An Introduction to War Studies 1802203311, 9781802203318

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An Introduction to War Studies

An Introduction to War Studies Edited by

Michael S. Goodman Professor of Intelligence and International Affairs, Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK

Rachel Kerr Professor of War and Society, Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK

Matthew Moran Professor of International Security, Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© The Editors and Contributors Severally 2024 Cover Image: Dr Lola Frost, ‘The Flesh of the World’ (2017). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023951238 This book is available electronically in the Political Science and Public Policy subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781802203325

ISBN 978 1 80220 331 8 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80220 332 5 (eBook)

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Contents List of contributorsvii Forewordxvii Sir Lawrence Freedman Preface and acknowledgementsxix 1

War Studies at King’s College London James Gow, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Rachel Kerr

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Conflict resolution in deeply divided societies Stacey Gutkowski, Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin

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Conflict, Security and Development Mats Berdal

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History of War Alan James

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Intelligence and international security Huw Dylan and David Easter

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International conflict studies: critical perspectives on conflict and security Vivienne Jabri, Leonie Ansems de Vries, Kiran Phull and Stephan Engelkamp

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International peace and security James Gow, Natasha Kuhrt and Maria Varaki

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International Relations and War: complexity, interdisciplinarity and analytical plurality Pablo de Orellana

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International Relations today: a long list of theories! Mervyn Frost

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National Security Studies John Gearson, Hillary Briffa and Joe Devanny

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Science and international security Hassan Elbahtimy and Filippa Lentzos

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Strategic Communications: shaping a new century Neville Bolt

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Terrorism, security and society Shiraz Maher and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens

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War Studies Online David Banks, David Easter and Anne-Lucie Norton

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War Studies Jan Willem Honig

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Index221

Contributors Leonie Ansems de Vries is Reader in International Politics at King’s College London, Chair of the Migration Research Group and Director of the King’s Sanctuary Programme. Her work combines research on migration, borders and the politics of violence with practical action and policy development on safe and legal pathways. She is the author of Re-Imagining a Politics of Life: From Governance of Order to Politics of Movement (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2014). Her forthcoming book, Politics of Exhaustion (Bristol University Press, 2024) examines the ways in which exhaustion is employed as a tool of governance to control people forced to move and how it is endured and resisted as a lived experience. David Banks is Lecturer in War Studies (Wargaming) at King’s College London, where he also serves as Academic Director of the King’s Wargaming Network. He has designed a number of wargames for research and education, and teaches two MA modules on wargaming methods and wargaming design. His current wargaming research is focused on determining epistemological standards for evaluating wargames as a research method. In addition to his wargaming research, Dr Banks also studies diplomatic practice in international society, with a special emphasis on symbolic and rhetorical diplomacy. His current book manuscript researches the motivation for and political consequences of state violations of diplomatic practice. He has been published in International Studies Quarterly and Security Studies, and media outlets including The Washington Post, Time, The Independent, Chicago Tribune, Navy Times, US World News & Report, and has appeared on BBC News. He received his PhD in International Relations from George Washington University in Washington DC in 2015. Mats Berdal is Professor of Security and Development in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where he is also Director of the Conflict, Security and Development Research Programme (CSDRG) and Programme Director for the MA in Conflict, Security and Development. From 2000 to 2003 he was Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. From 2015 to 2016, he served on the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Norwegian government to examine Norway’s military, humanitarian and development contributions to allied operations in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. He is a Member of the Academia vii

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Europaea and a graduate of the London School of Economics and Oxford University. Neville Bolt is Director of the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications, a leading global centre of expertise in strategic communications. He is Reader in Strategic Communications and Convenor of the Masters programme in Strategic Communications in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Dr Bolt is Editor-in-Chief of Defence Strategic Communications, the peer-reviewed academic journal of NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. And he is Senior Fellow at SCERU, at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Visiting Scholar at St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge. Much of his career was spent as a television journalist and producer-director at the BBC, ITV, and CBC (Canada). Working in news and current affairs, he specialised as a producer of war zone documentaries, covering conflicts in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Indian subcontinent. His book The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries (Columbia University Press) was published in 2012, winning the CHOICE International Relations ‘outstanding academic status award’, followed by a revised edition in 2020 (Oxford University Press). His co-authored book Unmapping the 21st Century: Between Networks and the State (Bristol University Press) was published in 2022. Hillary Briffa is Lecturer in National Security Studies and the Assistant Director of the Centre for Defence Studies in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, where she read for her PhD, asking whether small states can have a grand strategy. She is also a founding member of the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s, Chairs the Climate Hub of Circle-U (the European University Alliance), and serves on the College’s governing Council and Academic Board. Beyond academia, she worked on counter-radicalisation with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and worked at the Malta High Commission to the UK throughout Malta’s tenure as Commonwealth Chair-in-Office. After running peace-building projects in Eastern and Central Europe, in 2015 she was appointed an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and in 2016 became a recipient of the U.S. State Department’s inaugural Emerging Young Leaders award. Pablo de Orellana is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His research interests are interdisciplinary and include diplomacy, nationalist ideas, the history of ideas of statehood, and the relationship between conflict and aesthetics. In happier times, instead of researching nationalism, he drives his Vespa and pursues poetic, artistic, and archaeological interests. Joe Devanny is Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College

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London and the deputy director of the Centre for Defence Studies. He was a 2022–23 British Academy Innovation Fellow, undertaking research in the field of cyber diplomacy. He is a former Research Fellow at the International Centre for Security Analysis and a former postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Government. Huw Dylan is Reader in Intelligence and International Security at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and Associated Researcher at the Centre for Intelligence Studies, Norwegian Intelligence School. He joined the Department of War Studies in 2009 and led the MA in Intelligence and International Security for many years. His research is focused on the work of British and US intelligence during the Cold War and in contemporary security affairs. And he has published widely on a variety of relevant issues, including on the development of British deception operations in the early Cold War, and more recently on the failures of Russia’s intelligence machinery before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. His books include Defence Intelligence and the Cold War, published with Oxford University Press, and The CIA and the Pursuit of Security. David Easter is Senior Lecturer in War Studies and Programme Co-Director for the MA Global Security at King’s College London. He holds a BA in History and Philosophy from Lancaster University, and an MSc and PhD in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has worked as a Lecturer in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and as a Fellow at the Cold War Studies Centre/IDEAS. His research interests are intelligence, communications security and the Cold War. Hassan Elbahtimy is Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies and Director of the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS). Hassan’s research focuses on international security and the global politics of nuclear weapons. He has written widely on these topics including in Foreign Affairs, Journal of Strategic Studies, Security Studies, the Journal of Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Middle East Studies and the Nonproliferation Review among others. His research was awarded the McElveny Grand Prize by the Nonproliferation Review. He is an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and served as a Trustee and Executive Committee member of the British International Studies Association (BISA) 2019–2022 and chaired L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize in 2022. Stephan Engelkamp is Lecturer in International Relations Education at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where he is directing the MA programme in International Relations. His main research interests are global security governance and processes of normalisation in global

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and European politics, critical approaches to peace and conflict, international relations theory (especially critical norms research and post-colonial approaches), and political anthropology. His research has appeared in journals such as Alternatives, International Studies Perspectives and European Review of International Studies. He is the co-editor of a volume on critical norms research in International Relations, titled Kritische Normenforschung in den Internationalen Beziehungen (with Katharina Glaab and Antonia Graf, Nomos 2021). Sir Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London. Lawrence Freedman was Professor of War Studies at King’s College London from 1982 to 2014, and was Vice-Principal from 2003 to 2013. He was educated at Whitley Bay Grammar School and the Universities of Manchester, York and Oxford. Before joining King’s he held research appointments at Nuffield College Oxford, IISS and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1995, he was appointed Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997. In June 2009 he was appointed to serve as a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq War. Professor Freedman has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the Cold War, as well as commentating regularly on contemporary security issues. Among his books are Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (2000), The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (4th edn, 2019), Deterrence (2005), the two volume Official History of the Falklands Campaign (2nd edn, 2007), an Adelphi Paper on The Transformation in Strategic Affairs (2004), A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East (2009), Strategy: A History (2013), The Future of War: A History (2017) and Ukraine and the Art of Strategy (2019). His new book is Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine. He also, with his son, has a substack, Comment is Freed. Mervyn Frost is Professor of International Relations in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He has written extensively on ethics and international relations. His recent work, with Dr Silviya Lechner, is focused on the ‘practice turn’ in International Relations: ‘Two Conceptions of International Practice: Aristotelian praxis or Wittgensteinian language-games?’ Review of International Studies 42, 2 (2016), pp.334–350; ‘Understanding international relations from the internal point of view’ July 2015, Journal of International Political Theory. pp.1–21; and a monograph Practice Theory and International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2018). His earlier books include Ethics and International Relations (CUP, 1996), Human Rights in a World of States (Routledge, 2002); Global Ethics (Routledge, 2009); and an edited 4 volume reference work International

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Ethics (Sage, 2012). In 2020 he was awarded the Fellowship of King’s College (FKC). John Gearson is Head of the School of Security Studies, King’s College London. A Professor of National Security Studies, he is also Director of the Centre for Defence Studies in the Department of War Studies, and previously served as Director of the Freeman Air & Space Institute between 2020–2022. From 2002 to 2007 he was seconded to the House of Commons where he acted as the principal defence policy adviser to the Defence Select Committee and as a Parliamentary Clerk to the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee. While at Parliament he was responsible for inquiries into UK Defence and Security, the Iraq War, the New Chapter to the Strategic Defence Review, the 2003 Defence White Paper, and the Freedom of Information Act. After leaving Parliament he acted as a senior adviser to the UK Ministry of Defence study into the Military Role in Counter-Terrorism and more recently contributed to background work for various UK Strategic Defence and Security reviews. Prior to his time at Parliament, he was Director of the MA in Defence Studies at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at the UK Defence Academy. He is a member of the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. Michael S. Goodman is Professor of Intelligence and International Affairs and Head of the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is Visiting Professor at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School and at Sciences Po in Paris. He has published widely in the field of intelligence history, including The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Volume I: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis (Routledge, 2015), which was chosen as one of The Spectator’s books of the year. He is series editor for ‘Intelligence, Surveillance and Secret Warfare’ for Edinburgh University Press; and is a member of the editorial boards for five journals. He has recently finished a secondment to the Cabinet Office, where he has been the Official Historian of the Joint Intelligence Committee: Volume II will be published in 2023. He is a current British army reservist. James Gow is Professor of International Peace and Security in the Department of War Studies. He joined King’s in 1990. He is a permanent non-resident scholar with the Liechtenstein Institute, Princeton University. He has held visiting positions at the University of Sheffield, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, the Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University, and the Centre of International Studies, Princeton University. Among other activities, he was a member of the British Film Institute In-View Advisory Board (2007–9) and a member of the ESRC/AHRC ‘Global Uncertainties’ Development Panel and the ESRC/ AHRC ‘Global Uncertainties Fellowship’ Commissioning Panel (2008–9).

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He is currently Chair of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism Advisory Council, editor of the Routledge Contemporary Security Issues series, and a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of Genocide Research, Media, War and Conflict, Slovene Studies and the Encyclopedia Princetoniensis. Stacey Gutkowski is Reader in Peace and Conflict Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She is deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies and leads the Templeton Religion Trust’s Social Consequences of Religion research programme on religion and peacebuilding. She co-edits the book series Religion and its Others: Studies in Religion, Nonreligion and Secularity (DeGruyter) and is former co-director of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (2008–2020). She has published on the relationships among religion, the secular, peace and conflict in Israel and Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, the United States and Britain, including two research monographs (Religion, War and Israel’s Secular Millennials: Being Reasonable? (2020) and Secular War: Myths of Religion, Politics and Violence (2014)). Stacey holds a PhD from Cambridge and an MPhil in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and formerly worked for an NGO. Jan Willem Honig is Professor of International Security at The Netherlands Defence Academy and Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies. After obtaining a degree in Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam, Jan Willem Honig joined the Department of War Studies as an MA student in 1984. He soon transferred to and completed a PhD and a postdoc under supervision of Sir Lawrence Freedman and Michael Dockrill in 1989. After a stint in New York with the Institute for East-West Security Studies and New York University, he rejoined the Department as a lecturer in 1993. Punctuated by a sabbatical year with NYU and Princeton (1999–2000) and a secondment as chair of military strategy with the Swedish Defence College (now University; 2007–11), he remained with the Department until 2022 when he took up a professorship in international security studies with the Netherlands Defence Academy. The chapter represents a personal take on a phenomenon in which the author was a participant-observer over a significant part of its history. Vivienne Jabri is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Her research areas include critical social, political and international theory, international political sociology, and critical perspectives in conflict and security studies. She is Principal Investigator on a five-year UKRI Frontier Research Grant project, Mapping Injury, and is currently completing a book on the subject of war, the political and the international. She was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award in 2015 by

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the Peace Studies Section of the International Studies Association and served on the Politics and International Studies unit of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework in the UK. She has published four books, including the two most recent, War and the Transformation of Global Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 2010) and The Postcolonial Subject (Routledge, 2013), two co-edited volumes, and multiple articles and chapters on political subjectivity in contexts of war, conflict and security, on critical theory and understandings of the political, on relationality and global perspectives in International Relations, on war and aesthetic thought, and on the constitution of the post-colonial international. Alan James is Reader in International History in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and former fellow of the Institut des Études Avancées de Paris (IEA). He works on early modern naval history, particularly of France, and on the pre-Revolutionary French state. In addition to his own books and essays, he has co-edited the volumes Religion and War from Antiquity to Early Modernity (2023) and Ideologies of Western Naval Power, c.1500–1815 (2020), and co-authored European Navies and the Conduct of War (2019). He is a member of the Society for Nautical Research, a council member of the Navy Records Society, and a trustee of the British Commission for Maritime History on whose behalf he organises the long-established King’s Maritime History research seminar. Michael Kerr is Professor of Conflict Studies. He runs the MA in Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies with his two co-authors. Michael studied Government at the University of Essex and holds a PhD in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was a Leverhulme Fellow (2006–08). Joining King’s College London in 2008, he served as Director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies (2014–17), and Director for the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies (2012–21). His research focuses on consociational democracy, political protest, peace processes and third-party intervention in deeply divided societies. His publications include: Imposing Power-Sharing: Conflict and Coexistence in Northern Ireland and Lebanon (Irish Academic Press, 2006), The Destructors: The Story of Northern Ireland’s Lost Peace Process (Irish Academic Press, 2011), The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (OUP 2015), and The Sound and the Fury: A History of the Northern Ireland Hunger Strikes (OUP, 2024). Rachel Kerr is Professor of War and Society and Deputy Head of the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She joined King’s in 2003 as a Lecturer in War Studies and co-developed the War Studies Online programmes. Rachel holds a BA in International History and Politics from the University of Leeds and an MA and PhD in War Studies from King’s College

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London. Her research focuses on transitional and post-conflict justice and memory, war crimes and international justice, and she is the author of The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: An Exercise in Law, Politics and Diplomacy (Oxford University Press, 2004), Peace and Justice: Seeking Accountability After War (Polity, 2007) and The Military On Trial: UK War Crimes in Iraq (Brill, 2008). Natasha Kuhrt is Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research interests include international law, conflict, and intervention, as well as a regional focus on Russian foreign and security policies, particularly in Asia. She is co-convenor of the British International Studies Association Working Group on Russian & Eurasian Security. She has published widely on Russian foreign policy as well as on issues of intervention. Craig Larkin is Reader in Middle East Politics and Peace and Conflict Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies and Research Lead on Memory and Conflict for the FCDO funded Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme. His publications include: Memory and Conflict in Lebanon (Routledge, 2012), The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places (Routledge, 2013) and The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (OUP, 2015). He has researched and written extensively on Islamist movements, urban violence and ethnoreligious conflict throughout the Middle East. Craig holds a PhD in Middle East Studies from the University of Exeter (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, 2009). He previously studied Arabic at Damascus University (2002–4) and worked in community development projects in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Filippa Lentzos is Reader in Science & International Security at King’s College London, where she is jointly appointed in the Department of War Studies and the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine. A biologist and social scientist by training, Lentzos’s research critically examines biological threats, health security, biorisk management and biological arms control. Lentzos is also Associate Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Non-Resident Scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), adviser and mentor on the Young Women in Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Mentorship Programme, and serves as NGO Coordinator for the Biological Weapons Convention. Shiraz Maher is Reader in Non-State Actors in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. He is an intellectual historian whose research primarily focuses on the use of Islamic law by jihadist organisations and on the Syrian Civil War.

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Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens is Senior Lecturer in Terrorism and Radicalisation in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. His research focuses on how extremist groups and social movements attract, recruit, and mobilise their followers. He is the author of Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad (Harvard, 2020), and Homegrown: ISIS in America (Bloomsbury, 2020). Matthew Moran is Professor of International Security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He has served as Director of Research since 2019 and succeeded Mike Goodman as Head of Department in August 2023. He has published widely on security-related issues and his books include Living on the Edge: Iran and the Practice of Nuclear Hedging (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Riots: An International Comparison (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Anne-Lucie Norton was Executive Director of War Studies Online in the Department of War Studies from 2002 until her retirement in 2019. She has a BA in English Language and Literature, an MA in History of Ideas, a PGCert in Cultural and Intellectual History of the Renaissance, and is currently researching humanism in sixteenth-century Iberia. With a background in academic tertiary-level publishing, Anne-Lucie was invited by Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, who at the time was Head of the School of Security Studies, King’s College London, to prepare a competitive bid to the UK government for funds to create the Department’s first web-delivered postgraduate degree, MA War in the Modern World (WiMW), which launched in 2005. Prior to coming to King’s, Anne-Lucie held senior editorial and management positions in Jane’s Defence Publishing and Palgrave Macmillan where she established highly regarded lists in strategic and defence studies. Kiran Phull is Lecturer in International Relations (IR) at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where she co-convenes the MA in International Conflict Studies and the Research Centre in International Relations. Her research centres on the politics of global knowledge production and the rise of opinion polling. She takes a critical and interdisciplinary approach to the study of public opinion, focusing on the ways that epistemic technologies (polls, surveys, population data) create and shape the conditions for governing social and political life. Previously, Dr Phull was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics, where she received her PhD in IR exploring the history of scientific inquiry into Middle Eastern publics and the emergence of local emancipatory methods practices. Maria Varaki is Lecturer in International Law at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Before joining King’s she held research positions with the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights

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in Helsinki and the Law Faculty of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and she was Assistant Professor in International Law at Kadir Has University, Faculty of Law in Istanbul. She holds a PhD in International Criminal Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway, Ireland and two LLM degrees in International and Comparative Law, one from Tulane University, School of Law and one from New York University, School of Law. Additionally, she has worked for the OHCHR in Geneva, the UNHCR in New York and for the Legal Advisory section of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Foreword Sir Lawrence Freedman Although the Department of War Studies has always been based at King’s, until 2006 its degrees were awarded by the University of London. My appointment as Chair of War Studies was made by the University, and once I became Head of Department in April 1982 I was expected to meet up with the University-convened Board of War Studies. This had slightly more members than the Department had academic staff. I nonetheless found it valuable and constructive, helping me forge links with the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, as well as the other Colleges in the University. A large presence on the Board was the Professor of International History at the LSE, Donald Cameron Watt. A brilliant, engaging and at times eccentric figure, he was always very supportive. But he was worried about the name, and especially my plans for giving the Department a greater prominence. He warned me that this would result in student radicals occupying the Strand. I did not share this particular concern, but it was clear that for some ‘War Studies’ was a provocation. There was a move within the University to establish a Department of Peace Studies as a sort of countervailing force. I spoke to one of those behind this move and tried to explain that many of the items he wanted in his curriculum were already in ours. It was possible to study war without promoting it. One would not accuse those researching tropical diseases as being complicit in their spread. The prevalence of war might be regrettable but there it was, shaping the modern world, and so deserved proper attention. I noted that my predecessor as head, Wolf Mendl, was a distinguished Quaker, who had played an active role in post-war reconciliation in Japan. To no avail. The name, he told me, was far too ‘macho’. At which point, I’m afraid, I started to laugh. The issue never went away. There was a fine Department of Peace Studies at Bradford, with whom relations were cordial. Its curriculum was different but there was a significant overlap. The difference was that while we were sure we were not promoting war Bradford was expected to promote peace, and while we had occasional discussions about defining war, those discussions in Bradford about the meaning of peace were intense. I was always proud of the diversity of views amongst the staff and students not only on how to approach the topic but also what this meant for public policy. That seemed to me to be xvii

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as important as interdisciplinarity. Moreover, because other departments that covered our field went in for euphemisms to avoid the dreaded implication of war-mongering, the candour of our name made us distinctive. The moment the Cold War ended the issue was back with a vengeance. I lost count of the number of people who came up to me with what they were sure was an original joke about the need to change the name to ‘Peace Studies’. I had a little speech about the fact that war was what we studied – moments of conflict and violence rather than harmony and tranquillity – and how we did not need any more to study because sadly there was a backlog. Then the wars came – the 1991 Gulf War followed the by the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. I no longer needed my speech. The value of academic teaching and research in this area was now self-evident. I confess that in the euphoria of 1990 I wondered whether we could be able to sustain postgraduate interest, which is one reason why we decided to develop the undergraduate degree. Instead, the Department’s offer expanded dramatically with its staff and student numbers, addressing all the issues raised by war, including the ways to prevent its outbreak and mitigate its impact. Now, other than at King’s, there are a number of departments of war studies and individuals content to identify it as their field of study. By its example the Department has demonstrated the importance of approaching this most difficult and at times distressing of topics with scholarship and academic integrity.

Preface and acknowledgements Founded in 1962 by Professor Sir Michael Howard, the Department of War Studies (DWS) is unique in the UK and one of the very few university departments in the world devoted exclusively to the multi-disciplinary study of war and conflict. As DWS passes its 60th anniversary, the study of these issues has never been more important. From the use of chemical weapons in armed conflict and terrorist attacks, to increasingly complex attacks in the cyber domain, and from the rise of violent extremism to the emergence of dangerous new nuclear powers, various combinations of new and old threats continue to erode peace and security across the globe and challenge us to find new ways of countering them. The Department is uniquely equipped to advance understanding of the changing character of war and conflict, and its causes, conduct and consequences for society. We place great emphasis on recruiting and developing leading experts who have a depth of knowledge of their specialist subjects. We now boast a permanent faculty of over 100 full-time academic staff, with a further 100 research and teaching fellows. Our award-winning academics are drawn from around the globe and from a variety of methodological and subject backgrounds. Simply put, there is no other university that brings such a diverse range of disciplines, including history, international politics, law, philosophy, sociology, psychology and natural sciences together in a single, coherent department. Today, DWS has approximately 1,500 students, spread across four undergraduate degree programmes, 14 taught postgraduate degrees, and a postgraduate research programme that includes 250 doctoral students. Our staff and student numbers make us the largest security-related department outside of North America. Our 15,000+ graduates can be found in every corner of the globe, from 10 Downing Street and President Biden’s White House, to leading think tanks in India and aid agencies in Africa. This book is both reflection and commemoration of 60 years of War Studies and a handbook for War Studies students and scholars of the future. The 15 chapters reflect the breadth and depth of our multi-disciplinary approach to the study of war and conflict. The chapters are organised around our 14 MA programmes, authored by the programme directors and core staff. Each one provides a cutting-edge state of the art discussion of the topic in question, with a survey of the current state of knowledge in the field, a reflection on gaps and xix

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opportunities for future research, and a forecast of how the research agenda might evolve looking further forward. It has been an honour and a privilege to curate this collection and edit the chapters. As a whole, the book is a celebration of a long and continuing tradition of excellence in research and education on all aspects of war and conflict at the foremost centre for the study of war in the world. We are grateful to each of the contributors for their part in this, and of course to the entire staff and student body and our many alumni and associated fellows. We also extend our thanks to Dr Lola Frost for permission to use the artwork on the cover of the book, The Flesh of the World, which was exhibited as part of her exhibition at King’s, Deep and Radiant Time, in 2018. The Flesh of the World encourages us to reflect on the risks, vulnerability and precarity of war and peace. Dr Frost was the first War Studies Artist-in Residence (a position subsequently held by Baptist Coelho and Milena Michalski) and we acknowledge the generous funding of the Leverhulme Trust and Arts and Humanities Research Council in supporting these positions. Dr Frost was instrumental in pioneering novel and innovative arts-based research and artist–researcher collaborations under the auspices of the Art and Conflict Hub, together with the creative and energetic Jayne Peake. Finally, our thanks to all who have contributed to the genesis and preparation of the book and the War Studies at 60 celebrations, including Sanjana Balu, Elizabeth Brown, Lizzie Ellen, Jan Gocken, James Gow, Pablo de Orellana, Lauren Midgely, and the rest of the Department Senior Leadership Team, Peter Busch, Vivienne Jabri, Nicholas Michelson, Ralph Parfect, Julia Pearce, and Brooke Rogers. We hope you enjoy reading the book as much as we have! Michael S. Goodman, Rachel Kerr and Matthew Moran London, February 2023

1. War Studies at King’s College London James Gow, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Rachel Kerr In 1979, Michael Howard produced the raison d’être to study war, just over a decade after he had left the Department of War Studies (DWS) at King’s College London and almost two decades since its conception: War and the Liberal Conscience.1 The thesis of that elegant, witty and brief volume, based on a series of lectures at the University of Cambridge, is that all the wishes for peace and best efforts of humans to abolish war only succeeded in making the latter worse. While never the same each time it occurred, war was an ever present of the human condition. The only reasonable response, therefore, was to study this social phenomenon with a view to managing it and minimising it, wherever possible. That is what the small department he bequeathed did and what subsequently, ever growing, it continued to do, expanding in size and scope, establishing itself as the leading venue for academic research and education on war, in all its aspects.2 And the study of war has many aspects. War has links to every bit of human experience and endeavour. In that spirit, War Studies encouraged the expansive and inclusive range of war studies. Some, curiously, appear to have questioned this breadth and evolution, in some degree. Jan Willem Honig indicates qualms about the possible direction of travel in the present volume, while others at times associated with King’s have questioned either the absence of theory,3 or the more open and eclectic move away from Michael Howard’s roots in history.4 The fallacy, in either case, is to assume that the study of war should be bounded in some way; yet, war is not bounded in its relationships to each part of the human realm. While we can surely recognise that there is a core to which everything else does relate – the use (actual or implied) of armed force by specialist social organisations for political purposes, the rich study of war cannot, or should not, be constrained to that core. That was certainly the mission that underpinned the development of War Studies at King’s by Michael Howard and those who gave him the mission: to move beyond military studies, or military history, into an expansive exploration of war in its social context. That remains the multi- and interdisciplinary enterprise that it was at its outset. 1

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The ‘war and society’ mission was essential, both intrinsically to the field and also to university politics. King’s had an interrupted history of military studies and even a short-lived previous ‘Department of War Studies’. But, when it came to the development of that which would become the ‘War Studies’ celebrated in the present volume, with its multidisciplinary variety, Howard was advised to ‘interest the economists, the international lawyers, the social scientists, the international relations specialists, even, if possible, the scientists’.5 This holistic approach – stressing the wider context and the need to be interdisciplinary – shaped the Department of War Studies from its creation onwards. As War Studies passed its 60th anniversary the challenges posed by warfare, as states and other actors sought to secure their interests and ensure their survival, continued to frame its research and education. Inevitably, as the character of warfare morphed and new issues and fashions emerged, DWS adapted and evolved, growing in size and broadening in coverage. Extending it beyond the suggested specialisms to which Michael Howard was directed, would, in time, come to embrace military psychology, conflict and health, science and security, cyber security, and technology and ethics, as well as research on visual art and reconciliation, poetry, cinema and communication media, among other foci.

