Dr Chris Tuck A recurring question in the war in Ukraine has been ‘who is winning?’ At the moment, it is clear that, despite the large-scale failure of his initial invasion, Putin still hopes that that a clear-cut military victory can be obtained. But the question of whether further gains or losses on the ground might… Read More ‘Losing as Winning:’ Putin’s Developing Narrative of Victory
Dr James Bosbotinis The following article is based on a forthcoming paper, ‘The UK and Maritime Power’, which will be published in the journal Etudes Marines, a publication of the French Centre for Maritime Strategic Studies (CESM). As the UK enters the 2020s, it is confronted by a strategic system in flux. This is particularly… Read More British Maritime Strategy in the 2020s
Dr. Jeffrey H. Michaels Dr. Michaels is Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London In the original script of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, the film concludes with a custard pie fight in the War Room. Thankfully, Kubrick had the good sense to avoid the full slapstick approach and chose to… Read More Strategic Studies Slapstick: A Review of Patrick Porter’s Looking Back: WWIII Remembered
Robert McCabe, Deborah Sanders and Ian Speller The majority of navies are small. Given that this is the case, why is so little written about their strategies, roles and capabilities in the twenty first century? Academic research has tended instead to focus on blue water navies. Where small navies are considered at all, this tends… Read More Europe, Small Navies and Maritime Security, Balancing Traditional Roles and Emergent Threats in the 21st Century
ROB GEIST PINFOLD Dr. Rob Geist Pinfold is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Haifa and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London The research area of territorial withdrawal continues to polarise scholars. Theorists are irreconcilably divided regarding questions of agency: is withdrawal primarily affected by the global… Read More Territorial Withdrawal as Multilateral Bargaining: Revisiting Israel’s ‘Unilateral’ Withdrawals from Gaza and Southern Lebanon
WILLIAM MCKERAN William McKeran is studying at the UK Defence Academy and King’s College London. He is undertaking a Masters by Research that is using complexity theory to analyse the UK’s National Security Council, Fusion Doctrine and the Russian Federation. If you have any follow ups, contact him on Twitter Sir Mark Sedwill recently outlined the UK’s… Read More Strategic thought: the complexity of security
DR DAVID BLAGDEN David is Lecturer in International Security and Strategy at the University of Exeter’s Strategy and Security Institute. This post is intended to summarise and promote themes from his just-published book (co-edited with Mark de Rond), Games: Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 2019). You can follow him on Twitter here. Why plug a… Read More Games, Strategy, and the Conflict-Cooperation Spectrum
DR KEN PAYNE Know yourself, know your enemy, and in 100 battles you’ll never be defeated. It’s the only bit of Sun Tzu everyone remembers, and that’s good news for me, because the Master and I are of one mind. We’re both thinking about emotional intelligence (EI) and its role in war. A note for… Read More EI, meet IR: the emotionally attuned strategist
by Dr Robert T. Foley The First World War came to an ignominious end for Imperial Germany. On 6 November, Matthais Erzberger, a Centerist politician, was appointed to the commission to negotiate an armistice with the Western allies. Germany’s strategic and internal political situation was dire, as its allies sued for peace and mutiny and… Read More Reflections on the First World War: The German Perspective
DR ANDREW TAYLOR November 11this a significant day in the calendars of the British and Commonwealth states. It is principally Remembrance Day, commemorating the end of the First World War and reflecting upon the great cost in human life. It is also a significant date for scholars of maritime strategy. November 11th1992 was the date… Read More Gretton: Reflecting on his Enduring Lesson about Sea Control
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