1.1

PRE-HISTORY AND EMERGENCE

The first precursor to War Studies came in 1848, just under 20 years after King’s was founded. The Department for Military Science (DMS) was established to educate officer cadets for the British Army.6 Designed by then-Principal, the Reverend Richard W. Jelf, cadets studied a mix of the Bible (befitting an institution founded to offer god-fearing Christian men a place to study in London), history, languages, mathematics, and philosophy, as well as some more military-focused skills, embracing battlefield surveillance, fortification construction, strategy, and tactics.7 However, in 1859, the DMS was closed and studies linked to war fell dormant for over three decades, when (the later Sir) John Knox Laughton was appointed as Professor of Modern History, in 1893. Laughton had been a civilian instructor in the Royal Navy before coming to King’s in 1893, from which position he persuaded the Navy to permit access, albeit limited, to its archives and co-founded the Navy Records Society. Two years before Laughton died, military studies re-emerged in 1913–14, now a course for the general undergraduate programmes. Then, in 1927, the University of London created a Chair of Military Studies. This followed a model at the University of Oxford and was supported by the British government. Because King’s already had an (albeit patchy) association with aspects of studying war, this found its home at King’s. Retired Major General Sir Frederick Maurice was appointed to the Chair. His father, ironically, had

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been removed from the Chair of Theology at King’s, in 1853, for heretical thoughts on divine punishment, and Maurice Jr., himself, had been forced to resign from the army in 1918 for expressing equally heretical views concerning the Prime Minister’s statements about the Western Front in a letter published in the press. He only stayed for a few years, but the Military Studies department he had led continued, running courses for the Territorial Army. Military Studies was reconstituted as the ‘Department of War Studies’, in 1943, but this was short-lived, and closed in 1948. This was evidently not the end of War Studies. As the tides of change moved, a young assistant Lecturer in History had been appointed the year before and it was he who would be central, through the accidents and intricacies of university politics, to the return of the subject in a quite different kind of Department of War Studies established in the 1960s: Michael Howard. Howard joined King’s as an assistant Lecturer in History in 1947. He wrote, with John Sparrow, a history of the Coldstream Guards, the regiment with which he had served with distinction in the Second World War – a book he saw as his ‘graceful farewell to arms’ rather than the preface to War Studies that it turned out to be.8 In the early 1950s a group of senior figures in the University of London, including Sir Charles Webster, Lionel Robbins, and Sir Keith Hancock, all eminent scholars who had been involved in the British war effort and writing its history, decided that military studies should be revived within the University and its quality enhanced to become both a truly academic subject area and to reflect the full scope of twentieth-century war, embracing economics, society, law and ethics, and so on. The LSE, where Webster held the Chair of International History, was the prime and obvious candidate for the revived military studies post. It had the right environment, with coverage in that range of subjects, and it had a candidate – Noble ‘Bunny’ Frankland, an ex-RAF officer who collaborated with Webster to write the Official History of the Combined Bomber Offensive. But King’s had precedent and a ‘prescriptive right’ to first claim on a new appointment of this sort and a ‘plausible’ and willing candidate in Howard,9 who had served with distinction, won the Military Cross for gallantry and co-authored the regimental history. Howard became Lecturer in War Studies, based in the Department of History, in 1953. Over the next decade, War Studies developed into a specialist area within history, then a discrete Master’s programme, before the eventual creation of the eponymous Department of War Studies. Howard was given a year’s sabbatical to master his new focus, as he put it, ‘to learn my new trade.’ Counselled by a letter from Cyril Falls, he read Edward Meade Earl’s The Makers of Modern Strategy, which led him to other sources and to the inference that the history of war was that of ‘entire societies’ and that their cultures shaped how and why they fought and also that fighting itself impacted on social structure.10 This was distilled into what Howard popu-

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larised as a ‘war and society’ approach, gleaned from the mission that Webster – ‘the true Godfather of War Studies’ – had set, and from his self-education in his new field, which he also concluded meant approaching the study of history in a new way. Webster also told him that he had to write a ‘proper book’, as he happily recounted in his memoir.11 Howard demonstrated the potential of his approach with this ‘proper book’ – a landmark account of the Franco-Prussian War.12 After his appointment he was still a member of the History Department. The Head of Department expected him to teach the full range of history subjects; but he was prepared to teach only military history. This period of frustration and tension concluded when the professor in charge of history retired in 1961, and Howard was conferred with the title of Reader. It was agreed that he would get his own specialist area within History, which then became the discrete MA in War Studies and eventually, four years later in 1965, the Department of War Studies, after Howard had been conferred with the Chair in War Studies in 1963. By this time Howard had already been in effect running his own department-in-making with the specialist area, participating actively in the life of the University and working with and representing the Board of War Studies (individual Colleges had a much more subordinate role at that time). He had been fostering clusters of ‘war and society’ students within History (including later luminaries such as Brian Bond, John Gooch, and Peter Simkins) – a de facto ‘war studies’ programme that was the basis for his also establishing the MA in War Studies, agreed in 1962 under the University Board. The events of 1961–2 – Howard’s promotion and his liberation to create the MA programme, as well as his defining lecture on ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, delivered at RUSI – prefigured the conferring of the Chair of War Studies on him in 1963 and the shift to an actual department.13

1.2

THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR STUDIES

The MA was the foundation for the establishment of DWS, and its mainstay until the 1990s, but special subjects were offered to undergraduates on the University of London History programme and crucially, research students also began to be recruited in those early days. John Gooch continued from the specialist group in History to research for a doctorate, the foundation of a stellar career; others from that cohort such as Neil Summerton wrote PhD dissertations, but went seamlessly in other directions (in his case, to be a top civil servant), and Wolf Mendl came to research French nuclear policy, but before he had finished became the first lecturer appointed to support Howard when the new Department of War Studies opened in 1965, joining Howard and his secretary June Walker. A year later, Brian Bond, who had lost out to Mendl at the interview stage, became the second lecturer in the department. He had

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completed his MA in History in 1962 as part of Michael Howard’s proto-War Studies cohort of ‘war and society’ students (while already holding a one-year Tutorship in History at Exeter University from 1961) and he returned to the fold at King’s after four years as a lecturer at the University of Liverpool. Howard also began what would continue to be an important aspect of War Studies, securing external funding from charitable foundations committed to peace, disarmament, or the reduction of poverty to encourage research on war in the interests of peace – as all in War Studies concur, a better understanding of war gives better chances of peace. This approach brought Ford Foundation grants that allowed, inter alia, American scholarly greats-in-the-making, such as Richard Rosecrance and Morton Halperin to spend time in the Dickensian conditions of 154, Strand – the rickety home of the department. However, with DWS established, two years later, its founder moved on to Oxford. Howard was succeeded as Professor of War Studies by Laurence Martin, who joined the Department from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (and who had curiously been offered but then rejected the same Ministry of Defence-funded Fellowship at All Soul’s, Oxford that Howard took up – a strange employment merry-go-round). Howard considered that Martin’s profile in strategic studies would be important in the department’s profile and in taking it forward, while he would also be expert in managing university politics. All of this secured War Studies and offered ample qualification, when he left King’s a decade later, to become Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University. During the Martin era, there were two key developments. First, the Department steadily expanded student numbers and acquired two of its legendary characters in 1971. Barrie Paskins, a philosopher who had completed a PhD at Cambridge was appointed (as a Ministry of Defence Lecturer initially) to teach ethics in warfare. At the same time, a diplomatic historian who had worked in Martin’s department at Aberystwyth joined the ranks, Michael Dockrill (who shared a passion for old railways with Martin). As Brian Bond reported, War Studies continued to be a happy and ‘cosy’ place – no doubt, in part, due to Laurie Martin’s charm and sense of humour.14 Mike Dockrill showed immense enthusiasm and adaptability to fill gaps and take on new areas of teaching, with alacrity and famed good humour, for 30 years, until he retired in 2001.15 Martin’s recruitment of the diplomatic historian and the specialist in the ethics of war (and as it turned out, beyond expectations, also literary fiction and war) confirmed DWS’s multi- and interdisciplinary character, while a Ministry of Defence Fellowship Scheme in the early 1970s brought serving officers to experience academic education beyond military training, growing and strengthening the student cohort. The second major accomplishment of the Laurie Martin period was to secure and to grow the collections in the Centre for Military Archives under a new name, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. Michael Howard

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was pivotal in bringing the collected papers of Sir Basil Liddell Hart to King’s, where the Centre for Military Archives was officially opened in 1964. There was a strong sense that a specialist archive would be a great asset to research on war at King’s, enhancing its profile. However, following Liddell Hart’s death in 1970, there was uncertainty about its future and King’s was involved in legal disputes, notably with Liddell Hart’s widow. Although Sir Basil had bequeathed his whole collection to King’s, he had also included a clause to allow his wife, should she survive him, to rescind his bequest for the sum of £2500 during a period of three years after his demise. In 1972, Lady Liddell Hart invoked this clause, and King’s was required to pay £35,000 and appoint someone to enforce King’s responsibility to maintain the collection, should the College appear to lack in its care.16 Working with Julia Sheppard, archivist at the Centre for Military Archives, and then-Principal, Sir John ‘Shan’ Hackett, Laurie Martin secured grants and donations to ‘buy’ all the Liddell Hart papers already bequeathed to it and in its possession, securing the archive and giving it a platform to thrive and grow, in parallel to War Studies – a discrete, but linked, complement, and an immense asset to King’s, later embracing Michael Howard’s own papers, among its prized possession of over 800 sets of private and personal papers. When Martin left in 1978, Wolf Mendl succeeded him as Head of Department, but was not appointed to the Chair. A true mensch and all-round lovely individual committed to scholarship on peace, international affairs and civil–military relations, this gentle Quaker whose Jewish family had escaped 1930s Berlin industriously managed the small Department, keeping things ticking over, as financial pressures and dark shadows affected the College and, so, the department. This left the position of Professor of War Studies vacant and War Studies itself vulnerable to the pressures. When Marshal of the Royal Air Force and former Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Neil Cameron, became Principal of King’s College in 1980 he determined to fill the Chair with someone who would not only bolster, but enhance War Studies at King’s. In 1982, Mendl ended his term as Head of Department and the post, as well as the Chair in War Studies, went to Sir Lawrence Freedman, under whose leadership War Studies became firmly embedded as an academic subject and DWS was transformed into one of the biggest departments at King’s – and, indeed, the world. Although Freedman came to be celebrated around the world, his appointment came as a surprise to many. First, he was young – aged only 33 when he took up the appointment – and had no real experience in universities aside from studying, coming from research roles in ‘think tanks’ – the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Chatham House, the Royal Institute for International Affairs. However, he had Michael Howard’s imprimatur, having completed his DPhil at Oxford under his guidance. And his landmark book, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, published in 1981,

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had drawn attention and acclaim in an era of heightened debate about nuclear weapons. It had certainly come to Cameron’s attention, who felt that War Studies and King’s should be informing public debate, continuing a mission established by Michael Howard. This was a time of acute tension between the West and the Soviet Union, the rise of protests against nuclear weapons in Britain and across Europe, and the deployment on new weapons systems – cruise missiles in the UK and Germany by the US and the acquisition of Trident nuclear missile systems from Washington by London. Freedman’s expertise on nuclear strategy made him the ideal candidate. No sooner had he become Head of Department than Freedman undertook a mission to strengthen the department against the pressures that had applied to Wolf Mendl. He identified three areas in which he wished to see DWS grow. First, it needed to increase student numbers if it was to have resources to invest. Second, it needed to build on an established relationship with the Royal Naval College Greenwich, to develop King’s role in the provision of military education. Third, it should become a major contributor to policy debates in government and in the wider community. While Freedman pursued these avenues, the accidents of history also gave him a boost and a major platform to demonstrate the value of studying war. He took up his post on 1 April 1982; the following day, Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands, an event which was to become a major feature in his career as Official Historian of the Falklands Conflict. Although the Falklands occupied attention, the major changes of the Freedman era were being developed still. Brian Holden Reid was recruited with the help of the Leverhulme Foundation and strengthened the core provision in military history, writing on key military thinkers including ‘Boney’ Fuller as well as Liddell Hart. He later became a leading expert on the American Civil War. Philip Sabin was recruited in 1985 under a five-year Ministry of Defence Lectureship (subsequently made a permanent post by King’s), immensely adding to the Department’s provision, as something of a polymath – he arrived from Cambridge with expertise in both natural sciences – physics and nuclear theory – and classical and military history, with a command of the history of warfare from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. In this period, Freedman’s designs to grow student numbers to strengthen the department began to have effect. The MA cohort, which had initially been around 10 students, quickly became 20 or more. Alongside this, the number of research students continued to grow. But, all of these increases were at the established level of postgraduate studies. Freedman’s most radical move to expand and strengthen DWS was the introduction of an undergraduate programme, the BA War Studies. When the government removed the cap on student numbers, Sabin suggested an undergraduate degree might be possible and Freedman enthusias-

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tically embraced the idea and saw the opportunity to introduce the BA War Studies that would make the Department more secure. Michael Howard had avoided any suggestion of an undergraduate degree, an idea transmitted to those in the department. Freedman persuaded his colleagues of the case for this change and success soon bore out his judgement as the BA took off with an initial intake of 30, meaning 90 undergraduate students were in the Department by the end of the first three-year degree programme. In no time, those numbers were growing rapidly, exceeding the cautious aim to recruit 30 students per year – and as MA numbers were also on the rise, War Studies’ global reputation grew. Alongside this expansion on the educational side, the research agenda was also broadening and deepening. After the Falklands episode, Freedman was conscious that major international transformations were under way. By 1985, a new leader in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, was initiating new approaches that, in effect, ushered in the end of the Cold War, radically changing the strategic environment. There was then a need to focus on developments in other parts of the world, and in particular the Middle East. In 1990 the policy relevant work of DWS was reinforced by the formation of the Centre for Defence Studies, under the direction of Michael Clarke, with the benefit of an initial grant from the Ministry of Defence.17 The expansion on both research and educational fronts in the early 1990s required additional faculty. The 1991 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the global response to it, the dissolution and war in the Yugoslav lands and a series of other conflicts spurred activity and drew attention to the Department’s developing expertise on the rapidly changing strategic environment. On the educational side, reflecting both the changing strategic environment and the need to support the new degree, the faculty more than doubled in a span of four years. Efraim Karsh joined in 1989, followed by Christopher Dandeker who succeeded Wolf Mendl in teaching civil–military relations when the latter retired in 1990; Dandeker was crucial in developing the new undergraduate programme. In the course of the next three years, Saki Dockrill and James Gow (already on the books as researchers), and Beatrice Heuser, Jan Willem Honig and Andrew Lambert were appointed as permanent members of the faculty (Dockrill, Honig and Lambert having previously completed PhDs in War Studies). This was the point at which War Studies began its first period of rapid expansion, growing from a complement of five to one of 12. The additional people required to support undergraduate teaching were also able to offer new optional courses at postgraduate level and take on more research students. The need for new faces would not abate in the next 30 years. Another dimension of the expansion in relation to the changing strategic environment in the 1990s was a set of programmes of research, engagement and impact regarding Central and Eastern Europe and what were then called

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the ‘Newly Independent States’. The end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union left over 20 states emerging from communist rule, some of them with no recent experience of independent statehood.18 This was a security challenge where War Studies made two broad contributions. One was a series of projects over several years on Security and Democracy with funding secured from the European Commission by Freedman and Gow, led by the latter (and also conducted with partners in the Netherlands and Greece), which were a mix of education and action research involving partners in several of the post-communist countries and participants from across the whole of both regions. The second contribution was an extensive fellowship scheme for which Beatrice Heuser secured funding from the Volkswagen Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that brought scholars and practitioners from formerly communist countries to King’s, in some cases to read for the MA War Studies, but in others as visiting fellows to conduct research and gain experience. These activities were managed by the Kiwi force of Fiona Paton, remembered by everyone involved, and brought Graeme Herd and Elaine Holoboff to War Studies. Among the alumni from that period, Pjer Šimunović went on to be Croatia’s Ambassador to Washington DC, Natalia Gherman was Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deputy- and Acting-Prime Minister in Moldova before being appointed as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Central Asia, Jiří Šedivý served as Minister of Defence and Minister of European Integration before becoming the Czech Republic’s Permanent Representative to NATO and subsequently Special Envoy for Resilience Against Hostile Powers, and Nikolay Mladenov served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Bulgaria, before being appointed to two UN Secretary-General Special Representative Roles, first to Iraq (where he was also Head of the UN Assistance Mission), and then as Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, after which he became Director General AI and Research and Analysis Director at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi. As these individual examples show, these programmes were an immense success, in their own terms, helping to develop careers that made a difference. Freedman ended his time as Head of Department in 1996. But he stayed involved, first as Head of the new School of Social Science and Public Policy (which brought War Studies together with Geography, Education and Management), and then, from 2003, as Vice Principal, until his retirement in 2014 – and informally beyond, whenever his counsel was sought. Certainly, he worked very closely with his successor, Christopher Dandeker, who oversaw another remarkable raft of developments, continuing work begun under Freedman and ensuring the success of important developments beyond King’s itself.

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During the 1990s, the second prong of the DWS strategy took off, as the Department took responsibility for MAs to be taught to the RAF Staff College at Bracknell, pioneered by Phil Sabin, and then to the Navy and Army Staff Colleges at Greenwich and Camberley respectively – developments helped by the presence of MA and PhD alumnus Geoff Till at Greenwich and Brian Holden Reid’s secondment to Camberley and, then, Bracknell (when the Staff Colleges merged) as Resident Historian. Later in the decade the College was awarded a contract to provide academic support and the MA Defence Studies to the new Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) at Shrivenham, formed through a merger of the separate staff colleges, as well as a separate contract to provide educational support and a discrete MA International Studies at the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS). The agreement with JSCSC led to the formation of a whole new Defence Studies Department (DSD). Although this was an independent department, relations with DWS were inevitably close, with responsibilities for the RCDS shared over the years, and eventually they would come together as the School of Security Studies. The reputation of the Department increased student demand. Its academic offering also expanded, with new MA programmes, starting in 1997 with the MA International Peace and Security established in collaboration with the Law School by James Gow, to meet changing global conditions and to meet new research initiatives. That was followed in 2003 by the introduction of a new MA programme in Intelligence and International Security. Initially proposed by Andrew Rathmell and Kevin O’Brien (who departed for RAND Europe), Michael Rainsborough, who had joined the Department a few years earlier after completing his PhD under Freedman, developed and led the new programme during its first four years with a purpose to confront the hard realities and practicalities of our subject – although his well-meaning and quirky initiative to include practical understanding of how to make a rudimentary pipe bomb in an optional course could not be approved! When he moved on, Joe Maiolo took over – he had been recruited in 2001 to replace Michael Dockrill on his retirement.19 In 2004, Mats Berdal joined the Department from the International Institute of Strategic Studies, to develop another new MA programme in Conflict, Security and Development, a highly innovative programme addressing social and developmental aspects of the field. At this time, a major new strand of International Relations was also added, when Mervyn Frost and Vivienne Jabri transferred to King’s from the University of Kent to lead the development of another two new MA programmes the following year. A string of other programmes then emerged, reflecting the ever-changing security environment and new academic agendas, and all of them underpinning research groups and highlighting an ethos of research-led teaching, but also spurring excellent research informed by education. This was a distinctive, innovative, and creative model where lively MA programmes

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facilitated research, including the development and winning of research grants and contracts. From the 1990s onwards, DWS developed experimental international academic or professional educational links. Michael Rainsborough was appointed as academic consultant to the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he helped to establish the MSc in Strategic Studies and initially taught on it (having already taught at the National University of Singapore and at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich) and when he secured a permanent post in DWS, David Betz was recruited to replace him. John Gearson, who also completed his PhD under Freedman, and had worked with Freedman as consultant to the City of London on terrorism, followed paths of international engagement to the UAE, Oman and Brunei. DWS was also an early pioneer of online education, with its first flagship War Studies Online programme, MA War in the Modern World launched in 2005. Christopher Dandeker succeeded Freedman as Head of School in 2003 and was, in turn, succeeded by Brian Holden Reid. Holden Reid was probably the first of a series of heads of department who proclaimed that after recent growth there would be a period of consolidation. Yet, for all of them, the reality was a logic that spurred further expansion of provision and of faculty to cover new areas and to provide depth in existing ones. In 2007, four years after migrating to King’s, Frost became Head of Department, spurring the creation of an undergraduate International Relations programme alongside the BA War Studies, doubling the number of undergraduates. Theo Farrell, who had joined from Exeter, succeeded him, and then Michael Rainsborough became Head of Department in 2016. Rainsborough was succeeded by Michael Goodman, Head of Department at the time of writing (and one of the editors of the volume in which this piece appears). Each Head of Department presided over further enlargement of what was from 2008 onwards (at least), the largest locus of world and internationally leading research in the fields of politics, history and various forms of international studies associated with the social phenomenon of war.20 Amid that growth, in 2017, War Studies reached a notable landmark: Jack McDonald became the first – and to the time of writing only – individual to have gained BA, MA and PhD degrees in the Department, worked as a researcher and temporary lecturer and, at that point, joined the permanent faculty – the true War Studies scholar.21 It will not have escaped most readers’ notice that in this illustrious history of DWS, there is not an abundance of women featured. Among those who are, Beatrice Heuser was the first female to be promoted to the rank of Professor, becoming Professor of Strategic Studies in 2003, followed by Saki Dockrill (née Kimura), who became Professor of Contemporary History

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and International Security in 2003. Saki was a joyful embodiment of the spiritual and eclectic character of War Studies, and her loss to a second bout of leukaemia in 2009 was a blow for the Department. Saki and her husband, Michael Dockrill, left an important legacy in the form of an annual lecture to bring new voices to the fore, and an undergraduate scholarship programme. Vivienne Jabri, who joined in 2003 from Kent and cemented (with Frost) the Department’s twin bow in International Relations is Professor of International Politics. Yet, the Department remained behind the sector in the proportion of female staff, a situation it was working hard to correct to catch up with the more balanced and diverse student demographic.22 The majority of its new appointments into the 2020s were women, and many of its female staff have served in senior leadership positions, including the Vice-Principal, ‘Funmi Olonisakin (Professor of Security, Leadership and Development), Brooke Rogers, OBE, Vice-Dean People and Planning in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy (SSPP) and Professor of Behavioural Science and Security, who also had a leading role in shaping government policy on risk and behaviour, Rachel Kerr, Professor of War and Society who served as (Interim) Vice-Dean Education for SSPP, and Deputy Head of DWS (and who incidentally was directed to the MA War Studies by the aforementioned John Gooch as she was completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Leeds), Preeti Patel, Professor of Global Health and Development and Head of the Centre for Conflict and Health Research and Dr Julia Pearce, Associate Dean for Impact for SSPP and Director of Students and Culture in DWS.

1.3

PAST AND FUTURE

After six decades of almost constant growth, DWS was large and both young and old. It was young enough that around the time it reached 60, only a handful of those who had researched and taught in it were no longer alive – Michael Howard, Laurie Martin, Wolf Mendl and Michael and Saki Dockrill. But the Department, and with it the School of Security Studies with the Defence Studies Department (DSD) and King’s Institute of Applied Security Studies (KIASS), had grown to the extent that it was almost unrecognisable. This was testimony to the immense success of the War Studies project. The growth from one man – albeit in his own ironic terms, a ‘God-like professor’ – to a cottage industry of four or five, to a massive business of over 100 staff – plus another 60 or so faculty in DSD – was remarkable. It was paralleled by the arc from one MA programme to 14 of them, alongside two undergraduate programmes, and a research training programme with around 150 students. Equally remarkable was that at every stage of that research and educational evolution, in its academic rigour, interdisciplinarity, and commitment to engaging in public debate, War Studies (and its affiliates) had been exemplary in fulfilling both

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Michael Howard’s vision of eclecticism and King’s mission and ethos to produce knowledge in the service of society – far from the ivory tower version of a university, War Studies embodied the notion of contributing to global society, whether in terms of policy, human development, culture, health, or any other aspect of human and social experience. Just as war touches every aspect of human experience, War Studies contributes to practice and policy around the world in as broad a range of ways.

NOTES Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (London: Hurst and Co., 2008). The present account draws on several sources. Parts of it were adapted from the 2. booklet ‘War Studies 60 – Past, Present, Future: Celebrating Six Decades of Research Excellence’, King’s College London, available at: https://​www​.kcl​.ac​ .uk/​warstudies/​war​-studies​-at​-60/​dws​-celebratory​-publication, for which James Gow led the writing. That short ‘history’ and our own more developed piece here were both informed by research in the King’s archives on the topic by Mark Gwilt, who produced a draft history on which we draw: Mark Gwilt, The History of the Department of War Studies (Unpublished and Unfinished Draft) and additional work by Jan Gocken. The booklet and this chapter were also informed by the autobiographical accounts of two of the Department’s earliest members, Michael Howard and Brian Bond: Michael Howard, Captain Professor: A Life in War and Peace (London: Continuum, 2006); Brian Bond, Military Historian: My Part in the Development of War Studies, 1966‒2016 (Solihull: Helion and Co., 2018). The chapter, of course, also draws on our own personal recollection and papers, as well as those of colleagues, for which we are grateful. 3. Tarak Barkawi and Shane Brighton, ‘Absent War Studies? War, Knowledge, and Critique’, in Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers (eds.), The Changing Character of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.524‒542; Tarak Barkawi and Shane Brighton, ‘Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge, and Critique’, International Political Sociology, 5, 2 (2011), pp.126‒143. 4. David Morgan-Owen and Michael Finch, ‘The Unrepentant Historian: Sir Michael Howard and the Birth of War Studies’, British Journal of Military History, 8, 2 (2022), pp.55‒76. 5. Howard, Captain Professor, p.147. 6. Gwilt, History of DWS. 7. King’s College London was founded in 1829 by the Duke of Wellington (who fought a duel in the cause) and others as an institution where Christian men (no women were considered at the time) could receive a higher education. This was an explicit counter to the founding of University College London by Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham and others who favoured a non-denominational metropolitan higher education in opposition to the Christian-based provision at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Gentle rivalry between the two colleges continued throughout their histories, even as both became large, liberal research-intensive academic institutions. Michael Howard mocked Bentham and his Plan for Universal and Perpetual Peace, published in 1789: ‘Like so much that Bentham wrote, the work was smug, parochial and simplistic, making 1.

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sweeping generalisations on the basis of minimal knowledge’ (War and the Liberal Conscience, p.33). 8. Howard, Captain Professor, p.141. 9. Howard, Captain Professor, p.141. 10. Howard, Captain Professor, p.145. 11. Howard, Captain Professor p.145. 12. Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870‒71 (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961). 13. Michael Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History: A Lecture Delivered at the RUSI, 18 October 1961’, RUSI Journal, 107, 625 (1962), pp.4‒10. 14. Bond, Military Historian, p.34. 15. Bond, Military Historian, p.36. 16. Gwilt, History of DWS. 17. ‘CDS’ was a product of Freedman’s continuing conversation and dinners with the brilliant Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Michael Quinlan. James Gow, ‘Reflections on the Freedman School’ in Ben Wilkinson and James Gow (eds.), The Art of Power: Freedman on Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p.353. 18. This figure is not precisely stated, as it excludes the post-Yugoslav states but not Slovenia, which was involved. 19. Brian Bond also retired at the same time as Michael Dockrill and was replaced by William Philpott. 20. In the various UK national research excellence exercises in 2008, 2014, and 2021, peer review judged King’s to be the most powerful research unit in Politics and International Studies, with a vastly greater concentration of world or internationally leading research. See: https://​www​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​news/​sspp​-faculty​ -demonstrates​-far​-reaching​-impact​-and​-research​-excellence. 21. Andrew Stewart, one of the first undergraduate cohort in 1991, did not complete a Masters degree, but after a PhD in War Studies went on to work in the newly established Defence Studies Department, where he became Professor of Modern Conflict History in 2018, and remained as a visiting professor after leaving to take up a role as Professor of War Studies and Principal of the Military and Defence Studies Programme at the Australian National University and the Australian War College in Canberra; so he did not complete studies or work at every level in War Studies, but warrants mention. 22. Women remained underrepresented at around 46 per cent of all UK academics in 2021 (with female students, in contrast, 56 per cent of the complement across the country), with War Studies around 40 per cent, below the average. Further information including the full 2021 statistical reports are available from Advance HE here: https://​www​.advance​-he​.ac​.uk/​news​-and​-views/​equality​-higher​-education​ -statistical​-reports​-2021.

2. Conflict resolution in deeply divided societies Stacey Gutkowski, Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin Our understanding of what drives political instability, civil war and violent conflict between different ethno-national groups has developed significantly over the last 60 years, catalysing a vast, multidisciplinary social science literature on conflict resolution and peace studies. In the post-Cold War period, academic interest in conflict resolution grew dramatically as Western states began to make conflict mediation central to the pursuit of what were increasingly interventionist foreign policies, framed in terms of liberal peacebuilding, state building, and humanitarian responses to civil wars taking place in deeply divided societies. Since the 1990s, Western policy makers adopted and adapted the methods and language of conflict resolution to address challenges as diverse as terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the unprecedented refugee crisis that had occurred across and beyond the developing world. For example, at the very moment the Taliban were preparing to retake Afghanistan in August 2021, Western diplomats were considering how Northern Ireland’s experience of bringing Irish republicans and Ulster unionists together in government through a mandatory form of power-sharing might be replicated in Kabul between the various factions that comprise Afghanistan. Yet the West’s chequered record of peacebuilding in deeply divided societies has seen a more recent shift in emphasis away from military might to fostering democratic ideals and values from the bottom up. Scholar-practitioners have responded with a flurry of comparative case studies and new theories of conflict resolution that focus less on elite driven, negotiated, power-sharing settlements, and more on grassroots processes of peacebuilding, reconciliation, and societal transformation. The purpose of this chapter is to map the evolution of theories of conflict resolution over this 60-year period. It will engage with key touchstones, exploring the most important synergies between theoretical innovation and on the ground practice as post-Cold War events around the world dramatically highlighted the practical urgency of conflict resolution theory. It will then 15

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showcase some of the most promising trajectories for future research in this expanding field.

2.1

PEACE IN OUR TIME? THE PROMISE OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION AFTER 1989

The Soviet Union’s defeat in the Cold War did not herald an end to the conflicts over nationalism and ideology that had defined international relations since the turn of the century. In the first decades of the new millennium, Francis Fukuyama’s prophecy that liberal democracy’s triumph over international communism would mark a turning point in the history of war and diplomacy lay unfulfilled.1 The idea that a period of Western primacy would bring an era of peace to the regions that had been most affected by proxy wars over ideology during the Cold War proved equally optimistic.2 Precisely the opposite occurred over the last three decades. The end of the Cold War was a catalyst for civil wars in the Balkans, Central America, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than bringing stability to the periphery, the collapse of the bipolar international system created a vacuum in which Cold War ideological conflicts were supplanted by identity conflicts fought out between rival ethno-national groups.3 Conflicts that involved the mobilisation of strongly felt ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural identities were not a new phenomenon, however. They were, in fact, a common feature of the processes of European decolonisation that occurred during the first decades of the Cold War, when Britain and France succumbed to the forces of nationalism within their respective territorial empires. Often because of partitions which created sizable ethnic or religious minorities that were never inclined to integrate or assimilate with a dominant majority group, one enduring effect of European colonial state building failures was the creation of deeply divided societies that were prone to intercommunal violence. The significance of these identity-inflected conflicts to international relations was masked during the Cold War. The stability that bipolar superpower rivalry brought to the international system meant that ethnic tensions in societies where rival groups lacked cross-cutting social, political and economic cleavages were effectively suppressed, often by some form of authoritarian rule. That all changed when the Soviet Union collapsed and the seemingly atavistic nature of these identity-inflected conflicts, and their potential to spread, alarmed Western governments and captivated global attention in the early 1990s. How these ethnic conflicts might be peaceably resolved became a serious concern to Western policy makers. As their political masters sought to consolidate their Cold War victory by initiating liberal democratic transitions in former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states, Western diplomats looked to

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social science theories of conflict resolution for assistance in ushering in a new global order. It is quite appropriate then to view the short era of liberal interventionism that followed the Cold War as a period when theories of conflict resolution developed rapidly and were frequently put to the test. The most immediate challenge facing the West during this period was the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia’s ruling elites had coexisted peaceably since the Second World War. Banding together shielded its component nations from superpower rivalry and gave Yugoslavia significance in the Non-Aligned Movement. The ability of its popular authoritarian leader, Josip Broz Tito, to utilise communist ideology in suppressing competing claims to self-determination and bind the different nations that comprised Yugoslavia to the ideal of ‘brotherhood and unity’ also proved enduring. When its two western republics Slovenia and Croatia declared independence in 1991, no internal or external forces proved capable of preventing war from breaking out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, its most central and heterogeneous republic. Shadowing that of its larger Soviet neighbour, Yugoslavia’s disintegration was a portent of events to follow; a backlash which would ultimately undermine the West’s aspiration to achieve liberal democratic hegemony in the post-communist world. With scenes reminiscent of the ethnic cleansing and genocide that shocked the world after the allied occupation of Nazi Germany, the war for Bosnia eventually provoked decisive NATO intervention. The US brokered a lasting settlement at Dayton, Ohio, in 1995. This effectively ended the war and preserved most of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s territorial integrity, forcing Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs to coexist within a confederal democratic state. In the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, the UN launched no less than 14 major peacebuilding operations.4 A clear pattern emerged to these interventions. They sought to resolve inter-elite conflicts in states which, like Yugoslavia, had a history of ethnic violence, and to uphold international norms established first by the UN Charter, and built upon through subsequent international agreements such as the Helsinki Accords and Paris Charter.5 These UN-led missions were characterised by a desire to promote liberal democratic transition, maintain the territorial integrity of states, enforce international law, and protect human rights and the rights of minorities.6 By creating an International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to hold those guilty of committing war crimes to account, the West sounded a warning to nationalist leaders around the world that it was prepared to intervene to preserve state sovereignty and punish elites who committed gross human rights violations against their own citizens. Moreover, the form of government that was imposed on Bosnia-Herzegovina – a hybrid externally regulated liberal consociation with federal structures – underscored the West’s determination to

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promote democratic transition, not only in the Balkans, but also in the former Soviet bloc and its old spheres of influence. For Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk, the period of 1989–1997 saw the emergence of a ‘first generation’ of UN peacebuilders, whose rash optimism – informed by theories of ‘liberal peacebuilding’ – led them to attempt to transform corrupt and unstable states into bastions of good governance with free market economies in the belief that they would become readily amenable to foreign direct investment. The limitations of this approach were evident through the ill-fated US-led military intervention in Somalia (1992–93), the UN’s failure to prevent genocide from occurring in Rwanda (1994), and the necessity to impose peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina through the vast external veto powers of the Office of the High Representative (1995).7 While scholars agreed on the timeline of these events, some viewed these Western diplomats as a second generation of peacekeepers – rather than peacebuilders – drawing very little distinction between the UN’s traditional Cold War peacekeeping operations and the 1989–1997 period.8 Yet the vector for these international norms was a distinctly ‘liberal’ peacebuilding agenda – one that was dependent on the interrelationship between economic privatisation and democratic governance. When intervening in civil wars, international peacebuilders in the UN Secretariat and in Western governments did so with the aim of brokering quick ceasefires and holding elections to new liberal democratic institutions. Essentially, they acted in the hope that this would rapidly induce the conditions necessary to facilitate stable government, economic liberalisation, and long-term conflict resolution. Emerging from the discourse on this period, an essential normative question now lies at the heart of the academic literature on conflict resolution: has this ‘liberal model’ of international intervention in civil wars and subsequent ‘peacebuilding’ done more harm than good? This question is, of course, a consequence of the historical context from which it emerged, and scholars remain at odds over two key related questions, one of which is functional, the other ethical. The first is: to what extent has ‘liberal peacebuilding’ succeeded in resolving civil conflicts? The second is: has ‘liberal peacebuilding’ proved to be a legitimate, democratic, or even liberal form of intervention?9 To the first question, not even the proponents of liberal peacebuilding suggested that the model has been successful in resolving identity-inflected conflicts in the post-Cold War period. Hampered by what he describes as a ‘more benign version of the mission civilisatrice that was central to European imperialism’,10 and having failed to induce positive peace in the states where they intervened, Paris concluded that the first generation of liberal peacebuilders did not resolve the conflicts in question. He argued that conflict resolution is still best served by liberal interventionism however, maintaining that for international peacebuilding efforts to succeed, in the long term, gradual

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liberalising reforms must only be introduced by international peacebuilders after the establishment of robust political and economic institutions. Central to this critique of the first generation of Western peacebuilders then, was Paris’s hypothesis that ‘institutionalisation’ must come before ‘liberalisation’ for liberal peacebuilding to be more effective.11 For his critics, despite the poor performance of liberal interventions, Paris’s normative attachment to the liberal agenda was all the more ironic given their contention that liberal intervention was not liberal at all – it was simply a new style of modern imperialism.12 Challenging the liberal credentials of liberal peacebuilding, they found that these ostensibly well-intentioned liberal interventions were violating – by reconceptualising – states’ sovereignty, evading accountability, and ultimately weakening the targeted states rather than supporting conflict resolution.13 Elsewhere, ‘traditional Marxist’ approaches simply framed liberal peacebuilding as a cudgel with which to coercively maintain the global hegemony of a liberal economic order.14 Fuelled by the catastrophic consequences of Western interventions in the Middle East, critics of liberal peacebuilding increasingly turned their attention to ‘post-liberal’ forms of peacebuilding, placing greater emphasis on locally led rather than externally driven conflict resolution approaches.15 In 2001, the spectacular terrorist attacks on US territory by the Islamist group al-Qaeda provoked a more offensive interventionist Western foreign policy agenda than had been seen in the post-Cold War period. From the White House lawn, the US-led invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) were initiated as a central pillar in a defensive global ‘war on terror’. At the UN however, over time, these interventions were rationalised by Western diplomats in terms of liberal interventionism, state building, and conflict resolution, often with specific reference to the success of power-sharing arrangements in ending protracted ethnic conflicts in deeply divided societies such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. In fact, as far back as the early 1970s, British policy makers had reached the conclusion that if power-sharing structures could be used to regulate inter-elite rivalry between Christian and Muslim communities in a non-European country such as Lebanon, then this method of conflict resolution might enable Northern Ireland’s predominantly Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist communities to peaceably coexist. It is perhaps unsurprising then, that not long after the 1998 Belfast Agreement ended three decades of political violence and terrorism in Northern Ireland – bringing former adversaries together in a system of mandatory power-sharing – that consociational democracy became the model of conflict resolution most favoured by policy makers in Washington, New York, and London embarking on state building projects beyond the frontiers of Eastern Europe.

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During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the West’s commitment to utilising this ‘best practice’ model of conflict resolution in the developing world waxed and waned. Rather than paving the way for a smooth transition to liberal democracy in Iraq, the toppling of Arab Ba’athist dictator Saddam Hussein precipitated a civil war and an Islamist insurgency that engulfed the region in crisis and threatened to shatter the post-colonial state system in the Middle East and North Africa. The US government’s subsequent failure to support the democratic uprisings that swept the Arab world in 2010–11 indicated that the West lacked not only the political appetite, but also the military capacity to expand the frontiers of liberal democracy to Europe’s periphery. Because of this imperial overstretch, Western diplomats began to place far greater emphasis on the use of soft and smart power.16 Over the last decade, at the time of writing, this shift in Western policy making had been characterised by a desire to reduce military commitments in the Middle East and Africa, incentivise local actors to adopt models of good governance and economic liberalism, and explore bottom-up peacebuilding methods that incentivise local actors to engage in processes of conflict resolution and intercommunal reconciliation. This volte-face has been mirrored by dynamic changes in the conflict resolution and peacebuilding literature, where technocratic and state-centric approaches have given way to the emergence of local, micro, ‘everyday peace’ research agendas.17 The fact that the Taliban reversed a 20-year NATO-led nation-building project in Afghanistan in a number of weeks in 2021 suggests that a ‘light footprint’ Western approach to conflict resolution should be expected for the foreseeable future. This humiliation appeared to end, as President Joe Biden put it following the evacuation of American forces from Kabul, the US-led era of fighting ‘forever’ wars,18 and with it the era of liberal interventionism. Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, not only reaffirmed NATO’s raison d’être, but it also hastened a most significant advance in EU foreign policy, galvanising the West in anticipation of a reshuffling of global alliances in a new era of international relations.

2.2

CONFLICT RESOLUTION: DEVELOPMENTS, DEFINITIONS AND ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

Seeking to explain how inter-ethnic violence in deeply divided societies could be regulated, theories of conflict regulation emerged during the 1970s; most notably the seminal works of Eric Nordlinger (1972) and Arend Lijphart (1977).19 Energised by the increasing salience of ethnic conflicts in Central America, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a second generation of comparativists built upon their scholarship, most significantly Donald L. Horowitz (1985),

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Frank Wright (1988), Adrian Guelke (1988), I. William Zartman (1989), Ian Lustick (1993), and John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary (1993).20 For many of these political scientists, theory building was conducted through comparative analysis using the hard and seemingly intractable Cold War cases of Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel–Palestine. In the 1990s, as comparative politics emerged as an important social science sub-discipline, political scientists initially adopted economic rational choice-based approaches to the study of conflict resolution, using large-N quantitative studies to compare cases globally across different periods of time. Many followed in the footsteps of Ted Gurr, whose landmark study of social violence and political instability – Why Men Rebel – interpreted actors in conflicts as rational agents who make cost–benefit assessments of the expected utility associated with different choices.21 Prominent examples of such scholarship are Zartman’s ripeness theory, Stephen Stedman’s spoiler theory, and Barbara Walter’s credible commitment theory. They all conceptualised conflict and its resolution as a gains-maximising choice.22 Drawing attention to the shortcomings of conducting purely quantitative research on deeply divided societies and highlighting the lack of systematic studies on peacebuilding that account for bottom-up or ‘grassroots’ processes, a new generation of comparativists emerged in the 2000s. They adopted new interdisciplinary methodological approaches to the study of conflict resolution. Some took the view that Western academia and international think tanks prioritised state-centric elite bargains and complex constitutional engineering – elite driven top-down approaches – while largely ignoring the perspectives of indigenous populations and how grassroots peacebuilding initiatives could cultivate ‘local ownership’ of internationally induced peace agreements.23 Addressing this lacuna in the literature, scholars began to recognise that research on ‘reconciliation’ lagged far behind studies on conflict onset, peace agreements, and constitution making.24 In this context, Charles Lerche III suggested that while peace agreements may settle the material stakes of war – who governs next within a state and how they govern it – truth commissions aim to address issues of justice by determining who is to blame and what should be done about it.25 However, a prominent scholar-practitioner of conflict mediation, John Paul Lederach argued that achieving reconciliation between groups that have been locked in conflict requires grassroots peacebuilding at all levels of society precisely because it does not tend to trickle down from processes of inter-elite negotiations or develop organically as a result of internationally brokered constitutional settlements.26 Forging the concept of ‘everyday peace’, Roger Mac Ginty explored how community-level peacebuilding initiatives can disrupt violent conflict and produce tolerance in conflict ridden-societies.27 Taking a slightly different approach, Bruno Charbonneau and Geneviève Parent chal-

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lenged what was, at times, a polemical academic discourse over ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches to conflict resolution, arguing instead for the adoption of integrative and hybrid models.28 For post-conflict legacy issues such as trauma, war memory, state collusion, and truth and reconciliation programmes to be successfully addressed, they concluded that elite action and grassroots initiatives must be integrated – an area that we will return to later in this chapter. It remains difficult definitively to say whether a conflict has been resolved even after agreements have been secured. This is true even in circumstances where an internationally supported ‘peace process’ has delivered ceasefires, warring elites and their external brokers have negotiated a constitutional settlement to a historic dispute, and a period of post-conflict transition, supported by programmes of reconciliation and societal and economic recovery, is well advanced in terms of bridging and healing social divisions. Violence is cyclical in deeply divided societies. Most ‘post-conflict’ societies suffer from a peace deficit, albeit to varying degrees. Shifts in the external environment leading to regional instability can quickly trigger a resumption of violence, unsettling actors who invested their political capital in a peace process and opening space for those who either opposed or were excluded from it. Academics agree neither on what constitutes a ‘resolved’ conflict, nor on how the term ‘peace’ itself should be defined. The distinction made by Johan Galtung between conflict regulation – the application of various methods for containing political violence – and conflict resolution – the aspirational endgame of reaching a negotiated final settlement to a civil conflict – intersects with his definitions of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ peace. Building on Galtung’s argument that ‘negative peace’ is simply the absence of violence, Peter Wallensteen defined it as a situation in which the parties to a conflict ‘accept each other’s continued existence’, cease all violent action against each other, and ‘enter into an agreement that solves their central incompatibilities’.29 There is an element of realism to this. In ending protracted armed conflicts and civil wars through the establishment of a political process or peace process, intervening states often settle for ‘negative peace’, regardless of whether they hope it represents the basis for lasting social harmony and reconciliation, and thus leads to the establishment in the future of a more positive peace. Galtung defines positive peace as a scenario in which conflict resolution results in long-term social transformation because the integration of human society has, for the first time, become possible.30 This is the outcome of a political process in which both the constitutional and symbolic issues at the heart of a conflict have been peaceably resolved – often with international support and guarantees – and in which an ambitious programme of integrative social, economic, and political reforms have been initiated, the aim of which is to narrow class divisions, alleviate social tensions, and guarantee representation

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in government for previously excluded or marginalised groups.31 Therefore, positive peace implies that a shared future is not only possible, but that it is something that has come to be viewed by former adversaries as desirable because the constitutional and symbolic issues that led them to take up arms in the past have been resolved to the extent that they have lost their social and political salience.32

2.3

CONSOCIATIONAL DEMOCRACY: THE DOMINANT, ELITE-LED CONFLICT RESOLUTION MODEL

Over the last three decades, consociational theorists convinced many Western policy makers that power-sharing is a method of resolving protracted ethnic conflicts which is both effective and compatible with their interests promoting liberal democracy in the developing world. The increasing importance of this theory is evidenced by the complex liberal consociational engineering at the heart of the Dayton Accords and the Belfast Agreement, and the vast literature that evolved around these two European cases.33 In fact, both supporters and opponents of consociational democracy looked to the post-conflict experiences of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland as something of a litmus test concerning its suitability in less favourable environments.34 Consociational democracies and the coalition governments at their core are the products of elite bargaining and elite cooperation. For consociational theorists, four institutional pillars of government may provide the requisite incentives, motivations and security for segmental elites to coexist peacefully, even where the absence of significant cross-cutting societal cleavages represented an obvious impediment to power-sharing. According to Lijphart, a complete democratic consociation must have: a grand coalition government which includes all significant segments of society; a high degree of autonomy for each of those segments; a proportional representation electoral system; and mutual veto rights.35 By recognising, protecting and in some cases institutionalising the very issues which contributed to the outbreak of civil war, and by legitimising each community’s position within society and guaranteeing its elites a share of power in government, these constitutional stanchions offer a means by which conflict can be regulated and future violence avoided in the long term. After Lijphart published his seminal work, Democracy in Plural Societies, in 1977, the debate over consociational democracy increasingly centred around its suitability for resolving ethno-national conflicts and civil wars in the developing world. Supporters of this in-vogue, top-down model are typically realists who are pessimistic about the prospect of elites peaceably resolving intercommunal tensions in contested states of their own accord.

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They pointed to the propensity of competing elites in deeply divided societies to resort to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and gross human rights violations when their hegemony is challenged. They argued that for a culture of liberal power-sharing to evolve – over a period of time – bespoke and highly restrictive constitutional measures must be put in place and guaranteed by supportive regional and international actors.36 One major shortcoming of his theory was its failure to account for the pivotal contribution that external actors played in the negotiation, implementation, and stabilisation of consociational systems. The role played by the international community, regional alliances, and intervening states in the making and breaking of consociational arrangements, and the external linkage politics that binds domestic elites to external patrons was first addressed by Michael Kerr in 2006.37 This work initiated academic debate over the normative questionability of imposing consociational democracy on deeply divided societies and the empirical consequences of doing so.38 Another major criticism of Lijphart’s theory was its laser focus on political elites.39 John Dryzek found that it diminishes the extent to which deliberation occurs outside the framework of elite negotiations, arguing that consociational theory does not account well for peacebuilding that takes place beyond formal ‘Track 1’ diplomacy.40 Consociational theorists have commented on the absence of such non-elite perspectives in the literature, but they have yet to fill this critical gap. Even in recent studies that address seemingly bottom-up issues, such as achieving broad-based legitimacy for new social justice provisions through innovations such as gender quotas, consociational theorists tend to stress the maintenance of elite influence over progressive policy making.41 Looking elsewhere in the conflict resolution literature provides alternative perspectives that become especially crucial when moving past conflict management. Deliberative and agonistic theories each suggest that bottom-up prescriptions for conflict resolution can be instrumental in convincing elites to end violent conflict, requiring society at large to shelve antagonistic issues, and move towards positive peace. In what remains an intense empirical and normative debate, the record of consociational democracy is mixed both within and between cases.42 However, the establishment of new consociational systems in South Africa, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Macedonia, and Iraq did produce a gradual increase in academic support for consociational democracy.43 Normatively, its opponents offer critiques that are not dissimilar to those levelled at the advocates of liberal peacebuilding, the most enduring of which is that – rather than encouraging regular, democratic, cross-communal interaction – consociations institutionalise ethnic, religious, and cultural divisions at the heart of government.44

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Empirically, consociational theory is frequently criticised for failing to sufficiently establish the conditions under which power-sharing arrangements can bring long-term political stability to a society that is experiencing protracted ethnic conflict. Interrogating the precise conditions under which consociational democracy is likely to succeed, Horowitz argued that the model has an ‘adoptability problem’.45 Elsewhere, he argued that not only are consociations inherently illiberal, but by entrenching and empowering elites that are primarily responsible for the violent conflict they serve to exacerbate the very societal divisions they set out to alleviate. Through the imposition of anti-democratic and divisive constitutional measures – such as segmental quotas, mandatory coalitions, and minority vetoes – consociational democracy, he concluded, inhibits long-term conflict transformation.46 The leading advocates and reformers of Lijphart’s theory have responded to these and other criticisms through a series of edited volumes and special editions of journals which assess the record of consociational democracy in the post-Cold War era. O’Leary and McGarry made their case on grounds of political realism, maintaining the hypothesis that consociational democracy is, more often than not, the least bad option for peacebuilding in deeply divided societies.47 If a society that suffers from protracted ethnic conflict cannot even achieve a negative peace, O’Leary argued that there simply is no basis to assume that a positive peace which produces more desirable levels of conflict transformation may be established there by some other means.48 Consociational theorists contend that with sustained external support, mandatory power-sharing arrangements can, in fact, facilitate post-conflict democratic transition, or positive peace, through the establishment of the legal, cultural, and social justice provisions which are a prerequisite for all sections of society to buy into the concept of a shared future based on peaceful coexistence. It follows then, that the ability of consociational democracy to guarantee the political security of all segments of society may, in some cases, be the only realistic first step towards conflict resolution. Essentially, for consociational theorists, arrangements which recognise the political legitimacy of group identities are key to eliminating group violence, setting the stage for the establishment of democratic norms and the flourishing of civil society in the long term.49 Despite these shortcomings, the advocates of consociational democracy can credibly wield the same defence as liberal peacebuilding advocates: that the counterfactual would likely be far worse, whether that entails non-intervention rather than liberal impositions, or attempts to forcibly integrate rather than accommodate and consociate these deeply divided societies.50 Nevertheless, any assessment of the model’s successes and failings in the post-Cold War era must pay close attention to two key variables: the extent to which externally incentivised consociational engineering has alleviated ingroup and outgroup

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identity-inflected conflicts;51 and the extent to which the external forces that brokered a settlement between the internal elites remain committed to politically, financially, and militarily facilitating long-term societal transformation.52

2.4

‘BOTTOM-UP’ APPROACHES TO CONFLICT RESOLUTION: NEW INNOVATIONS

Originating in the 1960s, the field of peace studies also gained traction after the Cold War had ended. In contrast to the elite-focused theories of conflict resolution outlined above, this literature evolved through multidisciplinary studies of grassroots processes of reconciliation, its academic discourse closely interwoven with on the ground practices of mediation, offering a particular focus on the role played by civil society actors in ending violent conflict and societal healing. Writing in the late 1990s, in the shadow of the post-Cold War ‘liberal’ interventions, Lederach argued that while grassroots and middle elites were essential for sustainable peace, their role had thus far been largely understudied. He concluded that, to be successful, contemporary peacebuilding must target multiple levels of society: the grassroots, the middle managerial class, and its top leaders.53 Since then, scholarship which places society at the heart of its analysis has evolved symbiotically with practice on the ground in former war zones. In turn, practitioners have symbiotically benefited from comparative academic studies which aggregate best practice across case studies and time periods. Unlike top-down institution-building or constitutional engineering, bottom-up approaches focus on the quality of interactions between civil society organisations and citizens, addressing questions such as how journalists might be trained in best practice to crack down on fake news and hold elites to account. They viewed the growth and flourishing of indigenous civil society infrastructure, such as local media, as essential to fostering communication between the grassroots and middle elites, and, in turn, incentivising top leaders to act in the interest of peace.54 Scholars sought to enhance the conflict regulation literature with bottom-up insights, advancing adjacent to but beyond consociational theory. For example, Steiner et al. posed the following question: For purposes of conflict resolution, what happens when members of deeply divided communities are provided a space to freely discuss sensitive topics relating to peace?55 Through qualitatively analysing conversational units, these authors developed the concept of ‘deliberative transformative moments’ (DTMs), which were defined as observed transitions from low to high levels of deliberation between participants and vice versa. They found that deliberation could significantly and positively shift group perceptions towards reconciliation, particularly when

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members engage in a mixture of rational arguments and personal anecdotes.56 Where elites view deliberation between social groups as a threat to their continued election to high office, they tended to block reconciliation initiatives which seek to deliver social transformation through processes of grassroots intercommunal dialogue.57 Calling this the elite ‘immobilism problem’, Horowitz suggested that enhancing discussion and deliberation within wider society can ultimately generate electoral incentives for elites to join the reconciliation bandwagon.58 In another strand of the literature, scholars argued that intercommunal antagonism is inevitable but also highly productive for peacebuilding. Rather than muting conflict at the grassroots through forced consensus, these scholars argued in favour of agonism, where non-violent, lively dissent and debate is essential for a healthy democracy.59 Reminiscent of Lederach, Sarah Maddison argued that debate must be promoted simultaneously across multiple ‘levels’ of society: the constitutional level, institutional level, and the grassroots, interpersonal relational level.60 Drawing an example from Northern Ireland, she critiqued the propensity of consociational theorists to concentrate on negative peace through processes of elite bargaining which, she argues, inhibits fruitful, but painful agonistic discussion on who is historically responsible for the conflict. Agonistic debate across all levels of society in Northern Ireland, she concluded, is necessary for true reconciliation and initiating a process of ‘moving on’ from the legacy of the Troubles. Many scholars interested in how societies achieve social harmony following what are often brutal civil wars homed in on the issue of transitional justice. The relationship between legal transitional justice mechanisms and long-term societal reconciliation remains up for debate. However, truth and reconciliation commissions (TRC)61 garnered considerable attention within the conflict resolution literature, as providing a voice for citizens beyond government, promoting the unpacking of competing communal histories, and allowing citizens to ‘speak truth to power’ in holding war-time elites to account. Truth commissions, of which over 40 have been established in 35 countries since the 1970s, are temporary bodies that are created by the state to investigate and document the human rights abuses which occurred under a previous regime. They are either a component part of a post-war settlement or something that is established long after peace has been consolidated as a means of addressing legacy issues and deepening reconciliation. For example, Dryzek observed that South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was an important component of transitional justice alongside the establishment of a democratic consociational government after the end of apartheid.62 James Gibson’s empirical surveys further suggested that the South African TRC brought immediate reconciliation gains by strengthening national cohesion,

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reducing negative intergroup stereotypes, and increasing tolerance towards outgroups.63 Research on truth commissions engaged with two key questions for reconciliation, social harmony, and long-term positive peace. First, where there are competing historical narratives, and where even the basic facts of the conflict are essentially contested or indeed unknown, how should societies engage with their recent violent pasts? Second, how should the surviving perpetrators of acts of violence between one community and another be approached and dealt with? The findings of a truth commission must be viewed as broadly legitimate to contribute to conflict resolution over the longue durée. Priscilla Hayner unpacked practical and methodological problems in documenting ‘the truth’, both in determining what is ‘true’ and in systematising an approach to truth-gathering upon which all parties can agree.64 Scholars also debated the relationship between ‘truth’ and ‘justice’ in a post-war context. Here, some academics and practitioners contended that a truth commission ought not to have a judicial or punitive component. Rather, a commission should be an exercise in reconciliation through revelation in its own right. They argued that ‘justice’ and ‘punishment’ should not supersede the prime objective of societal healing and group reconciliation.65 Hayner argued the contrary, countering that commissions should not be understood as abandoning justice in the name of ‘truth’.66 Instead, the ‘stick’ of potential criminal prosecution may be crucial for the success of truth commissions. Moreover, war crime prosecution may be demanded by international law.67 Onur Bakiner makes headway on a crucial empirical test for truth commissions by posing the question: do truth commissions successfully and positively influence post-war government policy and judicial processes, and if so, by what mechanism do they exert this influence? Bakiner found that truth commissions can successfully cause direct and indirect political change through full and complete acceptance and implementation of their recommendations, and by the knock-on effects of pressure brought to bear on governments by civil society to implement those recommendations. He also found no compelling evidence to suggest that truth commissions nourish impunity in judicial systems through the promotion of truth at the expense of justice, citing evidence from South Africa’s handling of and experience with amnesty.68 However, despite Bakiner’s evidence from South Africa that TRCs do influence political and societal norms after conflict, further innovation is needed to better measure the directions, scale, and causal mechanisms of these normative changes. For example, should the success of a TRC be gauged by the volume of factual detail accrued, the degree to which culpability is ascribed to individuals or groups based on this information, or some other social markers of reconciliation between groups, economic flourishing, or democratic health? Emerging research reveals a complex and ambivalent picture which highlights

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that involvement in truth commissions can have individual emotional costs – fear, anger, shame, and guilt – but equally lead to positive psychosocial impacts on social integration and stability.69 Further systematic research is required, however, to determine what is the constellation of political-legal institutions, international backing, and civil society vigour which are conducive to a successful TRC.

2.5

OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

As the study of conflict resolution advances, innovations from across the social sciences, both theoretical and empirical, are essential to further flesh out the mechanisms through which peace holds or disintegrates in the long term. ‘Bottom-up’ methodologies such as ethnography and oral history, mainstays of Anthropology, Sociology and Critical Geography, can shed new light on the subtle societal shifts that make a return to violence more likely, and the complex, cross-cutting factors which pave the way for reconciliation and the flourishing of civil society. Such insights are vital from a policy perspective as well, as states and civil society seek to develop ‘early warning systems’, and other tangible barometers for measuring social harmony, and plan supporting interventions for fragile post-war societies. The broadest contribution future research could make to the field of conflict resolution is to improve tangible measurements of positive peace. Peacebuilders on the ground draw on international best practice to evaluate their progress in consolidating peace, often gleaned from an echo chamber of UN and civil society reports. But academia has not yet kept pace in providing definitive, parallel analysis of the myriad steps along the road to sustainable peace. This would require a step change in funding mechanisms, to support long-term collaboration between academics and peace practitioners, across regions of the world and areas of expertise. In practical terms this would also involve a greater diversification and integration of peacebuilding methods, such as the promotion of ‘unofficial truth projects’70 which, in Brandon Hamber’s words, provide communal ‘truth telling from below’71 through oral histories, local commemorative practice and memorial exhibitions. An increasingly critical and prescient area of research within conflict and peace studies is intergenerational transmission of violent and traumatic memory. The legacy of war and trauma travels beyond first-hand experience (perpetrators, victims, witnesses), impacting and shaping the lives and memories of subsequent generations.72 This form of residual trauma or ‘postmemory’, often ignored in peacebuilding processes, remains in Hirsch’s words, ‘a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated, not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation’.73 Past trauma is thus inscribed into con-

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temporary lives, reproducing feelings of guilt, shame and injustice and legitimating ongoing hostilities. Although postmemory research initially focused on the impact of the Holocaust on second-generation survivors, the concept has been successfully applied to other (post)conflict contexts.74 Craig Larkin’s application of postmemory to post-war Lebanon demonstrates the persistence of war memory despite official government silence, amnesty, and public censure. It highlights how postmemory narratives feed polarised identities, entrenching communal mistrust and a sense of social injustice. Postmemory provides a repertoire for future confrontation and violence as specific historic events (massacres, bomb attacks, targeted killings) are recalled and used in popular mobilisation during periods of political instability to reanimate old grievances, territorial divisions and historicise contemporary tensions.75 While postmemory studies have overwhelmingly focused on conflictual and divisive processes that memory mobilisation triggers, postmemory narratives also offer opportunities to acknowledge past injustices, encourage shared responsibility and provide a potential route towards future rehabilitation.76 If this is indeed the case, it opens up a number of critical questions around the potential for ‘post-traumatic growth’77 and non-conflictual forms of memory. More research is needed to examine in what ways war memory (whether educational, informal, state sanctioned, or civil society initiatives) can help facilitate and de-escalate future conflict. Can memory be reconciled with notions of forgiveness, shared responsibility for the past and reconciliation itself? Such research has policy relevance for educational interventions and peacebuilding initiatives which encourage intercommunal dialogue and post-war social cohesion. Another significant and overlapping trajectory for conflict resolution research is the study of emotion. Conceptually, this has tacitly underpinned the study of conflict onset and resolution in Political Science and International Relations, but without detailed elaboration, both empirically and theoretically. In parallel, social psychologists have developed an extensive literature on individual and group psychological responses to war, terrorism, genocide, and other forms of political violence,78 as well as receptivity to political compromise.79 Within International Relations and Critical Geography, scholars are beginning to draw on theoretical concepts pioneered in Social Psychology and also Cultural Theory to flesh out how collective emotional responses shape politics.80 While the application of these innovations to the explicit study of the politics of conflict resolution remains an area for further research, advances are being made, including on the Palestine–Israel case, with work by Naomi Head (2016) on mutual empathy and Stacey Gutkowski (2021, 2019) on the emotional nuance of settler colonialism which might someday be exploited for a peaceful end to occupation.81

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NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). Peter Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict Resolution: War, Peace and the Global System (London: SAGE, 2007), p.25. John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1997), pp.5‒6. Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.60. Charter of the United Nations, The United Nations, accessed 8 October 2021, https://​www​.un​.org/​en/​about​-us/​un​-charter; ‘Helsinki Accords,’ Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Making the History of 1989, Item #245, accessed 8 October 2021, https://​chnm​.gmu​.edu/​1989/​items/​show/​245; ‘The Charter of Paris for a New Europe,’ Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, accessed 8 October 2021, https://​www​.osce​.org/​files/​f/​documents/​0/​ 6/​39516​.pdf. Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management, and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), pp.141‒47; Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict Resolution, p.11. Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk (eds), The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London: Routledge, 2009). Stefan Wolff and Christalla Yakinthou (eds.), Conflict Management in Divided Societies: Theories and Practice, (London: Routledge, 2013), p.9. Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver P. Richmond (eds.), The Liberal Peace and Post-War Reconstruction: Myth or Reality? (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2013). Roland Paris, ‘International Peacebuilding and the “Mission Civilisatrice”,’ Review of International Studies, 28, 4 (2002), pp.637‒656. Roland Paris, ‘Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism,’ International Security, 22, 2 (1997), pp.54‒89; Paris, At War’s End, p.7. Neil Cooper, ‘Review Article: On the Crisis of the Liberal Peace,’ Conflict, Security & Development, 7, 4 (2007), pp.605–616; Roland Paris, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding,’ Review of International Studies, 36, 1 (2010), pp.337–365; Neil Cooper, Mandy Turner and Michael Pugh, ‘The End of History and the Last Liberal Peacebuilder: A Reply to Roland Paris,’ Review of International Studies, 37, 1 (2011), pp.1995–2007. David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building (London: Pluto Press, 2006), pp.123‒142; Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, ‘Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Travails of the European Raj,’ Journal of Democracy, 14, 3 (2003), pp.60–74. Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, p.7. Roger Mac Ginty, Everyday Peace: How So-Called Ordinary People Can Disrupt Violent Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); Oliver P. Richmond, A Post-Liberal Peace (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2012). Joseph Nye, ‘Get Smart: Combining Hard and Soft Power,’ Foreign Affairs, 88, 4 (2009), pp.160‒163. Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Everyday Peace: Bottom-up and Local Agency in Conflict-affected Societies,’ Security Dialogue, 45, 6 (2014), pp.548‒564;

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Oliver P. Richmond, ‘A Post-liberal Peace: Eirenism and the Everyday,’ Review of International Studies, 35, 3 (2009), pp.557–580. 18. Missy Ryan, ‘As Biden Touts an end to America’s ‘Forever’ wars, Conflicts Drag on Out of Sight,’ The Washington Post, 22 September 2021. Available at: https://​www​.washingtonpost​.com/​national​-security/​biden​-wars​-afghanistan​-iraq​ -syria/​2021/​09/​22/​cc090ff0​-1b08​-11ec​-914a​-99d701398e5a​_story​.html. 19. Eric Nordlinger, Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). 20. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (University of California Press, 1985); Frank Wright, Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis, (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988); Adrian Guelke, Northern Ireland: The International Perspective (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988); I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993); John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation: Case Studies of Protracted Ethnic Conflicts (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). 21. Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). 22. I. William Zartman, ‘The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Hurting Stalemates and Ripe Moments,’ The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 1, 1 (2001), pp.8–18; Stephen Stedman, ‘Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes,’ International Security, 22, 2 (1997), pp.5–53; Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 23. Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie, Crafting Peace: Power-Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 24. Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, pp.8–9. 25. Charles Lerche III, ‘Truth Commissions and National Reconciliation: Some Reflections on Theory and Practice,’ Peace and Conflict Studies, 7, 1 (2000), pp.2–23. 26. Lederach, Building Peace. 27. Mac Ginty, Everyday Peace. 28. Bruno Charbonneau and Geneviève Parent (eds.), Peacebuilding, Memory, and Reconciliation: Bridging Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches (London: Routledge, 2012). 29. Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict Resolution, pp.5–8. 30. Johan Galtung, ‘An Editorial,’ Journal of Peace Research, 1, 1 (1964), pp.1–4. 31. Richard Caplan, Measuring Peace: Principles, Practices, and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp.13–21. 32. Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, pp.8–9. 33. Matthijs Bogaards, Ludger Helms and Arend Lijphart, ‘The Importance of Consociationalism for Twenty-First Century Politics and Political Science,’ Swiss Political Science Review, 25, 4 (2019), pp.341–356. 34. John Coakley, ‘The Challenge of Consociation in Northern Ireland,’ Parliamentary Affairs, 64, 3 (2011), pp.473–493; Rupert Taylor (ed.), Consociational Theory: McGarry and O’Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict (Oxford: Routledge, 2009); John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, ‘Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland’s Conflict, and its Agreement. Part 1: What Consociationalists Can Learn

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from Northern Ireland,’ Government and Opposition, 41, 1 (2006), pp.43–63; McGarry and O’Leary, ‘Part 2. What Critics of Consociation Can Learn from Northern Ireland,’ Government and Opposition, 41, 2 (2006), pp.249–277; Paul Dixon, ‘Why the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland is not consociational,’ Political Quarterly, 76, 3 (2005), pp.357–367; Donald L. Horowitz, ‘The Northern Ireland Agreement: Clear, Consociational and Risky’, in John McGarry (ed.), Northern Ireland and the Divided World: Post-Agreement Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp.89–108; Adrian Guelke, Politics in Deeply Divided Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012); Giuditta Fontana, Education Policy and Power-Sharing in Post-Conflict Societies: Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Macedonia (New York: Palgrave, 2016); Joanne McEvoy and Brendan O’Leary (eds.), Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021); Michael Kerr, Imposing Power-Sharing: Conflict and Coexistence in Northern Ireland and Lebanon (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006). 35. Arend Lijphart, ‘Consociational Democracy,’ World Politics, 21, 12 (1969), pp.207–225; Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, p.1. 36. Michael Kerr, ‘A Culture of Power-Sharing,’ in Taylor, Consociational Theory, pp.206–220. 37. Kerr, Imposing Power-Sharing, pp.179–197. 38. Adrian Guelke, ‘Institutionalised Power-Sharing: The International Dimension,’ Ethnopolitics, 19, 1 (2020), pp.92–95; Joanne McEvoy, ‘The Role of External Actors in Incentivizing Post-conflict Power-sharing,’ Government and Opposition, 49, 1 (2014), pp.47–69. 39. Lijphart, ‘Consociational Democracy,’ pp.207–225; Nordlinger, Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies, p.4. 40. John S. Dryzek, ‘Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies: Alternatives to Agonism and Analgesia,’ Political Theory, 33, 1 (2005), pp.218–242. 41. Siobhan Byrne and Allison McCulloch, ‘Gendering Power-Sharing,’ in Allison McCulloch and John McGarry (eds.), Power-Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp.250–267. 42. John McGarry, ‘A Consociationalist Response,’ Ethnopolitics, 19, 1 (2020), pp.100–106. 43. Bogaards, Helms and Lijphart, ‘The Importance of Consociationalism,’ pp.341–356. 44. Adrian Guelke (ed.), Democracy and Ethnic Conflict: Advancing Peace in Deeply Divided Societies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p.243. 45. Donald L. Horowitz, ‘Conciliatory Institutions and Constitutional Processes in Postconflict States,’ William and Mary Law Review, 49, 4 (2008), pp.1213–1248. 46. Donald L. Horowitz, ‘Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems,’ Journal of Democracy, 25, 2 (2014), pp.5–20. 47. Allison McCulloch and John McGarry (eds.), Power-Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges (New York: Routledge, 2017). 48. Brendan O’Leary, ‘Debating Consociational Politics: Normative and Explanatory Arguments,’ in Sid Noel (ed.), From Power Sharing to Democracy: Post-Conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies (Toronto: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), pp.3–43. 49. O’Leary, ‘Debating Consociational Politics’; Ilan Peleg, ‘Transforming Ethnic Orders to Pluralist Regimes: Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Analysis,’ in Guelke, Democracy and Ethnic Conflict, pp.7–25.

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50. Paris, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’, pp.337–365. 51. Theodor Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: The Decline of a State and the Rise of a Nation (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993); Adrian Guelke, Democracy and Ethnic Conflict: Advancing Peace in Deeply Divided Societies (London: Palgrave, 2004); Anthony Oberschall, Conflict and Peace Building in Divided Societies: Responses to Ethnic Violence (London: Routledge, 2007). 52. Kerr, Imposing Power-Sharing, pp.26–40. 53. Lederach, Building Peace, pp.37–63. 54. Ibid., pp.46–48; Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, pp.23–24. 55. Jürg Steiner, Maria Clara Jaramillo, Rousiley C. M. Maia and Simona Mameli, Deliberation across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 56. Steiner et al., Deliberation, pp.20–21. 57. Ibid. 58. Donald L. Horowitz, ‘Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems,’ Journal of Democracy, 25, 2 (2014), pp.5–20. 59. Sarah Maddison, Conflict Transformation and Reconciliation: Multi-Level Challenges in Deeply Divided Societies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015); Sarah Maddison, ‘Can We Reconcile? Understanding the Multi-Level Challenges of Conflict Transformation,’ International Political Science Review, 38, 2 (2017), pp.155–168; Andrew Schaap, ‘Agonism in Divided Societies,’ Philosophy & Social Criticism, 32, 2 (2006), pp.255–277. 60. Maddison, ‘Can We Reconcile?’. 61. There remains some ambiguity around the exact title and remit of Truth Commissions which have been established as: Commissions on the Disappeared (Argentina, Uganda); Truth and Justice Commissions (Ecuador, Haiti, Togo); Historical Clarification Commission (Guatemala); Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa, Chile, Peru). Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), pp.7–18. 62. Dryzek, ‘Deliberative Democracy,’ pp.235–236. 63. James L. Gibson, ‘Does Truth Lead to Reconciliation? Testing the Causal Assumptions of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Process,’ American Journal of Political Science, 48, 2 (2004), pp.201–217. 64. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths. 65. Amy Guttman and Dennis Thompson, ‘The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions,’ in Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thomson (eds.), Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commission (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp.22–45. 66. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths. 67. Ibid., pp.91–110. 68. Onur Bakiner, ‘Truth Commission Impact: An Assessment of How Commissions Influence Politics and Society,’ The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 8, 1 (2014), pp.6–30. 69. Anderson Mathias, Darío Páez, Agustín Espinosa and Bernard Rimé, ‘Truth Commissions: Individual and Societal Effects’, in Wilson López López and Laura K. Taylor (eds.), Transitioning to Peace: Promoting Global Social Justice and Non-violence (Cham: Springer, 2021), pp.29–42.

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70. Louis Bickford, ‘Unofficial Truth Projects,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 29, 4 (2007), pp.994–1035. 71. Brandon Hamber, Transforming Societies After Political Violence: Truth, Reconciliation, and Mental Health (New York: Springer, 2009). 72. Barbara Tint, ‘History, Memory, and Intractable Conflict,’ Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 27, 3 (2010), pp.239-256; Martha Minow, Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 73. Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997), p.2. 74. Susana Kaiser, Postmemories of Terror: A New Generation Copes with the Legacy of the ‘Dirty War’ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Samuel Henkin, ‘Postmemory and the Geographies of Violence at Kraing Ta Chan, Cambodia,’ GeoHumanities, 4, 2 (2018), pp.462–480; Nikola Knežević, ‘Is Collective Memory Making the Next Balkan War Imminent?,’ Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe, 38, 4 (2018), pp.10–17; Neil Ferguson and Donna Halliday, ‘Collective Memory and the Legacy of the Troubles: Territoriality, Identity and Victimhood in Northern Ireland’, in Johanna Ray Vollhardt (ed.), The Social Psychology of Collective Victimhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp.56–74; Anjali Gera Roy, Memories and Postmemories of the Partition of India (London: Routledge, 2019). 75. Craig Larkin, Memory and conflict in Lebanon: Remembering and Forgetting the Past, (London: Routledge, 2012); Craig Larkin, ‘Beyond the War? The Lebanese Postmemory Experience,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42, 4 (2010), pp.615–635; Craig Larkin and Ella Parry-Davies, ‘War Museums in Postwar Lebanon: Memory, Violence, and Performance,’ Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 25, 1 (2019), pp.78–96. 76. Cillian McGrattan and Stephen Hopkins, ‘Memory in PostConflict Societies: From Contention to Integration?’, Ethnopolitics, 16, 5 (2017), pp.488–499. 77. Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard G. Tedeschi (eds.), Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth: Research and Practice (London: Routledge, 2014). 78. Daniel Bar-Tal, Intractable Conflicts: Social-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 79. Johanna K. Vollhardt and Rezarta Bilali, ‘Social Psychology’s Contribution to the Psychological Study of Peace – a Review,’ Social Psychology, 39, 1 (2008), pp.12–25. 80. Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014); Ben Anderson, ‘Affective Atmospheres,’ Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 2 (2009), pp.77–81. 81. Naomi Head, ‘A Politics of Empathy: Encounters with Empathy in Israel and Palestine,’ Review of International Studies, 42, 1 (2016), pp.95–113; Stacey Gutkowski, ‘Secular Feelings, Settler Feelings: The Case of Palestine/Israel,’ Religion, State and Society, 49, 2 (2021), pp.41–60; Stacey Gutkowski, ‘Love, War and Secular “Reasonableness” among Hilonim in Israel-Palestine,’ in Monique Scheer, Nadia Fadil and Birgitte Schepelern Johansen (eds.), Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions: European Configurations (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), pp.123–138.

3. Conflict, Security and Development Mats Berdal By the spring of 1966, Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defence and one of the principal architects behind America’s military escalation in Vietnam, had come to entertain grave doubts about the direction of US policy in Southeast Asia. Although he chose to keep his misgivings private and would remain at the Pentagon for another two years, an impassioned speech given in May 1966 provides a revealing window into the sources of his growing unease. Making only fleeting reference to the war itself, McNamara focused his remarks on what he saw as the all-important but neglected connection between ‘security and development’ in international affairs.1 Deploring the tendency to identify security with ‘exclusively military phenomena’, the future head of the World Bank insisted that without development, security would forever remain an elusive goal. There was, in McNamara’s view, a critical nexus between security and development that demanded urgent attention by scholars, governments and international institutions. The present chapter examines the contribution and distinctive identity of Conflict, Security and Development (CSD) as an area of academic enquiry, teaching and policy engagement specifically concerned with the nexus between security and development in international affairs. It is divided into three interconnected parts. The first examines the emergence of CSD as a subject area which, in the tradition of War Studies, has embraced methodological pluralism and interdisciplinarity, yet has remained intellectually focused on issues at the core of that very tradition: the changing character of war, the use and utility of force, and the sources of violence and insecurity in international relations. Part two considers some of the principal contributions made to the field, highlighting two areas in particular: the relationship between State fragility and modern armed conflict, and the post-Cold War history and record of external intervention – by states, international organisations, and various coalitions of the willing – aimed at mitigating, stabilising, and resolving conflicts located primarily within the boundaries of recognised states. The final part identifies some key areas of emerging and future research and teaching where questions of security and development have become increasingly and inescapably intertwined, including, inter alia, the effects of climate change on violent conflict, and the connections between global health, pandemics, and insecurity. 36

Conflict, Security and Development

3.1

37

CSD AND WAR STUDIES

McNamara’s much-publicised Montreal speech shows that thinking, even at the highest level of government, about the complex relationship between socio-economic change and violent conflict is not a feature unique to the post-Cold War era. As a call aimed at bringing analysts and practitioners closer together, however, McNamara’s intervention left few immediate traces. Throughout the Cold War, mainstream work on security and development issues was heavily compartmentalised and marked by mutual neglect and occasional distrust. ‘Security studies’ in Western universities and think tanks were devoted primarily to the military dimensions of East–West relations, concerned in particular with the stable management of relations and the avoidance of direct confrontation between two nuclear-armed blocs deeply divided along ideological lines. Within such a context, regional and local conflicts tended to be defined by reference to the global competition for influence between the superpowers, with only limited appreciation shown of regional dynamics, local sources of conflict, and the connections between security and development. The development studies community by contrast concentrated on the conditions for ‘sustained economic growth’ in newly decolonised and developing countries.2 When such growth proved elusive in many parts of the world, attention turned increasingly to the sources of poverty and chronic underdevelopment.3 This sense that each field proceeded from a different set of assumptions and embraced their own distinctive agendas, was mirrored in the world of policy-making, where ministries of foreign affairs and defence had little to do with those of development and overseas aid. The convergence of security and development, then, understood as the growing recognition among scholars and practitioners of the need to examine issues of security and development in their mutual interaction rather than as separate areas of academic enquiry and policy-making, is a product of changes in the international political landscape and normative climate prompted by the end of the Cold War. Two sets of developments, necessarily connected, merit special attention in this regard. The first is conceptual in nature and relates to changes in the discourse around the meaning of security, specifically the shift away from the State as the sole referent object of security. The second relates to changes in the character and dynamics of war itself, as well as in the scale and scope of external involvement within boundaries of conflict-affected states.

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An introduction to War Studies

The Broadening of Security

As the stable management of relations between East and West ceased to be the overarching preoccupation of policy-makers and academics in the early 1990s, traditional conceptions of security came to be questioned more widely on the grounds that they were overly state-centric and too accepting of the distinction – seen as increasingly untenable in a more globalised, interdependent and less sovereignty-fixated world – between issues of ‘low’ and ‘high’ politics. Reflecting a wider shift in the normative ambition of international society, both scholarly and policy attention turned to what the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its landmark Human Development Report of 1994 termed human security: a multi-dimensional and explicitly people-centred conception of security whose main categories encompass not only personal but also economic, food, health, and environmental security.4 The effect of this broadening has been to deepen our understanding of the sources of state fragility and its relationship to violent conflict, especially at the local and micro-level of armed conflict. At the same time, a more multi-faceted conception of security also drew early attention to certain global or transnational issues where questions of development and security could not easily be separated. Three of these have become especially prominent over the past decade: the impact of climate change on security; the connections between global health, pandemics, and armed conflict; and the effects of transnational organised crime on development and security. All three, as discussed more fully below, are central to the future CSD research and teaching agenda. 3.1.2

The Interventionist Impulse and the Changing Character of Armed Conflict

If changing geopolitical and normative circumstances can be said to have had a liberating impact on the study of security after the Cold War, still more important in terms of bringing the field of security and development together and shaping its profile within War Studies, were two, closely related, ‘real-world’ developments. First, the post-Cold War era has witnessed a dramatic growth in interventions and externally aided efforts aimed at consolidating peace and ‘building stability’ in countries at, or emerging from, war and violence. These interventions have varied greatly in scope, scale, and intensity of commitment by external actors, ranging from small-scale missions in Central America to the assumption of trusteeship-like powers in East Timor and Kosovo and major stabilisation and state-building exercises in Iraq and Afghanistan. Notwithstanding their many and important differences, one common feature nonetheless distinguishes these from more traditional UN peacekeeping.

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Concerned with the legacies and socio-economic dislocations brought about by protracted conflict, the aims of intervention have been framed in profoundly ambitious terms. By supporting economic, political, and institutional change, they have sought to address underlying or ‘root’ sources of violence and instability within the boundaries of established states. It is the transformative ambition of modern peacebuilding and state-building that has brought the interdependence of security and development issues into particularly sharp relief, stimulating fierce debates about the role of development initiatives and actors in post-war recovery efforts, and prompting changes in the machinery of governments emphasising ‘jointness’ and integrated approaches to conflict interventions in weak and fragile states.5 While it is true that the appetite for ambitious ‘nation-building’ exercises has waned in Western countries after the chastening experience of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the resurgence of Great Power politics has weakened the prospects for collectively legitimised interventions on humanitarian grounds, the interventionist impulse is plainly not dead, as the scale of operations by UN and regional organisations in Africa makes clear.6 Moreover, even though the record of interventions is decidedly mixed, there is broad agreement that delivering stability and securing ‘durable peace’ within conflict-affected states are inescapably linked to policy challenges that would in the past have been seen (if not dismissed altogether) ‘merely’ as issues of development, including, inter alia, how best to reintegrate ex-combatants into civilian life after conflict; how to improve governance and management of natural resources in fragile and resource-dependent countries; how to strengthen and protect the role of women in society; and, more generally, how to ensure that critical entitlements in areas such as health and education are provided across groups in societies fractured by war and violence. Second, and stressed above, the ideologically driven competition for influence between East and West was the dominant prism through which violent conflict in the international system was viewed throughout the Cold War era. The effect of this explains, in part, the widespread optimism that characterised the liberal internationalism and ‘New Interventionism’ of the immediate post-Cold War era. That optimism, however, proved short-lived as an upsurge of civil wars, often mutating into larger regionalised conflicts, upended the expectation that the end of bipolar rivalry would also signify, to borrow Francis Fukuyama’s catchy but infelicitous phrase, ‘the end of history’.7 Attempts to explain the resurgence and persistence of such conflicts stimulated lively and ongoing debates about character and underlying drivers of modern armed conflict, including the developmental dimensions. One of these has centred on the conceptual value and empirical credibility of the ‘New Wars’ idea; another, on whether it is at all helpful to draw a sharp distinction between ‘greed’ and ‘grievance’ when studying motivations for violence in civil wars.8

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An introduction to War Studies

Diversity and Methodological Pluralism

Conflict, Security and Development, it is clear from the above, does not constitute a discrete field of inquiry, let alone a separate discipline in the sense of possessing an agreed intellectual base and unifying method. As an area of academic enquiry, it is best understood as a ‘crossroads which take into account various forms of human thought’, drawing on insights and employing tools of analysis that range across disciplinary boundaries and subject demarcation lines.9 Put differently, diversity in methodological approach and theoretical perspectives are sources of strength that have enriched, and hold out the promise of further enriching, our understanding of the nexus between security and development. Thus, the work of historical sociologists on the violent and drawn-out processes of ‘state formation’ in late medieval and early modern Europe has provided insights relevant to the study of ambitious Western-led ‘state-building’ exercises since the early 1990s.10 Likewise, historical and ethnographic approaches to civil wars and their aftermath help explain why the distinction between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ is often so blurred or ‘messy’ in modern conflicts.11 Political economy analysis for its part has done much to illuminate the ways in which networks of patronage and informal coalitions of power and influence drive violent conflict within war-torn societies, thwarting the efforts of external actors to build peace and encourage sustainable development. And yet, while methodological pluralism and diversity are to be welcomed, there are obvious dangers in casting the net of any subject area too wide. As Sir Lawrence Freedman perceptively noted of the security studies field in the late 1990s, ‘once anything that generates anxiety or threatens the quality of life in some respects becomes labelled a “security problem”, the field risks losing all focus’.12 Mindful of this cautionary note, the focus of research and teaching within CSD has reflected the interdisciplinary traditions and intellectual preoccupations of War Studies, and may usefully, albeit somewhat schematically, be viewed as falling within two broad areas: (1) the developmental dimensions and nature of modern armed conflict, especially within weak, fragile or ‘failed’ states; and (2) the role and record of external actors – including military and development actors, global, and regional organisations – in efforts to build peace and support development in zones of conflict.

3.2

FINDINGS AND THE STATE OF THE FIELD

3.2.1

Understanding State ‘Failure’ and Modern Conflict

‘From Haiti in the Western Hemisphere to the remnants of Yugoslavia in Europe, from Somalia, Sudan, and Liberia in Africa to Cambodia in Southeast Asia, a disturbing new phenomenon is emerging: the failed nation-state,

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utterly incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community.’13 Thus wrote Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner in their oft-cited article published in late 1992, marking the beginning of an ongoing debate about the nature and consequences of state ‘failure’ in international relations. The debate has gone through several distinct phases. When Helman and Ratner penned their article, international policy interest in the phenomenon was driven principally, if not solely, by humanitarian concerns, with war-shattered Somalia widely seen the paradigmatic case of state failure. In the aftermath of 9/11, Western, especially US, interest has been motivated above all by fears that ‘failed’ or poorly governed states might provide enabling conditions for the growth of transnational threats, specifically international terrorism. Work within Conflict, Security and Development has contributed greatly to the debate, resulting in a more nuanced and sophisticated grasp of the relationship between state fragility and contemporary civil wars. It has done so by critically challenging Helman and Ratner’s depiction of state failure as little more than a descent into ‘violence, anarchy and random warfare,’ stressing instead how war, whilst always costly and destructive, is also transformative in its effects on state and society.14 Like much of the early writings on state failure, Ratner and Helman’s attention was drawn to the human and socio-economic costs and seeming ‘irrationality’ of modern civil wars. There were good and obvious reasons for this, and, indeed, further research has deepened our appreciation of both the direct and indirect, visible and less visible, impact of war in poor and developing countries.15 While there is considerable variability across cases, wars are, unsurprisingly, costly in their effects on society and the formal economy, with capital destruction ‘not only broad but also concentrated on those capacities which are recognised as being critical for sustainable development’, including physical assets (e.g. manufacturing, communications and transportation infrastructure) and, crucially, human and social capital.16 Civil wars also impact negatively, though unevenly, on food security, education (especially for girls), public health and healthcare systems.17 And yet while the economic costs and developmental damage of violent conflict are incontrovertible, war is also, as it has always been, an agent of change that reorders relationships of power and influence within State and society. This helps explain why States and societies subject to protracted war and violence do not simply collapse into ‘anarchy’, ‘chaos’ and ‘ungoverned space’. As both ethnographic studies and political economy analysis of conflict zones, especially in Africa, have shown, groups and individuals who live in conditions of insecurity, violent strife, and the absence of functional central government are never passive or indifferent to the circumstances in which they find themselves.18 Politico-military elites and power-brokers, traders and local businesses, customary rulers and civil society actors, ‘ordinary’ people and

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households: all of these groups seek ways of adjusting to the realities created by war, long-term political crisis and persistent State weakness. The strategies of adjustment adopted by conflict actors are necessarily varied, reflecting differences in interest and circumstances. Some are primarily predatory in nature, aimed at personal enrichment through the capturing of criminal rent and the exploitation, both systematic and opportunistic, of vulnerable civilian populations through pillaging and violent taxation. In some cases, the criminal interests of political-military elites in power come to depend on the continuation of State weakness and functionally useful levels of violence. Writing in 2017 about the ‘post-conflict’ dynamics and attempted political transitions in Afghanistan and Myanmar, for example, Vanda Felbab-Brown perceptively stressed how criminality and political arrangements in both settings were in fact ‘mutually constitutive.’19 Strategies of adjustment can also, however, be less about predation than about taking the necessary steps required to survive in a world where the State no longer executes the basic functions of government. Indeed, the response of local communities to such conditions has often been ‘to forge informal arrangements to provide some degree of predictability and security for themselves.’20 The larger point here is that armed conflict and state failure should not be treated simply as the violent collapse of a system. Exploring contemporary armed conflict in weak and fragile states requires an understanding of the alternative systems of power, influence and economic activity that crystallise within conflict zones, and the interaction of local war economies with the political agendas of conflict actors. These findings have important consequences for our understanding of the dynamics of civil wars, development in and during conflict, and state failure. Three general observations can be made. First, while Western thinking about war and peace has traditionally drawn a sharp distinction between war and peace, the aforementioned findings help explain why that very distinction has rarely proved clean in modern conflicts. This in turn has important implications for how to think about war-to-peace transitions which are more likely to represent ‘a realignment of political interests and a readjustment of economic strategies rather than a clean break from violence to consent, from theft to production, or from repression to democracy.’21 Second, the sources and manifestations of state fragility and state resilience vary greatly across different cases. It follows that the catch-all category of ‘state failure’ is profoundly unhelpful as an analytical device for exploring the interface between development and security, or as an uninterrogated premise for policy intervention. A good example is provided by the challenge of transnational organised crime, which, like international terrorism, has frequently been linked to ‘failed states’. While it is clearly the case that transnational

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criminal organisations are drawn to states where institutions are weak and corrupt, beyond this, ‘the relationship between transnational criminals and the broad spectrum of fragile states is highly variable, depending on the precise governance gaps that are most useful to specific crimes, and to relevant stages (production, transit, and destination) in an often complex illicit supply chain.’22 Finally, findings about the dynamics of war within weak states qualify the oft-cited assertion that war is simply ‘development in reverse’.23 War does not bring economic activity, or indeed development, to a halt. As local and micro-level studies of conflict have shown, groups, individuals, and households adapt – sometimes in highly innovative ways – to the conditions and opportunity structures created by violence, the disintegration of formal institution and collapse of entitlements. Alternative systems of coping, even of governance, emerge, as economic activities and networks are transformed rather than destroyed by conflict. In some cases, as post-war developments in Liberia suggest, formerly violent non-state actors may even become ‘accidental state-builders’ in post-conflict settings, providing basic governance functions that are welcomed by local communities.24 3.2.2

The Lessons and Limits of State and Peacebuilding Interventions

The preceding pages have shown that the emergence of CSD as a field of research and teaching is closely connected to the real-world growth of international intervention and associated state-building practices since the early 1990s. The record of these interventions is distinctly and highly uneven. In particular, the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ignominious state-building exercises that followed in their wake cannot but induce extreme scepticism about any scheme that seeks to graft Western institutions and modes of governance onto politically and culturally complex societies by means of external intervention and force of arms. While the sources of failure are manifold, the inability to engage with the distinctive political economies that emerge in response to the disintegration of formal institutions is plainly a prominent one. Political economy analysis makes it clear that strengthening fragile states and consolidating peace requires far more than the building of institutional capacity, which is how conventional state-building, championed by donors and development actors, has tended to approach the challenge. This is especially true, as the history of Western-led support for Security Sector Reform painfully illustrates, where capacity-building assumes a technocratic and templated form divorced from political processes and underlying conflict dynamics.25 Where civil war and state weakness have altered social, economic, and political bases of power within society, giving rise to alternative political orders that rest on informal

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and violent networks of privilege and patronage, formal rules and institutions (the focus of attention among externals) matter less to ‘post-conflict’ stability than the underlying political economy and power dynamics shaped by war and armed conflict. In these circumstances, ‘development-as-usual’ policies – that is, economic policies that are not synchronised as a matter of priority with political processes aimed at consolidating peace – have inflamed rather than reduced conflict.26 From Iraq and Afghanistan to the DRC and South Sudan, the result of ambitious state-building efforts – from support for democratic elections, constitution-making, DDR and SSR to the introduction of market-oriented economic policies – has frequently been to reproduce violent political economies and to entrench, rather than weaken, the power of predatory elites and conflict actors. Instead of narrowly conceived capacity-building that focuses merely on formal institutions, the deeper challenge lies in arriving at more inclusive political settlements that also take account of the informal distribution of power, influence, and resources within society, so that legitimacy for ‘post-conflict’ arrangements can be built across society and include those whose experience of the state has historically been marked by political exclusion and economic marginalisation. This, in turn, entails a broader conception of the ‘state’ to include informal actors and networks that have prospered during conflict and have benefited from state weakness.27 These findings draw, above all, on political economy analysis, aptly described as a useful way of ‘denaturalising the idea of the Weberian state, blurring the binary distinctions between state and non-state, legitimate and illegitimate, and highlighting the networks, coalitions and material foundations that underpin or undermine the state.’28 Understanding the uneven record of Western-led state and peacebuilding interventions cannot, however, be limited to the analysis of elite incentives defined in terms of power and economic interest alone. The record of coercive and consent-based interventions over the past three decades underlines the central importance of placing both conflict analysis and the study of interventions within their proper political, historical, and cultural context. Too often, the preference of outsiders, whether intended or by default, has been to deal with war-torn societies as ‘clean slates’, ignoring the complexity of interests and motivations of actors, including the critical influence of non-material factors such as nationalism, religion, and ideology in shaping the response to outsiders. Attention to non-material factors – neglect of which has sometimes been reinforced by the methodological techniques and preoccupations of positivist Social Science – is also, as research within CSD has shown, essential for a deeper understanding of the sources of both wartime and post-war violence.29

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45

FUTURE RESEARCH AGENDA

The conception of Conflict, Security and Development as a crossroads where different traditions of thought meet and diversity of approaches is encouraged, necessarily precludes a comprehensive, let alone settled, overview of future research challenges. The final section identifies, and seeks to illustrate, three major areas where the interdependencies between issues of security and development now require more systematic attention by scholars and practitioners. 3.3.1

The Transformative Effects of War and Their Implications for Development and Peacebuilding

The effects of civil war on state and society are far-reaching and transformative, and their implications for peacebuilding and development require less generalising and more context-specific, fine-grained, and historically informed research.30 While the potentially destabilising impact of interventions on local conflict dynamics is now well documented,31 less work has been undertaken on the ways in which political crises might also be ‘understood as opportunity and not just rupture or breakdown.’32 The starting point here, as noted above, is that those affected by conflict and violence will always seek ways of adjusting to the realities of war and the socio-economic dislocations it brings in its wake. In doing so, they often demonstrate ingenuity and entrepreneurial skill in the development of coping mechanisms. Over time, practical adaptions to political crisis and insecurity may result in local, even regional, systems of ‘governance without government’33 in which local communities play an essential role in delivering services and in the provision of basic public goods, including security, law, and order. In turn, such systems may provide the foundations for more durable political settlements owing to the greater legitimacy they enjoy and their ability to meet the needs of war-weary populations. The emergence of such organic, or bottom-up, forms of non-state governance should not, it is vital to stress, be romanticised or viewed as simple alternatives to central government. Forms of non-state governance are varied and highly dependent on historical, political, and cultural context. They are also frequently predatory and exploitative. Still, comprehending how they crystallise and operate within zones of ‘limited statehood’ is essential if security and development assistance is to be tailored in ways that help build stability and reinforce peaceable behaviour.

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An introduction to War Studies

Global Health, Pandemics and Civil Wars

The Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia from 2013 to 2016 and, on a smaller scale, in the violence-ridden provinces of North Kivu and Ituri in eastern Congo from 2018 to 2020, as well as the more recent, ongoing and global COVID-19 pandemic, have all drawn attention to the multi-faceted connections between modern epidemics/pandemics and armed conflict within fragile states. While these links are increasingly recognised, they remain understudied and in need of more systematic policy attention.34 This holds true with respect both to the impact of violent conflict on the emergence, severity, and control of infectious diseases on a regional and global scale, and, conversely, the impact of epidemics/pandemics on the dynamics of civil wars and conflict governance.35 Conditions of war and conflict-induced state fragility have long been known to exacerbate the transmission and prevalence of infectious diseases. Depending on the transmissibility and virulence of specific pathogens, situations of civil war can play a critical role in facilitating the spread of known diseases otherwise contained by robust healthcare systems and effective vaccine coverage. Thus, the destruction of sanitation, water purification and reclamation systems during war have contributed to the rapid spread of cholera and other waterborne diseases, while airborne pathogens have been effectively spread by the movement of combatants, internally displaced, migrant, and refugee populations.36 The adverse effects of armed conflict on local capacities to monitor, prevent and control outbreaks have further added to the speed of transmission, often involving, as with the Ebola epidemic in 2013–16, rapid dissemination across national borders. The challenges involved in detection, surveillance, and control of infectious diseases have been affected not only by the war-induced damage to local health capacities, but also by the inherent weaknesses in global pandemic control systems and the wider ‘international health governance infrastructure’; weaknesses laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic.37 While these are all enabling conditions for the spread of disease, the deliberate actions of belligerents can also contribute in direct ways to the outbreak of infectious disease, as in Syria in 2013 when the targeting by government forces of healthcare systems, sanitation and water supplies contributed to an outbreak of polio in ‘rebel’ controlled areas. Similarly, sexual violence, restrictions on access to food and water, and the deliberate targeting of health workers, have all been employed by belligerents as ‘weapons of war’, affecting the transmission of, and vulnerability to, known diseases. Civil wars can also increase the risk of new infectious diseases. Indeed, according to Wise and Barry, there is now ‘considerable overlap between the hotspots for emerging infections and hotspots of civil conflict.’38 Drawing attention to the resulting risk of zoonotic spill-over, they note how ‘combat operations and

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the threat of violence invariably generate the migration of civilian populations into safer locations, often into forested or other remote areas where intense interaction with wildlife populations is more likely.’39 With regard to the impact of epidemics/pandemics on the dynamics and trajectory of conflict, existing evidence, including from the COVID-19 pandemic, indicate that they typically serve to intensify and sharpen underlying conflict drivers and grievances among communities. The causal mechanisms are multi-faceted but increased competition over economic and natural resources, threats to livelihoods, social fragmentation, and increased violence have all been identified as consequences of epidemic outbreaks. Pandemic outbreaks have also affected conflict governance and peace processes as non-state armed groups, both criminal and insurgent, have sought to exploit grievances and build legitimacy in the absence of effective state institutions and responses.40 The importance of further research lies in the crucial fact that the connections between violent conflict and infectious disease alluded to above are not uniform across cases and contexts.41 Improving our understanding of how and why they vary is critical to effective development and health interventions in war and post-conflict settings, and requires further qualitative and anthropological research to supplement quantitative work.42 Part of the future research agenda must include a systemic analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in zones of conflict, as well as more detailed studies of individual cases that will shed light on the precise relationship between conflict dynamics, politics and public health. 3.3.3

Climate Change and Security

Concern about the cascading impact on populations and ecosystems of human-induced global warming and climate change – evidenced in the increased frequency of extreme weather events, rising sea levels, diminishing freshwater resources, loss of biodiversity, and changing precipitation patterns – has risen sharply over the past decade. The steady accumulation of data about the primary and second-order effects of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases has produced a broad scientific consensus around the scale of the global climate crisis and the need for adaptation and mitigation to reduce risks.43 Accompanying the heightened sense of urgency about global trends has also been a growing concern about the linkages between climate change and security, specifically the ways in which the differential impact of the change might be intensifying existing drivers of conflict and creating new pressures on poor and conflict-prone countries and regions heavily dependent on agricultural livelihoods. The change of tone on this score over the past ten years is striking. In 2011 the Security Council, in cautious and qualified terms,

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expressed ‘its concern that possible adverse effects of climate change may, in the long run, aggravate certain existing threats to international peace and security.’44 A decade on, the UN’s Deputy Secretary-General, addressing the Council during a debate on climate-related security risks, boldly asserted that ‘the climate emergency is a major driver of inequality, insecurity and conflict.’45 Since 2017 the Security Council itself has also increasingly linked climate-related effects and ecological changes directly to instability and ongoing conflicts, making specific reference to the climate–conflict linkage in Mali, Sudan, Central Africa, Darfur, the DRC and Somalia.46 Increased competition over diminishing natural resources (including land, forage and water), forced migration, threats to agricultural production and food security, land degradation and declining community resilience, have all been identified by the Council as climate-related pressures that are deepening existing political, social and economic vulnerabilities within conflict zones. And yet while the reality of climate change and its impact on human security is undeniable, the precise mechanisms whereby environmental change is transmuted into violence, and, crucially, the ways in which both political and socio-economic drivers of conflict interact with climate-induced pressures to generate violent conflict, demand further and more systematic investigation. Indeed, an authoritative survey of the current state of knowledge, whilst concluding that climate change has affected organised conflict within countries, also found that ‘the mechanisms of climate–conflict linkages remain a key uncertainty’, and that, to date, factors other than climate variability – specifically, underdevelopment, acute state weakness, horizontal inequalities, and, not least, a previous history of violence and conflict – were ‘substantially more influential’ conflict risks.47 These findings suggest, unsurprisingly, that the causal connections between climate and violent conflict are mostly indirect and rarely linear. They also, however, point to the limitations inherent in any attempt to generalise about the impact of climate change across different conflict settings. As such, they open an important area for further research within CSD. Although the Security Council has highlighted regions where climate variability now appears to be exacerbating conflict – the Lake Chad Basin, West Africa, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa – more context-specific research into linkages and causal pathways is needed to understand both the negative impact of climate-induced change on security, and, conversely, how environmental pressures might provide the basis for cooperation among communities in conflict-affected situations.48 Historical and more recent anecdotal evidence provide some indication of possible links either way. Thus, the devastating drought that affected Syria between 2006 and 2010 is widely considered to have inflamed underlying tensions and resentments against the regime, which exploded into full-scale rebellion in 2011. In Mozambique, by contrast, the

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effect of a similarly catastrophic drought was to reinforce a mutually hurting stalemate between government forces and RENAMO, setting the stage for ending the civil war in the early 1990s. A peace deal signed between the Indonesian government and the Free Ache Movement in 2005 has also been linked by participants in the talks to the devastating effects of the Tsunami in 2004, which concentrated minds in favour of a political solution to the long-running dispute. As Chitra Nagarajan has observed of Mali, ‘despite the significant role climate change plays in shaping the risk landscape, there is of yet no detailed evidence-based analysis of climate security in Mali that is grounded on both up to date climate science and conflict analysis and highlight the perspectives of people affected.’49 The research challenge for students of Conflict, Security and Development lies in exploring, through much more detailed and integrated conflict analysis of individual case studies, the precise connections between climate change and violent conflict, ensuring that the impact of greater climatic variability is not artificially divorced from political context and historical roots of conflict, including entrenched patterns of governmental rent-seeking, corruption and policies that perpetuate the long-standing political and economic marginalisation of communities. More detailed empirical case studies are likely not only to reveal the variable impact of climate events and trends on conflict but should also provide much-needed understanding of the opportunities for adaption and entry points for mitigation and risk reduction.

NOTES 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

Robert S. McNamara, ‘Security in the Contemporary World’, Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Montreal, 18 May 1966. General Assembly Res. 1710, 1084th Plenary Meeting, 19 December 1961 (A/ RES/1710(XVI)). David Hulme, ‘Poverty in Development Thought’, in Bruce Currie-Alder, Ravi Kanbur, David M. Malone and Rohinton Medhora (eds.), International Development: Ideas, Experience and Prospects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp.81‒97. As head of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981, McNamara himself would do much to shift the Bank’s major focus towards targeted poverty reduction. ‘United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 1994’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp.24‒25. For an unsurpassed study of the history of the human security idea, see S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuan Foong Khong, Human Security and the UN: A Critical History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown, Greater than the Sum of Its Parts? Assessing ‘Whole of Government’ Approaches to Fragile States (New York: IPA, 2007). Available at: https://​www​.cgdev​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​archive/​doc/​weakstates/​ Fragile​_States​.pdf.

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As of early 2021, some 70,000 troops were serving in large-scale and ambitious operations in the CAR, the DRC, Mali and South Sudan. 7. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992). 8. For issues in ‘Greed and Grievance’ and ‘New Wars’ debates see, Mats Berdal, ‘Beyond Greed and Grievance – and Not Too Soon’, Review of International Studies, 31, 4 (2005), pp.687‒698; and Mats Berdal, ‘The “New Wars” Thesis Revisited’, in Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers (eds.), The Changing Character of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) pp.109–134. 9. Philip Windsor, ‘The Evolution of the Concept of Security in International Relations’, in Michael Clark (ed.), New Perspectives on Security (London: Brassey’s, 1993), p.62. 10. Charles Tilly, ‘War-making and State-making as Organised Crime’, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp.169‒191. 11. Mats Utas (ed.), African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks (London: Zed Books, 2012). 12. Lawrence Freedman, ‘International Security: Changing Targets’, Foreign Policy, 111, (1998), p. 53. 13. Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner, ‘Saving Failed States’, Foreign Policy, 89, (1992), p. 3. 14. Ibid. 15. On the important but difficult-to-quantify costs of civil war, see Antonio Ugalde, Ernesto Selva-Sutter, Carolina Castillo, Carolina Paz and Sergio Cañas, ‘The Health Costs of War: Can They be Measured? Lessons from El Salvador’, British Medical Journal, 321, 7254 (2000), pp.169‒172. 16. Frances Stewart and Valpy Fitzgerald, ‘Case Studies of Countries at War: An Introduction’, in Stewart and Fitzgerald (eds.), War and Underdevelopment [Volume 1] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.16. 17. Hazem Ghobarah, Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, ‘Civil Wars Kill and Maim People – Long After the Shooting Stops’, American Political Science Review, 97, 2 (2003), pp.189‒202. 18. Ken Menkhaus, Timothy Raeymaekers and Koen Vlassenroot, ‘State and Non-state Regulations in African Protracted Crises: Governance Without Government?’, Afrika Focus, 21, 2 (2008), p.8. 19. Vanda Felbab-Brown, ‘The Hellish Road to Good Intentions’ (Tokyo: United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, 2017), p.4. 20. Ken Menkhaus, ‘Somalia’s 20-Year Experiment in Hybrid Government’, World Politics Review, (2012), p.3. See also, Miles Larmer, Ann Laudati and John F. Clark, ‘Neither War nor Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): Profiting and Coping amid Violence and Disorder’, Review of African Political Economy, 40, 135 (2013), pp.1‒12, and Ashley Jackson and Ramatullah Amiri, ‘Insurgent Bureaucracy: How Taliban Makes Policy’ (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2019). 21. David Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 320 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.32. 22. Stewart Patrick, ‘Civil War and Transnational Threats: Mapping the Terrain, Assessing the Links’, Dædalus, 147, 4 (2017), p.51. 23. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 27.

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24. Christine Cheng, Extra-legal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia: How Trade Makes the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 25. See Mats Berdal and David Ucko (eds.), Reintegrating Armed Groups After Conflict: Politics, Violence, and Transition (London: Routledge, 2009). 26. Graciana del Castillo, Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenge of Post-Conflict Economic Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 27. See important findings of the ‘Elite Bargains and Political Deal Project’ to which the CSD community in War Studies has made valuable contributions: Christine Cheng, Jonathan Goodhand and Patrick Meehan, ‘Synthesis Paper: Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains that Reduce Violence Conflict’ (London: UK Government Stabilisation Unit, 2018), available at: https://​assets​.publishing​ .service​.gov​.uk/​government/​uploads/​system/​uploads/​attachment​_data/​file/​ 765882/​Elite​_Bargains​_and​_Political​_Deals​_Project​_​-​_Synthesis​_Paper​.pdf. 28. Jonathan Goodhand, Astri Suhrke and Srinjoy Bose, ‘Flooding the Lake? International Democracy Promotion and the Political Economy of the 2014 Presidential Election in Afghanistan’, Conflict, Security & Development, 16, 6 (2016), p.485. 29. See, in particular, Kieran Mitton, Rebels in a Rotten State: Understanding Atrocity in Sierra Leone (London: Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2015) and Astri Suhrke and Mats Berdal (eds.), The Peace in Between – Post-War Violence and Peacebuilding (London: Routledge, 2012). 30. For a trenchant critique of generalising tendencies in study of peace- and state-building interventions, see Dominik Zaum, ‘Beyond the “Liberal Peace”’, Global Governance, 18, 1 (2012). 31. See the range of case studies in Mats Berdal and Dominik Zaum (eds.), Political Economy of Statebuilding (London: Routledge, 2012). 32. Menkhaus et al., ‘African Protracted Crises’, p.10. 33. Ken Menkhaus, ‘State Failure and Ungoverned Space’, in Mats Berdal and Achim Wennmann, Ending Wars, Consolidating Peace: Economic Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2010), p.181. 34. Paul H. Wise and Michel Barry, ‘Civil War and the Threat of Pandemics’, Dædalus, 147, 4 (2017). 35. Although not discussed here, key areas other than infectious diseases affected by protracted civil war include non-communicable diseases; sexual, reproductive, and maternal health; child and mental health. See S. Garry and F. Checchi, ‘Armed Conflict and Public Health: into the 21st Century’, Journal of Public Health, 42, 3 (2019), pp.287‒297. 36. Nathan A. Paxton, ‘Plague and War: Political Breakdown and the Spread of HIV’, Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 32, 4 (2017), p.256. 37. Wise and Barry, ‘Civil War and the Global Threat of Pandemics’, p.80. 38. Ibid., p.73. 39. Ibid., p.71. 40. This is the subject of an ongoing research project within CSDRG at King’s College London. See ‘Peace Processes and Rebel Orders: None-State Armed Group (NSAG) Responses to Covid-19’, Concept Note, August 2020, CSDRG. 41. More generally on the need for further research, especially into the indirect effects of war on public health, the earlier findings of Murray and associates, remain valid. C. Murray, G. King, A. Lopez, N. Tomijima and E. Krug, ‘Armed

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42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

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Conflict as a Public Health Problem’, British Medical Journal, 324, 7333 (2002), pp.346‒349. Garry and Checchi, ‘Armed Conflict and Public Health’, p.295. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). ‘Overview of Security Council Presidential Statements (S/PRST/2011/15)’, United Nations, 20 July 2011. ‘Overview of Security Council Letters (S/2020/1090)’, United Nations, 12 November 2020, annex. ‘Resolution 2349’, United Nations Security Council, 31 March 2017, paragraph 26. Katharine J. Mach et al., ‘Climate as a Risk Factor for Armed Conflict’, Nature, 571 (2019), p.194. For the view that the emerging ‘climate–conflict narrative’ runs the risk of overstating the impact of climatic factors on conflict, concealing the deeper causes of insecurity within specific regions and ecosystems, see Tor A. Benjaminsen, ‘Does Climate Change Cause Conflict in the Sahel?’, in Roy Behnke and M. Mortimore, (eds.), The End of Desertification? – Disputing Environmental Change in the Drylands (New York: Springer, 2016), pp.99‒116. Chitra Nagarajan, ‘Climate-Fragility Risk Brief: Mali’ (Climate Diplomacy, May 2020), p.22, available at: https://​climate​-diplomacy​.org/​magazine/​conflict/​ climate​-fragility​-risk​-brief​-mali.

4. History of War Alan James When the Department of War Studies was founded decades ago as an offshoot of the History Department at King’s College London, the aim was to pursue the study of war from a number of disciplinary angles. Yet this was not a reaction against the discipline of History itself. Indeed, in many respects it was the very opposite in that it removed some of the professional and institutional barriers to the study of the historical experience of war behind which it had become stuck. Sir Michael Howard, who led this project along with others, was, and always remained, an historian and one with extraordinary ambitions for his profession. Not a typical resident of the ivory tower, he also had combat experience and a storied military career. This, alone, did not make him unique, but the way in which his life as a soldier influenced his approach to the study of the past and his hopes for this new academic venture certainly did.1 His experiences provided a deep, personal appreciation of the full range of ethical, psychological, physical, and organisational challenges that war presents. From this and his sense of the enormity of war in human history and its impact on all aspects of life came the conviction that History could provide the academic coherence and the platform upon which a genuinely inter- or, rather, multi-disciplinary study of war could flourish. It is worth recalling, however, that it was a deep-seated resistance to the study of war, all too common in the History departments of most universities, that created the need for such a department in the first place. Today, there is a very productive and active collaboration between the two departments at King’s in the delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, and in the research activity of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War. This also includes members from other departments across the College, but it is a rare, collaborative success. More commonly, the work of historians of war is lonely and suffers from a perceived association with what can be called ‘traditional military history’. This is seen as narrowly conceived and suitable for a specialist or popular audience only. Worse, its focus seems to reinforce a view of the world that functions according to strictly national perspectives and by traditional hierarchies of power, and in that sense it works against the modern research interests of the main body of contemporary historians. It can even be ridiculed. As Howard colourfully reminds us, for many academics ‘military 53

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history is to History what military music is to music’.2 Unsurprisingly, military historians often bemoan their lack of status, but there are clearly reputational issues that affect the wider study of war too.3 To be sure, there is currently a growing body of excellent, imaginative work being produced by historians on war-related topics. There are some signs, too, of institutional change with the recent introduction of War Studies programmes within some History departments. Yet, it is often these very historians, in their need to dissociate themselves from these common perceptions about military history, who react most vociferously against it, and the wider historical profession is all too ready to amplify their unease. This is precisely because, at least in part, the many methodological and conceptual advances in History over the last century or more have required a consistent and determined effort to distance the discipline from traditional military history or, more precisely, from the out-dated, nineteenth-century academic priorities and triumphalist tone that it is seen to embody. If, however, History has until now been able to afford the relative marginalisation of the study of war in this way, the reverse is clearly not true. The very same aversion was behind a self-defeating logic that, surprisingly, later emerged within War Studies. In the attempt by some who joined the department to define a unique, coherent, and conceptually rigorous War Studies project, military history was seen as somehow incompatible and, by extension, the privileged disciplinary position of History itself. Yet war is a subject. It is not a discipline awaiting definition.4 Its sheer complexity and ubiquity in the past and the dangers it poses to society today are all best studied through a variety of complementary approaches. The challenge for the study of past experiences of war, therefore, is not to turn away from History but to embrace it fully and, indeed, to attempt to broaden its reach by including an unambiguous and unapologetic focus on war itself. There is no better example of the sort of productive engagement that is needed than Andrew Lambert’s study of Sir Julian Corbett and the contested development of a ‘British way of war’ in the early twentieth century. This is a study not just of the greatest theorist of naval warfare in British history and of the related development of wider strategic thinking in his time but, to some extent, of the nature of historical knowledge itself.5 Lambert demonstrates that, traditionally, military history was written as a means of extracting lessons from the past for the practitioners and political leaders of the present. Warfare was studied, often by retired generals or civilian strategists, like Corbett, in order to highlight the decisions made by military leaders, the tactical and operational successes or failures that occurred, or the strategic priorities that had shaped their national histories. A similar commitment to the practical service of society has continued, in many ways, to direct scholarship in the Department of War Studies. Indeed, this was signalled by Michael Howard’s own growing engagement with contemporary defence policy and service education, summed

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up in his elegant text, The Continental Commitment, of 1972.6 In the early years of the department as a whole, much of the historical work was modern, produced under the shadow of Cold War realities. Of course, different times pose different questions, as illustrated by the rapid transition of Sir Lawrence Freedman from a nuclear strategist into the Official Historian of the Falklands Conflict of 1982, a war that began just as he became Head of Department. One of his successors as Head of Department, Michael S. Goodman, has written the Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and War Studies alumnus (both MA and PhD) John Ferris has produced that of GCHQ. To these achievements could be added such others as the long-term secondment of a professor of History, John Bew, to the Cabinet Office. These are obvious marks of the esteem with which the historical work in War Studies is held at the highest levels of state. Similarly, the department has always collaborated with military and naval academies around the world, many of which have provided careers for its graduates. Yet War Studies is, of course, an entirely independent, academic department. Inasmuch as a characteristic emphasis emerged to define its academic ambitions, it has been a shared interest in Strategy, the application of military means to the pursuit of political aims.7 Taking a cue from Clausewitz, much of the best work on whom has been done in the department, war is understood as a fundamentally political act.8 As such, it is characterised in any given age by expectations about the utility and nature of war that applied and by the mass of social, cultural, and intellectual assumptions that shaped political purposes. Adopting an emphasis on these evolving perspectives and assumptions is the key to understanding the dynamics of change in war over time. Accordingly, the history of military thought has always been a research priority, and Lambert’s work on Corbett is only the most recent, important example produced by the department.9 In whatever form it takes, however, History is the key to understanding the strategic priorities that animate war. After all, the study of Strategy is, in effect, about intensively contextualising war in order to appreciate the range of influences on the formation of political aims, and History, almost by definition, is about context. Indeed, historians of war tend neither to produce merely factual or chronological narratives of the past nor aspire to the development of elaborate theoretical frameworks. Rather, it is by digging as deeply as possible into as much as can be known about an issue or an event and its context in the widest sense that a liberation of sorts can be achieved from the limited theoretical and strategic assumptions that characterise traditional military history and the often unspoken, misleading, linear models of development that are associated with it. To understand the modern study of the history of war, we have to look to its origins in the experience of war itself. The destructive world wars of the twentieth century led to a disciplinary shift in emphasis by some away from

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the events and the conduct of past wars toward an understanding of the nature of war, its dangers, and impact on society. We can see the evolution of the field very clearly in its approaches to early modern history, particularly the Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648 and the associated changes in warfare at the time.10 This is universally recognised as a uniquely damaging, protracted, and costly conflict which marked a key stage in the escalation of modern war. The reputation of the ‘all destructive fury’ by the marauding armies that ravaged central Europe, which for some time served as an explanation of sorts for Germany’s apparently damaged and delayed emergence as a modern, centralised state from 1871, changed somewhat after the First World War. Writing in 1938, C. V. Wedgwood concluded that the Thirty Years War had not just been an ‘unmitigated catastrophe’ but a precursor to the great conflict of her own time, in the sense that it had demonstrated the futility of war itself. The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.11

The lesson she drew that ‘war breeds only war’ feels directed as much at the leaders she blamed for the devastation she had witnessed herself as it did at those of the seventeenth century. Others, trying to explain and condemn the horrors of the First World War, took aim at the decision makers and leaders. The ‘lions led by donkeys’ interpretation, which still has a residual influence on scholarship today, described noble troops mindlessly led to their deaths in their thousands by incompetent generals. Not just a human tragedy, however, the war was also seen as the result of the breakdown of the international system; and the search for answers, in the hope that such a collapse of order could be prevented from ever recurring, gave rise to a different set of questions and even to new disciplinary forms. This includes the dedicated study of ‘International History’, which addresses the interactions between states and the forces that influence them, and the related, social scientific study of ‘International Relations’, concerned with theory and the fundamental assumptions governing the international environment. In addition to apportioning national blame, answers were also needed from historians about the war’s more fundamental, or longer-term origins, as well as its links to the outbreak of global war again in 1939. Whilst the big themes such as leadership, imperialism, ideology, industrialisation, or political or social change all imposed themselves, the fighting itself, the operational ebb and flow, and other means and methods could be left safely to specialist writers. In the process, something like a twin-tracked historical pathway opened. On one hand, military history in its familiar form, including all of the technological,

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material, and human stories, continued to be produced for a large and receptive popular audience, just as it is today. On the other, echoing developments within the historical discipline more generally, others sought a fuller, more-rounded understanding of society and to graduate from a fixation on the actions and decisions of individual states or leaders. Indeed, for many historians, power in the royal courts and on the battlefields of Europe had long given way to an interest in power within social and economic structures over long periods of time as well as in ‘history from below’. This is demonstrated by the influence of many prominent post-war Marxist historians,12 and perhaps especially by the Annales school of reformist historians in France with their interest in fundamental structures, long-durée trends, mentalités, and the variety of influences on civilisation, including economic and environmental ones. Fernand Braudel was one of the most prominent annalistes. He, too, had an intense, personal experience of the Second World War, having been taken prisoner by Nazi Germany. It was during this time that he worked on his ground-breaking book of 1949, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. A literary achievement as much as an academic one, Braudel famously wove together various perspectives to provide a deep, descriptive history of the region. Yet in this case, the direct experience of war did not lead to any particular interest in the conduct of past wars. Indeed, Braudel famously questioned the significance of historical events altogether which he described simply as ‘surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs’.13 Still, however, he described war as ‘a powerful and persistent undercurrent of human life’ that is always being reinvented. War, the begetter of all things, the creature of all things, the river with a thousand sources, the sea without a shore: begetter of all things except peace, so ardently longed for, so rarely attained. Every age constructs its own war, its own types of war.14

The study of war, therefore, did not simply sink beneath the tide of history. Indeed, it emerged boldly on the surface, invigorated and re-defined by Michael Roberts on whom the Second World War had a very direct, and different, influence. Roberts deftly applied warfare, including operations, technological developments, and tactical changes, to broader historical developments. Specifically, in a thesis first published in 1956, he claimed that in the century encompassing the Thirty Years War, 1560–1660, there had been a ‘Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe’, and this has directly or indirectly set the agenda for every historian of war since. Roberts identified a small number of innovations which optimised the use of firepower, primarily in the Swedish and Dutch armies. Linear formations that allowed volley fire,

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light field artillery, and greater movement were key features of this revolution in warfare. The implications, he argued, were enormous. The changes allowed for a more determined, offensive pursuit of decisive warfare which led inevitably to a general escalation and to greater violence. In an essay far more often referred to than actually read, Roberts summarises his main conclusion that, in this revolution, he had located not only the origins of the unparalleled violence of the Thirty Years War but the scale and brutality of the violence of his own time. By 1660 the modern art of war had come to birth. Mass armies, strict discipline, the control of the state, the submergence of the individual, had already arrived; the conjoint ascendancy of financial power and applied science was already established in all its malignity; the use of propaganda, psychological warfare, and terrorism as military weapons was already familiar to theorists, as well as to commanders in the field. The last remaining qualms as to the religious and ethical legitimacy of war seemed to have been stilled. The road lay open, broad and straight, to the abyss of the twentieth century.15

Without question, this has been the most influential thesis in military history, and much of its appeal is down to the obvious synergy between the effect of military change that Roberts described and the related idea of an international order based on newly sovereign, warring states that can trace its origins to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the end of the Thirty Years War. Despite the lack of evidence of any such change occurring in 1648, this is an idea that is almost universally held by social scientists of all stripes. Thus, the destructive, pitiless, as well as the innovative and transformational, picture of the Thirty Years War painted by Roberts reinforces this widely held assumption by social scientists about the birth out of chaos of the modern international order. In the decades since the appearance of the Military Revolution thesis, historians of warfare have challenged the impact of specific changes that Roberts identified and have argued amongst themselves about which alternative innovations from other times or places throughout history are the most truly revolutionary. But that debate does nothing to alter their willing servitude to instrumental, Realist interpretations of the rise of the modern Westphalian world order based on power.16 For historians of war, the Military Revolution thesis offered an open path into the heart of mainstream historical debate. The effect, however, was that, rather than freeing them from set theoretical models, it bound them to one, and to a sociological interest in the past.17 Studies of the conduct of early modern war have since then mostly been deployed to develop the Weberian foundations of Roberts’ thesis and to explore the effects of the escalation of war on the modern state. The increased scale of war had not just led to greater lethality and decisiveness, Roberts claimed, but to pressure on states which forced them

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to improve their organisational structures and tax-raising capacities. As the scale and cost of war grew, so important did financial resilience become that wars were as much protracted contests between the relative capacity of states to provide the logistical and financial support needed to keep armies in the field as they were about operational successes themselves. The logical extension was an intensification of competition and the expansion of European imperial power overseas and a globalisation of warfare born of this unquenchable thirst for resources. Gratefully, then, historians of war largely dedicated themselves to the study of institutional reactions to financial and material pressures of war and the state’s capacity to adapt and to compete. In this respect, the contribution of naval history, in particular, has been especially valuable, a traditional strength in the Department of War Studies and the Laughton Naval History Unit. With the study of the success achieved by states that exploited the potential of the sea, the growing pressures of war have seemed less and less to have led to centralised, continental monarchies, as implied by Roberts, and more to what has been called the fiscal-military state as embodied, mostly, by eighteenth-century Britain. For this, navies were the key. Naval strength allowed smaller powers to emerge with a global, commercial reach and to influence, without bearing the full brunt of, major wars. Unlike armies, navies require both an enormous political and financial commitment by the state in the industrial, technological, and logistical infrastructure needed and a more co-operative alignment of policy with the interests of the merchants and seafarers and other monied elites of a nation. In many ways, therefore, it is such ‘seapower states’ which best embody modernity.18 The emphasis on the material and financial foundations of war has been just as revealing for later periods. Indeed, the truly global, industrial wars of the twentieth century were the result of intense imperial rivalries for power and resources, to the point that ‘total war’ was largely a war of industry itself and the relative capacity of states to direct their economies to the production of the war materials and supply issues that made the fighting possible. Work by Joseph A. Maiolo and others shows that material pressures played out in arms races, for example, that characterised the nature of individual states and of the international system itself.19 The same emphasis led to a wider interest in the impact of war on society more generally which has largely come to define the field. Examining war’s widest possible ramifications was all part of what Michael Howard encouraged, giving rise to what is sometimes referred to as the ‘war and society’ approach to history. Yet from the 1960s, there was an effort to go further which, arguably, shows up the limits of this approach. A ‘new military history’ was conceived which explored the whole array of effects of war and employed psychology, literature, memory, gender, and other perspectives.20 John Keegan’s 1976 work The Face of Battle, as an exemplar, explored the

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effect of war on the individual through the ages and shed important light on combat motivation and group cohesion. Yet as work on the history of war has grown in sophistication, subject reach, and importance, the more it is said by some to have turned its back on the core, defining aspect of war: the violence and fighting itself. Howard likens the trend metaphorically to an ‘historiographical flight to the suburbs’ by which the inhabitants of a modern city leave its centre uninhabited or lifeless.21 Thus, the wider historians have cast their nets to write about the impact of war, the more isolated those who study the fighting itself have come to feel. After all, to a large extent the identity of the ‘new military history’ is negative; to be ‘new’ is to be seen as not ‘traditional’. Yet it is not just this, or the charge that important details and perspectives are missed in this way, that is dangerous. The problem is that historians of war, new or old, have not done enough to challenge the conceptual foundations of the field such as those that have supported the Military Revolution thesis. The Military Revolution has been the subject of debate for decades and it has been challenged countless times on the basis of timing, geography, effect, and on the specific tactical and technological innovations that should be credited.22 What is remarkable, and what needs to be addressed, however, is that somehow the conceptual logic of the thesis remains mostly untouched and, indeed, often gets reinforced. The assumption that innovation in the means available to fight inevitably leads to escalation and modernisation on a European model continues to dominate. There has been very little work on changing motivations and purposes in war or on the mutual influences between military actions and the broader social, economic, cultural, and intellectual context of war.23 In other words, there is a general neglect of how changes in society can, in turn, affect the conduct of war. These reciprocal influences are necessary in order to come to the fullest possible understanding of war and of society. Yet it can often feel as if the one-directional approach takes wars themselves as incidental to their impact. This stands in contrast to much recent work in ‘Imperial History’ from which the History of War can take inspiration. The work of Lauren Benton and many others explores all of the complex legal ambiguities, compromises, and contradictions of early empires and, in the process, annihilates simple, traditional narratives of European conquest of the globe.24 Within War Studies there has been a lot of work on the operational level of war, and a current generation of historians such as William Philpott are very fruitfully revisiting some of the operational challenges faced, for example, in the First World War. Far from the turgid leadership and endless, unthinking sacrifices often portrayed in older scholarship, they are finding not just unique national military cultures but a general and remarkable adaptability and innovation.25 There were successes as well as tragedies in the war, and the transformations by militaries and their ability to rise to the most extraordinary and rapidly changing pressures are at least as remarkable as those that took

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place on the home fronts. Paradoxically, then, in order to complete the transformation from ‘traditional military history’, the History of War must embrace some of the subjects of interest to it. Operations, weapons, personal decisions, and other practical aspects of fighting are all part of the key, defining aspect of war, and it must be remembered that this fighting is not just a force that acts on society. It is also a product of society and indeed of society when it is arguably at its most intense and generative. Any renewed focus on fighting must be combined, therefore, with an effort to graduate beyond the conceptual stranglehold of simple modernisation theories or the often unspoken Realist assumptions that are so prevalent. This can be a difficult balance to strike, but there are a number of ways to broaden the reach of the History of War in the future. Above all, war needs to be understood as a cultural activity. To fully understand its impact and its evolution, we need to understand the motivation for conducting it, its perceived purpose, and its social context in any given time or place. The standards to be applied, therefore, are not universal, and among other things this means that a genuinely global perspective is needed. There have been calls for the internationalisation of History for many years, and there have been countless studies of the experience of war outside of Europe.26 Yet, there is a fundamental, conceptual problem that limits progress down the path of countering the charge of Eurocentrism. In his 2019 work, Empires of the Weak, the political scientist, J. C. Sharman, set out to end Eurocentrism within global imperial history altogether by setting his sights squarely at discrediting the Military Revolution thesis which he holds largely accountable for the myth of a ‘rise of the west’ in early modern history.27 He discusses the many ways in which non-Europeans held the military upper hand in the past and shows that European empires depended upon non-Europeans to sustain any sort of presence overseas at all. This is valuable, of course, but it is not new. Historians have long recognised the active, effective role of people globally in their own histories. As one example among many, P. J. Marshall, who worked at King’s until the early 1990s, insisted upon the agency of local actors in India in the eighteenth century and presented the British as just one participant among many in an Indian play.28 Though it could be countered that, in this way, he was simply putting British achievements into even sharper relief, there has been a lot of work since, in both War Studies and the History Department at King’s (and elsewhere), that has gone further in exploring the perspective of the sub-continent and which has been much more uncompromising about the damaging effect of Western imperialism as a result.29 What is needed are similarly sympathetic studies of violence, and of warfare, adopting genuinely non-European perspectives and standards and the embrace of a greater diversity of voices in what has been hitherto a largely white, male field.30

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By choosing to focus so directly on the weakness of the Military Revolution thesis itself, Sharman not only misses any such opportunity to contextualise extra-European warfare, but he exaggerates the canonical status of the thesis after decades of debate by historians. Rare would be the historian of war today who believes that the specific innovations originally said to have appeared on the battlefields of Europe between 1560 and 1660 were uniquely responsible for the development of modern European war and the international state system, rarer still those who believe they led to European military domination of the globe, an effect that Michael Roberts made no mention of in his original thesis. Thus, the danger is less the thesis itself, which in many ways has long been discredited, but in the basic assumption behind it of a universal drive for conquest on a European model. It is this assumption that allowed Geoffrey Parker in his influential expansion of the original thesis in 1988 to extend the technological and material determinism behind the Military Revolution to a more generalised description of European military superiority globally.31 Sharman’s approach is typical of that of many historians, even the most openly sympathetic to the experience of the rest of the world, who still apply the standards of European success. From their work we learn that other societies in the past were variously good at adjusting to European innovations or slow to do so. On occasion, they are even shown to have been ahead of the curve.32 Yet crediting the non-European world with competing with Europeans at their game does nothing to challenge the most damaging and entrenched assumptions. All too rare and isolated are sensitive studies of other military cultures, too frequent the inadvertent reinforcement of unhelpful ideas like the myth of Westphalia or the ‘rise of the west’. To globalise requires more than just increased coverage, therefore. It means taking every opportunity to address our most cherished assumptions about the past. This includes taking seriously the charge levelled by Tarak Barkawi and Shane Brighton that we have neglected important ontological and epistemological questions about war. Yet the emphasis on Strategy that has coloured so much work within War Studies does not just mean the study of the best ways of winning wars in the past, as they seem to imply. It is to contextualise past wars and to explore the reasons they started, the way they were fought, and the means chosen to do it, all as reflections of culturally conditioned political aims. This seems the best way to liberate the History of War from the limitations of some traditional military history and to embrace Michael Howard’s original vision for War Studies by contributing in a mutually beneficial way to an invigorated discipline of History and to the range of other disciplinary approaches within War Studies.

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NOTES 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Michael Howard, Captain Professor: The Memoirs of Sir Michael Howard (London: Continuum, 2006). Michael Howard, ‘Military History and the History of War,’ in Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (eds.), Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.13. John J. Miller, ‘Sounding Taps: Why Military History Is Being Retired,’ National Review (2006). Though see the persuasive, opposite claim in Tarak Barkawi and Shane Brighton, ‘Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge and Critique,’ International Political Sociology 5, 2 (2011), pp.126‒143. Andrew Lambert, The British Way of War: Julian Corbett and the Battle for a National Strategy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment. The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974). Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz (London: Pimlico, 2002); Jan Willem Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s “On War”: Problems of Text and Translation,’ in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds.), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp.57‒73. Brian Bond, Liddell Hart: A Study of His Military Thought (London: Cassell, 1977); Brian Holden Reid, J.F.C. Fuller: Military Thinker (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987). See the excellent work by Peter H. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War (London: Allen Lane, 2009). C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (London: J. Cape, 1938), pp.525‒526. Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians (Washington DC: John Hunt, 2022). Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, [Volumes 1 & 2] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), Vol.1, p.21. Ibid., Vol. 2, pp.836‒91. Michael Roberts, Essays in Swedish History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), p.225. Alan James, ‘Rethinking the Peace of Westphalia: Toward a Theory of Early-Modern Warfare,’ in Jonathan Davies (ed.), Aspects of Violence in Renaissance Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp.96‒112. Barkawi and Brighton, ‘Powers of War,’ p.131. Andrew Lambert, Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). Joseph A. Maiolo, Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931‒1941 (New York: Basic Books, 2010); David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920‒1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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20. Joanna Bourke, ‘New Military History,’ in Matthew Hughes and William J. Philpott (eds.), Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), p.258. 21. Howard, ‘Military History and the History of War,’ p.17. 22. There have been countless summaries of the debate since, but a standard collection of early writings is in Clifford J. Rogers (ed.), The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder: Westview, 1995). 23. See a rare attempt to reconsider motivation in Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden’s Intervention in the Thirty Years’ War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 24. Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400‒1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 25. William Philpott and Jonathan Boff, ‘Transforming War, 1914‒1918,’ British Journal of Military History, 5, 2 (2019), pp.1‒18. 26. Jeremy Black, Rethinking Military History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004). 27. J. C. Sharman, Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). 28. P. J. Marshall, ‘The British in Asia: Trade to Dominion, 1720‒1765,’ in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume 2, The Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp.487‒507. 29. Mark Condos, The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jon E. Wilson, India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire (London: Simon & Schuster, 2016). 30. As just two examples of this growing literature, see Joanna Waley-Cohen, The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006); D. E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Boulder: Westview Press, 2011). 31. Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution. Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500‒1800 (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 32. See e.g. Tonio Andrade, The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation and the Rise of the West in World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

5. Intelligence and international security Huw Dylan and David Easter Intelligence has always been a part of war, but it has not always been a part of War Studies.1 There were several reasons for this. Many scholars of war did not consider intelligence a particularly significant nor a particularly interesting field, reflecting, perhaps, the sentiment of Carl von Clausewitz, and his foundational text On War, where his discussion of intelligence is largely pejorative.2 But the absence was also related to access. In the UK, it reflected the traditional absence of any real and meaningful discussion of intelligence in the political sphere, and a linked determination to retain material related to secret intelligence from the archival record. Michael Howard noted in 1985, ‘so far as official government policy is concerned, the British security and intelligence services do not exist. Enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought by the storks.’3 For much of the twentieth century the British discussion of intelligence was largely confined to press reportage of scandals, leaks, autobiographies, and what has been labelled the ‘airport bookstore’ genre of reportage. Internationally, too, this was the norm. Even in the US, where the discussion of secret intelligence was in some respects more open, the openness was relative, not absolute. Unlike its secretive British counterpart, the American foreign intelligence service, CIA, was established publicly, following a robust Congressional debate, and by statute, the National Security Act of 1947. And Sherman Kent, veteran of the US’s wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and long-time head of the CIA’s strategic assessment office, the Office of National Estimates (ONE), published his book Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy in 1949, decades before any comparable British publication. But, much like the UK, the US also jealously nurtured the secrecy surrounding its other intelligence agencies – the long-running joke was that the un-abbreviated name of the US’s code-breaking organisation, the NSA, was No Such Agency. As in the UK, secrecy limited the scope for academic study or informed public discussion. This has now changed. Intelligence is an integral, rapidly developing and diversifying part of War Studies. In keeping with the other chapters in this volume, this essay offers an outline of the topic, identifies gaps, and suggests an agenda for future research. Doing so for intelligence in War Studies remains problematic. Secrecy is at the heart of 65

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intelligence. We are concerned with secretive organisations, engaged in secret work, generating secret information. We are concerned with governments who can, and do, control access to the overwhelming majority of data about these organisations and their work, and which largely chose what to release to the historian and when – and, of course, what not to release.4 This poses something of a Rumsfeldian problem for researchers and anyone penning a survey of gaps and research agendas, some lacunae are apparent but we may be unaware of others: we have known-knowns, known-unknowns, and unknown-unknowns.5 Nevertheless, there is room for optimism. Secrecy was never absolute. And today there can be little doubt that the veil has been lifted somewhat, particularly so regarding Western intelligence services. Other services are tentatively beginning to follow in the same direction, particularly those in Eastern Europe. Many other services remain stubbornly opaque and this creates an imbalance in our understanding of intelligence. It is tilted towards the more open services of the Anglosphere, with some notable exceptions. And, even within this category, it is also tilted towards certain elements of the intelligence world. First, there is an emphasis on the more process-related matters of intelligence, organisational structures, analytical systems, organograms, and the like. Second, there remains a certain preponderance for studies of the ‘louder’ side of intelligence work, in particular paramilitary and subversive covert operations, although this is slowly changing. Several factors have led to changed official attitudes towards secrecy in many states, and the consequent enabling of robust academic study of intelligence. (Although we should not be so naïve as to consider that the drift towards greater openness is in any way irreversible.)6 Notable shifts include developments in the legislative and cultural environment. In the UK, for example, the intelligence and security services were brought out of the cold and placed on a legislative footing, starting with the 1989 Security Service Act, which ended the always implausible notion that real public discussion of the agencies could be avoided because they did not ‘officially’ exist. Laws and scrutiny begat reports, a public record, and authoritative public sources. And they have only proliferated since 1994.7 These added to the material already public as the result of a cultural and political shift visible in the UK. A shift in wider society away from deference to government assurances that there were some things that could not be talked about; and an evolution, reflecting social change, in successive governments from the policy of blanket denial visible in the post-war period to a more engaging and open one, that of managed release.8 The most obvious result of this policy was the multi-volume official history of British intelligence in the Second World War. But it also opened the door to a flood of memoirs and personal perspectives on intelligence during that conflict, way beyond what had officially been sanctioned previously. In 1993, the cultural shift was reflected in the ‘Open Government initiative’ driven by

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William Waldegrave, and the policy of allowing select intelligence papers to be released into the archives in accordance with the 30-year rule.9 Today the momentum of these changes leaves historians of British intelligence in a situation unimaginable when the Department of War Studies was founded in 1962. Abundant (though limited) primary source material is available in the National Archives at Kew; the agencies have offered perspectives on their own histories by publishing weighty authorised histories; and the public conversation concerning intelligence has matured.10 This public conversation has both backward- and forward-looking perspectives. Reports into controversies and failures such as the myriad Iraq enquiries or the ISC investigations into intelligence and terrorist attacks in the UK have offered unprecedented insights into the contemporary working of the secret world.11 And the conversation concerning the future of British intelligence, particularly, but not only, in the digital realm, that preceded the Investigatory Powers Act was conducted, amongst others, by a significant number of government departments, former practitioners, think tanks, and advocacy groups, generating between them a torrent of reports, insights, and knowledge into contemporary intelligence affairs.12 Secrecy is alive and well, but there is a healthy tug on its veil. These British trends followed in the footsteps of the United States. There the conversation about intelligence has historically had more of a public flavour, going back to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent need to establish a peacetime intelligence structure.13 But, like in the UK, certain social, political, and legal factors have driven intelligence further out of the shadows. Notable here, of course, was the deterioration of the American public’s faith in the government, driven partly by the vestiges of the cultural shifts of the swinging sixties, and reinforced by the disillusion with the Vietnam War, the clear break of faith with authority that followed the leaking of The Pentagon Papers, and then the revelations of 1974 and the ‘year of intelligence’. The subsequent ‘season of inquiry’, with a series of Congressional investigations and reports, most notably the report of The Church Committee, laid bare before the global public many of the CIA, NSA, and FBI’s deeds and misdeeds. The revelations of the swashbuckling operations conducted by the CIA during its ‘golden era’, notably the infamous assassination operations, and – far more controversially at the time – the reports of its engagement in domestic intelligence and surveillance activities in breach of its charter, led to a tightening of the leash on US intelligence, and a limit on the President’s ability to do more or less as they wished with the agencies.14 Trust, now, had to be verified, so Congress created oversight panels, well-resourced and with significant authority to compel documents and people, and to publish reports. Intelligence became a matter of public interest, not just curiosity. Since then, the resources available to scholars of US intelligence have grown to a point where they outstrip any other intelligence community.

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Adding to the weight of material published by the oversight committees is the material housed in various US archives. Scholars of British and other friendly intelligence services have long since undertaken the pilgrimage to various US repositories, such as the National Archive at College Park or the archipelago of Presidential libraries, to take advantage of the more liberal declassification regime and learn about their home state’s intelligence agencies. And, to their credit, elements of the US intelligence machinery have embraced the openness agenda to a far greater degree than most other intelligence communities. Historians of the CIA now have a vast number of documents at their disposal, available online through the Agency’s ‘Electronic Reading Room’. These include the Agency’s in-house journal Studies in Intelligence and many of the agency’s internally compiled histories, such as significant compilations on the Vietnam War, the Agency’s reports on the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and the ‘take’ from the Abbottabad raid on Osama bin-Laden’s lair.15 The NSA, although not quite as forthcoming, is remarkably so by global standards too, releasing a significant amount of material.16 Former US intelligence officers routinely publish their memoirs. Others engage in associations, think tanks, and commentary. The Freedom of Information Act has been ably utilised by a variety of foundations and initiative to extract vast amounts of documents from the federal government.17 Together, and along with many others, they have pushed the boundaries of our knowledge of US intelligence and government far further than would have otherwise been the case. Studies of US intelligence tend to overshadow those concerning most other countries, but that is to an extent a reflection of the openness of the US system. Beyond the US, the UK and their 5-eyes partners, the culture of openness varies. Many countries, particularly in Europe, are moving in a positive direction in terms of opening archives and supporting a more public debate about intelligence. This is enabling more academic study, and future generations of War Studies students will enjoy a more global perspective on intelligence than previous ones. Official histories, or authorised releases are becoming less of a rarity. Complementing the existing mass of Anglocentric material is a significant range of impressive international intelligence history.18 And the mass of official and more traditional archive-based academic writing is consistently being supplemented by a body of journalism and work on harder-to-research states.19 But some barriers are more difficult to overcome than others. This applies particularly to two major intelligence powers, namely China and Russia. Despite many Western governments and private security companies being increasingly willing to highlight Chinese intelligence operations, especially those concerned with economic espionage, the study of Chinese intelligence lags many other intelligence powers. A body of work is accruing and leaks and investigations have revealed many aspects of China’s domestic intelligence

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and surveillance state, particularly with reference to Xinjiang.20 Yet, the development in our understanding of Chinese intelligence, past and present, is limited. Russia, and the USSR before it, has been a staple of intelligence studies and War Studies for decades. The fascination with Soviet intelligence was born out of a variety of factors, not least the revelations of its remarkable success in penetrating the governments, security bureaucracies, and, indeed, societies of its Cold War adversaries. Some of their agents and spectacular coups remain household names and still feature in academic studies. But the fascination with Soviet intelligence, too, grew out of the knowledge of the violence and oppression perpetrated by the organs of Soviet state security, at home and abroad. The fear, terror and absurdity of it all was captured, with immense moral courage, by dissidents such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn21 and reinforced time and again by external observers.22 These, and others, illustrated the centrality of the intelligence apparatus to the Soviet system, how it was, in effect, a paranoid counterintelligence state. But knowledge of the Soviet system, and to an extent the Russian one that followed, was always conditioned by the prerogative of the authoritarian state not to have to discuss matters that it did not wish to engage with, not to release documents or have accountability or transparent legal mechanisms. This left the study of Soviet intelligence largely looking in from the outside, reliant on extrapolating tradecraft from busted operations or impossible-to-hide successes (like many of their assassinations), or dependent on the testimony of exiles or defectors.23 This changed somewhat following the collapse of the Soviet empire, if only briefly. Archives opened and were quickly exploited by scholars. Former officers were given official blessing to work with Western journalists; the Russian intelligence services produced their own series of official histories. And, of course, there were the leaks. Notably the remarkable case of the Mitrokhin Archive, a cache of documents from the secret archives of Soviet intelligence, compiled and hidden over years by disillusioned KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin.24 Today, students of intelligence in War Studies have at their disposal a range of impressive studies of Soviet intelligence and the Cold War. But the terrain remains treacherous; even before its invasion of Ukraine, Russian archives remained far more difficult to access than comparable Western ones; the relative openness of the 1990s has been reversed; and the services are jealously secretive. Study of contemporary Russian operations remains strong, of course, and much has been published on their operations and failures prior to invading Ukraine in 2022. Much like the Cold War, progress is being made by journalists, scholars, dissidents and activists who exploit, analyse, and expose what they can.25 Similarly, the Cold War pattern of Western governments exposing operations when it suits them has continued (and, of course, Russia frequently returns the favour).26 But, unlike during the Cold War, the technological environment favours a greater degree of open-

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ness. Now, with the proliferation of online researchers, and the sheer volume of daily interactions that are, one way or another, databased or otherwise recorded, Russian operations have been exposed and more open to scrutiny more quickly than ever before. The remarkable speed at which the investigative group Bellingcat unravelled the GRU’s attempted assassination of former officer Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, in 2016, or exposed the Kremlin’s hand in the attempted assassination of Alexei Navalny, are but two examples of this evolving trend that renders a stubbornly opaque intelligence community slightly less so.27 It is not only the Russian and Chinese intelligence services who have been exposed online. Britain, the US, South Africa, Libya, and Israel have seen their secrets leak – indeed, all intelligence agencies today face risks of exposure owing to the interconnectedness and portability of digital technology and records. Two risks are worth noting, as they have particular relevance to students of intelligence. One concerns the difficulty of completely hiding one’s methods in any digital operation. Code, once deployed for intelligence or disruption operations, can be lost to the wild. Adversaries or third parties can scour systems to identify problems. They can observe, trace, and even adopt, repurpose, and redeploy code. This makes deploying a carefully honed digital exploit or weapon an inherently risky business for a publicity-shy or blowback-averse agency.28 Second, it has added a new dimension to the age-old practices of whistleblowing and espionage. The portability and transmissibility of digital data means that today leaking, exposure by journalists, activists, online security firms and their ilk, has left all intelligence communities more vulnerable to mass-breaches than ever before. Vast amounts of data can be extracted from servers remotely; leakers have smuggled out huge collections on CDs or tiny drives. Other supposedly secure systems have been hacked. The fallout, caches of documents given catchy names, like Vault 7, are visible to a curious global public on the open web; sites like Wikileaks, the Intercept, and Cryptome, among others, offer the public unprecedented insights into the recent and ongoing operations and politics of many intelligence agencies. This has generated controversies, but also sparked debate and scholarship. And there is no indication that the tide of digital leaks and insights will ebb soon. Edward Snowden still casts a shadow over intelligence studies. In short, the planned and forced erosion of secrecy has allowed intelligence studies, as a part of War Studies, to bloom. The field is growing; it is diversifying, embracing new agendas; it is globalising. Its scope and scale are beyond what can be covered adequately in a short chapter. But a number of observations are possible. First, there is an abundance of literature on covert action. These are more difficult for states to hide, as they involve generating an effect. The investigations today build upon a long tradition of exposure and analysis, going back to the Second World War’s Special Operations Executive or Office

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of Strategic Services.29 Scholars have unpicked covert action, east and west, violent and psychological, to illustrate the value policy-makers see in employing intelligence agencies to secretly influence adversaries.30 Their work contributes to an ongoing and often fraught public debate concerning the role of intelligence agencies in major events, most notably the Russian intervention in the 2016 US election. The contours of this operation have been investigated by several US official bodies, and the ensuing reports have offered fresh insights into the age-old practice of election interference, this time in the digital age.31 Covert action, deception, and disruption may be staples of the intelligence studies genre, but they are significant and worthy of continued study.32 Intelligence in War Studies has moved far beyond this traditional area of investigation. Students of intelligence now have many more places to start than their predecessors. Surveys, handbooks, and textbooks, written by academic and practitioners, abound, supplementing the late Michael Herman’s ground-breaking Intelligence Power in Peace and War, or Department of War Studies Professor, Sir David Omand’s Securing the State.33 These volumes provide a platform to ongoing debates around intelligence practice, process, and history. These debates are frequently found in the specialist intelligence journals, like Intelligence and National Security. The key concepts of intelligence are routinely being challenged; questions of how we understand intelligence and how should we understand intelligence are frequent topics, fed by new revelations and better dialogue between practitioners and scholars. Our understanding of intelligence collection is also growing. We are fed by a stream of historical insights and contemporary case studies into the craft of espionage, both human and technical, against state and non-state actors alike. These reveal the consistent and often remarkable innovation in the business of espionage, as well as the continuity of timeless motivations for spying – greed, sex, ideology – though, as discussed below, huge gaps remain, particularly concerning signals intelligence and cryptography.34 How intelligence agencies assess the take from these operations is a perennial topic in the literature, fed frequently by the drive to understand failure and to avoid it in the future. Our insights into many relevant issues – including, but not limited to, organisational efficiency, psychological barriers, the consumer–producer relationship, politicisation and corruption, denial and deception – have multiplied, fed by investigations into myriad events. Frequent in these discussions is the observation that intelligence did exist that might have helped prevent the attack, but that it was not shared with the relevant party, that success or failure hung on the matter of dissemination. Disseminating intelligence, sharing secrets, is a more limited field of study, albeit a growing one.35 In particular, the literature on international liaison is developing rapidly, revealing that the most secretive government organisations are also some of the most internationally networked. Politicians and profes-

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sionals have consistently underlined the value of these networks, particularly in countering international terrorism, and other border-crossing phenomena.36 Such liaisons occur because parties value them.37 Intelligence is currency, power, and, as such, is political. Some of our most significant insights into intelligence concern the links between intelligence and decision-makers, how this relationship can be effective, and how it can be corrupted.38 The state has significant capability, and, in cases, powers to intrude into the lives of its citizens, establishing ethical guidelines for doing so is important work for scholars, practitioners, and politicians alike.

5.1

DEVELOPING THE DISCIPLINE: GAPS AND OPPORTUNITIES

The future of intelligence in War Studies is being written by a growing band of students, researchers within and outside the academy, and a growing number of collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives. It is particularly welcome to see more emphasis being placed on researching the social history of intelligence, the people of intelligence, and how issues like gender, popular perception, and class have factored into the work and development of secret services.39 The field has developed considerably over the past generation and will continue to evolve through embracing new ideas and exploiting fresh raw materials. The precise contours of this development are difficult to chart. As mentioned, intelligence studies is peculiarly vulnerable to interference and obfuscation by interested parties. It is instructive to consider how remarkable it was that the Ultra secret remained broadly contained for as long as it did, or how a generation of Cold War international history more or less disregarded the role of intelligence in great power decision-making in war and peace. Nevertheless, we can underline several areas where our knowledge is limited and requires developing. First, global perspectives. The literature on intelligence remains stubbornly Anglocentric. The impact is that we know much more about the history and nature of a limited number of intelligence agencies, particularly the US and UK, than most of their global counterparts. This, in turn, conditions our understanding of more abstract issues, such as the causes and remedies to failure. The foundation for a more global understanding is being laid. But this requires more work, particularly on the harder-to-research agencies of the autocratic world. The relevance of relatively academically obscure services to major global events has been underlined time and again over the past decades. One need only examine the role of Pakistan’s ISI in Afghanistan.40 Developing our understanding of intelligence from a global perspective is important both academically and in policy terms, and the inclusion of new voices and initiatives will be both welcomed and necessary.

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Second is sigint. The writing on intelligence over the decades has leaned towards a bias on organisational, humint and covert action-related issues. This is understandable; these operations have been easier to research. Historically, however, it is sigint agencies that have consumed the lion’s share of states’ investment in intelligence and delivered the bulk of the data they disseminate. The story of the Ultra secret, and its clear value to allied warfighting efforts during the Second World War is testament to this. But the historiographical focus on Ultra also underlines our relatively limited understanding of the utility and impact of sigint in the Cold War and beyond. Certain scholars have made significant strides, and certain insights have been provided by various agencies, like the NSA and GCHQ.41 But the value of cryptographic secrets to governments the world over makes them extremely reluctant to give up anything more than they must. There are, doubtless, many episodes that enterprising researchers will bring to light, as they recently did with the Crypto AG revelations.42 It is probably the tip of an iceberg. Echoing the first point above, the extent of sigint agencies’ penetration into target systems, the ongoing technical and scientific developments, particularly in AI, along with the long and contemporary history of sigint beyond the Anglosphere, constitutes an immense body of uncharted water, beyond the odd islet visible through leaks or uncovered harder-to-hide digital operations. Future scholars of intelligence in War Studies will pursue this matter doggedly. Third is intelligence and policy. Intelligence services, like all services, serve customers, generally political and military officials (although, increasingly, the public is also being considered a key customer, particularly regarding digital threats). The interaction between customers and intelligence officials has long since been recognised as a key point of success or failure in the system.43 If the relationship is dysfunctional there is a risk that much of the hard work of espionage and assessment will be wasted or politicised, and its value depleted. But, beyond several major studies, there is much still to be explored concerning the impact intelligence has on policy. This is fundamentally important. It is difficult to consider the 2003 Iraq war without examining the relationship between Prime Minister Blair, President Bush and their intelligence services. The assessments that policy makers in the US and other NATO capitals received, over the years, concerning the resilience of the Afghan security forces following the withdrawal of US will likely provide interesting reading for inquiries and scholars. But the impact of intelligence on policy extends beyond these matters. Two areas, particularly, are worthy of dedicated and sustained research. One is intelligence and diplomacy. How has intelligence (on friends as well as rivals) been used to support policy-makers’ diplomatic gambits over the years? Revelations concerning the UK spying on members of the UN prior to the Iraq war, or the US listening to the then German Chancellor, and close ally, Angela Merkel’s communications, suggest that few targets have

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been untouchable. Another, linked, issue is that of economic espionage, and its impact on state procurement policy, industrial strategy, and research and development.44 The history of economic intelligence illustrates its value for strategic planning and economic development. And as many recent revelations concerning contemporary digital and conventional espionage, particularly but by no means exclusively from China, illustrate, states see significant benefits in stealing economic secrets.45 Intelligence is woven through myriad elements of statecraft. Unpicking its impact remains a worthy task. Intelligence agencies retain an ability to surprise us. Stealing secrets involves both exploiting the oldest human instincts and vices, and extreme creativity and guile. Revelations, leaks, confessions, and investigations will continue to present us with insights into the uses and limits of intelligence, or the scope and scale of operations. The three areas set out above will develop, joined by what are currently ‘unknown-unknowns’. The discipline will grow and the significance of intelligence is unlikely to diminish. Intelligence agencies will need to develop their skills and techniques. Society will need to maintain a careful watch on the evolving powers of intelligence agencies and how these are regulated and overseen to ensure that it adheres to democratic values. The dark arts of espionage will remain a fascinating and vital element of War Studies.

NOTES 1.

Nor, indeed, of the related fields of international history and international relations. 2. See David Kahn, ‘Clausewitz and Intelligence’, Journal of Strategic Studies 9, 2‒3 (1986), pp.117‒126. Christopher Andrew, ‘Intelligence, International Relations, and Under-theorisation’, 3. Intelligence and National Security, 19, 2 (2004), p.171. See e.g. Christopher Moran, Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain 4. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). The late Donald Rumsfeld was much derided for this statement, wrongly in our 5. estimation, as the statement is perfectly clear and evidently true. 6. See e.g. the Digital National Security Archive’s comment on the matter of ‘Re-classification’ in the US, available at: https://​nsarchive2​.gwu​.edu/​NSAEBB/​ NSAEBB179/​index​.htm. 7. The ISC publishes Annual and Special reports, available at: https://​ isc​ .independent​.gov​.uk/​publications/​. 8. Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001). 9. Richard J. Aldrich, ‘The Waldegrave Initiative and Secret Service Archives: New Materials and New Policies’, Intelligence and National Security, 10, 1 (1995), pp.192‒197. 10. See, for example, Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm (London: Allen Lane, 2009), or Keith Jeffrey, MI6: The Official History of the Secret Intelligence

Intelligence and international security

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

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Service (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), or Michael S. Goodman, The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee: Volume I. From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis (London: Routledge, 2014). See also the National Archives guide to intelligence, available at: https://​www​ .nationalarchives​.gov​.uk/​help​-with​-your​-research/​research​-guides/​intelligence​ -and​-security​-services/​. Many are available on the Intelligence and Security Committee website, available at: https://​isc​.independent​.gov​.uk/​publications/​. See, for instance, RUSI’s report ‘A Democratic Licence to Operate’, available at: https://​rusi​.org/​explore​-our​-research/​projects/​independent​-surveillance​-review. This is discussed in several places, including Huw Dylan, David Gioe and Michael S. Goodman, The CIA and Pursuit of Security (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021). The reports of the Church Committee are available at: https://​www​.aarclibrary​ .org/​publib/​contents/​church/​contents​_church​_reports​.htm. The Electronic Reading Room is available at: https://​www​.cia​.gov/​readingroom/​ home. Many NSA materials are available at: https://​www​.nsa​.gov/​news​-features/​ declassified​-documents/​. The Digital National Security Archive is available at: https://​nsarchive​.gwu​.edu/​, and the Cold War International History Project at: https://​www​.wilsoncenter​.org/​ program/​cold​-war​-international​-history​-project. Tony Insall, Secret Alliances: Special Operations and Intelligence in Norway, 1940‒1945 (London: Biteback, 2019); Aviva Guttmann, ‘Turning Oil into Blood: Western Intelligence, Libyan Covert Actions, and Palestinian Terrorism (1973‒74)’, Journal for Strategic Studies (2021), pp.993‒1020. See e.g. Daniela Richterova’s publications at: https://​kclpure​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​portal/​daniela​.richterova​ .html, Ahron Bregman’s publications at: https://​kclpure​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​portal/​ahron​ .bregman​.html, and Uri Bar-Joseph’s publications at: https://​sites​.google​.com/​ hevra​.haifa​.ac​.il/​barjo/​. Philip J. Davies and Kristian C. Gustavson (eds.), Intelligence Elsewhere: Spies and Espionage Outside the Anglosphere, (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2013); Robert Dover, Michael Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand (eds.), Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015); The AFIO’s Guide to the Study of Intelligence is available at: https://​www​.afio​.com/​ publications/​Guide/​index​.html​?page​=​1. Nicholas Efitimiades, Chinese Intelligence Operations (Tokyo: Toppan, 1994); Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil, Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019). The Xinjiang studies include Amnesty International’s work, available here: https://​www​.amnesty​.org/​en/​ latest/​press​-release/​2021/​06/​china​-draconian​-repression​-of​-muslims​-in​-xinjiang​ -amounts​-to​-crimes​-against​-humanity/​; Human Rights Watch: https://​www​.hrw​ .org/​news/​2019/​08/​16/​data​-leviathan​-chinas​-burgeoning​-surveillance​-state; and the work of several media outlets, including the New York Times e.g. https://​ www​.nytimes​.com/​2019/​05/​22/​world/​asia/​china​-surveillance​-xinjiang​.html. There are several editions available. For example, an abridged version is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (London: Harvill Press, 2003). Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (London: Bodley Head, 2018); Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

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(London: Penguin, 2004); Amy Knight, Putin’s Killers: The Kremlin and the Art of Political Assassination (London: Biteback, 2019). See e.g. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990). Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Penguin, 2015). See the work of Mark Galeotii, for example, available at: https://​www​.ucl​.ac​.uk/​ ssees/​prof​-mark​-galeotti. The FBI exposed much of the Ghost Stories investigation, see: https://​www​.fbi​ .gov/​news/​stories/​operation​-ghost​-stories​-inside​-the​-russian​-spy​-case. See Bellingcat’s investigations at https://​www​.bellingcat​.com/​. Stuxnet is the obvious example; see, for instance: https://​www​.mcafee​.com/​ enterprise/​en​-gb/​security​-awareness/​ransomware/​what​-is​-stuxnet​.html – but there are many other cases. There is much OSS material available on the CIA’s website, see: https://​www​ .cia​.gov/​readingroom/​collection/​oss​-collection. And there are many fine studies of the SOE, not least M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940‒1944 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), and a well curated list of SOE books available at: https://​www​ .goodreads​.com/​shelf/​show/​soe. Rory Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, (London: Profile Books, 2020); Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden (London: Penguin, 2005); Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 2004). See for instance Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, available at: https://​www​.justice​.gov/​archives/​sco/​ file/​1373816/​download. The legacy of this is discussed in Dylan, Gioe and Goodman, The CIA and Pursuit of Security. Deception is a topic that is relatively under-explored beyond particular case studies. See Huw Dylan, ‘Super-weapons and Subversion: British Deterrence by Deception Operations in the Early Cold War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 38, 5 (2015), pp.704‒728, and his other work on deception available at: https://​ kclpure​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​portal/​en/​persons/​huw​-dylan(31d2035c​-5f45​-48db​-a330​ -025fcc3a6edc)​.html. Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); David Omand, Securing the State (London: Hurst, 2011); and there are many others, e.g. Loch Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Gordon Corera, Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories and the Hunt for Putin’s Agents (London: William Collins, 2021); Richard Aldrich, GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency (London: Harper Press, 2010); David Easter, ‘The Impact of “Tempest” on Anglo-American Communications Security and Intelligence, 1943–1970’, Intelligence and National Security, 36, 1 (2021), pp.1‒16; see also his many publications on covert action and sigint available at: https://​kclpure​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​ portal/​david​.easter​.html.

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35. The issues of dissemination was a factor, for instance, in the failure before the 9/11 attacks, see the 9/11 Commission Report, available at: https://​www​.9​ -11commission​.gov/​report/​911Report​.pdf. The issue is also discussed extensively by Amy Zegart, see her many publications at: https://​cisac​.fsi​.stanford​ .edu/​people/​amy​_zegart. 36. The former DG of the British Security Service (MI5) commented on this in his article: Stephen Lander, ‘International Intelligence Cooperation: An Inside Perspective’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17, 3 (2004), pp.481‒493. 37. See e.g. Jennifer E. Sims, ‘Foreign Intelligence Liaison: Devils, Deals, and Details’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 19, 2 (2006), pp.195‒217; Thomas Maguire’s publications are visible at: https://​ kclpure​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​portal/​thomas​.j​.maguire​.html; see also Huw Dylan, Defence Intelligence and the Cold War: Britain’s Joint Intelligence Bureau, 1945‒1964 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 38. Christopher Andrew, for example, examined the different dynamics of various US presidents and their intelligence communities in For the President’s Eye’s Only (London: HarperCollins, 1995). But see also more recent studies like Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back `Russia and then Took on the West (London: William Collins, 2021). 39. There is a great volume of work, for instance, on the women of Bletchley Park and the SOE. And Daniel Lomas has penned several pieces on diversity in British intelligence over the Twentieth Century, including ‘#ForgetJamesBond: Diversity, Inclusion and the UK’s Intelligence Agencies’, Intelligence and National Security, 36, 7 (2021), pp.995‒1017. 40. See Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (New York: Penguin, 2018). 41. GCHQ’s centenary history was published recently. See John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). 42. Jason Dymydiuk, ‘RUBICON and Revelation: The Curious Robustness of the “Secret” CIA-BND Operation with Crypto AG’, Intelligence and National Security, 35, 5 (2020), pp.641‒658. 43. See Erik J. Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and Beyond (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2013); and the classic study by Richard K. Betts, ‘Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures are Inevitable’, World Politics, 31, 1 (1978), pp.61‒89. 44. Britain’s operations against the UN are detailed here, for instance: Martin Bright and Peter Beaumont, ‘Britain Spied on UN Allies Over War Vote’, The Guardian, 8 February 2004. 45. See e.g. the FBI’s 2020 comments on Chinese economic espionage, available at: https://​www​.fbi​.gov/​news/​speeches/​responding​-effectively​-to​-the​-chinese​ -economic​-espionage​-threat; or the survey conducted by the think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, available at: https://​www​.csis​.org/​ programs/​technology​-policy​-program/​survey​-chinese​-linked​-espionage​-united​ -states​-2000.

6. International conflict studies: critical perspectives on conflict and security Vivienne Jabri, Leonie Ansems de Vries, Kiran Phull and Stephan Engelkamp Images we saw emerge from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, in the aftermath of the US decision to withdraw from Afghanistan after a 20-year military presence in the country, sum up – as other locations of violence, conflict and warfare have done – how operations of global power are manifest. They demonstrate the reach and scope of their ramifications, the political institutions and populations impacted, and the complex intersections of race and gender as these become apparent in discourses and practices. In scenes witnessed across the globe, we saw the re-emergence of a Taliban insurgency as this movement took over the Afghan state in scenes that invited comparisons with the US withdrawal from Vietnam. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan may have been a response to the events of 11 September 2001, but Afghan history directed our lens on the articulation of imperial domination in twenty-first-century mode, an intervention combining military force with the government of the population in the absence of direct rule. We could place Afghanistan in the wider global context whereby interventionist military operations came to be combined with aspirations for no less than the wholesale transformation of governing structures in target societies and with these the transformation of the international juridical-political order.1 Yet the events in Afghanistan may be alternatively interpreted; the realist scholar may focus on the changing interests of the United States as the major power with the largest military commitment in the region, while the liberal may focus on the failures of a ‘nation-building’ project whose remit was the inscription of democratic and human rights values upon governing institutions and civil society. This latter perspective viewed the intervention as no less than a ‘civilising mission’, though it was not named as such, where the rights of women and all Afghans would be respected and where freedom of choice would prevail. Critical perspectives in international conflict studies are as interested in how contexts and events such as Afghanistan are interpreted and ‘explained’, as they are in unravelling how frameworks of knowledge are implicated in how 78

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power operates and distinctly, how security and its practices are implemented. Our mediascape is replete with images of conflict and violence, and these are often assumed to take place at some distance removed from the domestic settings of liberal democracies. Yet when looked at from a global perspective, the causes, dynamics, and outcomes of conflict are not confined to those immediately affected but are intricately bound up with a constellation of forces, intended and unintended, attributable to distinct parties or deeply woven in structural and institutional continuities, visible and invisible, related across space and time, defiant of state boundaries. Critical perspectives in conflict and security studies recognise this ‘relational’ character of conflict, violence, and security practices, and seek to unravel the complex intersection of global power, frameworks of knowledge, and the shaping of subjectivity as identities and differences find expression. This introduction will illustrate this intersection with examples of themes that are of core interest in international conflict studies research and pedagogy. These include reflection on the significance of the difference between the global and the international, on understandings of violence, on postcolonial perspectives that place the lens on race and racism, on governing populations and their movement, and on governing the post-conflict context through such practices as peacebuilding. Before we focus on these themes, and as indicated at the outset, the question on knowledge and its justification is central to any critical perspective on conflict and security, the matter covered in the first section below.

6.1

CAPTURING CONFLICT: THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEM IN INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT STUDIES

One of the key questions that has salience for scholars in international conflict studies, indeed one that exercises the philosophy of the social sciences as whole, is whether we can, in duplication of the natural sciences, explain phenomena such as violence, migration, government responses to terrorism, and so on, thereby identifying the ‘causes’ of events. However, the alternative epistemological stance is to argue that human phenomena such as conflict involve human beings and their capacity to use language and to interpret their conditions, thereby rendering immutable cause–effect law-like statements about conflicts and security challenges not just complex, but also questionable. This Weberian problematique is particularly acute in international conflict studies where, as illustrated above in relation to Afghanistan, the best we can come up with are a set of often conflictual interpretations.2 For any critical perspective in international conflict studies, the above epistemological problem is rendered more complex through reflection on the

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work that concepts do, irrespective of whether these concepts are deployed for explanation or interpretation purposes. If concepts are not simply the ‘mirror of nature’, to use Richard Rorty, but construct the world, and through that construction, enable a knowing of the world, the distinction between explanation and understanding becomes less clear-cut; that interpretation is always already a constitutive aspect of explanation.3 We can illustrate this line of argument through the concept of violence, a major theme in international conflict studies. The conventional understanding, following the famous Clausewitzian dictum, is that violence is an instrument used as a continuation of policy through other means.4 Violence is here understood as the infliction of death and injury directed at a known and identifiable enemy. Violence is hence an extension of power, utilised to influence behaviour. This instrumental understanding of violence is taken further in Hannah Arendt’s On Violence, where the lens falls precisely on the ‘instruments’ of violence.5 Arendt’s compelling argument is that the instruments of violence, and she is particularly interested in the nuclear arsenals of Cold War rivals, have so removed violence from policy, specifically politics, given the capacity to destroy all earthly species several times over, that a radical distinction must be made between violence and power. Where power is of politics, for Arendt, violence brings an end to politics. The instrumental understanding of violence also comes into question when we ask what its use does to the subject involved, and this subject may be an individual or a corporate entity such as a state or an organisation. Frantz Fanon, one of the iconic figures in postcolonial thought, was involved in the Algerian war of independence, both as a member of the National Liberation Front and as a practising psychiatrist involved in the treatment of fighters subjected to torture. His experience of the colonial condition and the anti-colonial struggle, as recorded in The Wretched of the Earth, compel him to argue that the violence of coloniser and colonised is mutually constitutive; specifically, that the violence of the colonised comes to constitute their subjectivity and modes of articulation in a defining political struggle.6 In this interpretation of violence, therefore, we see violence interpreted not solely in instrumental terms, where violence is somehow external to the subject, but as constitutive, formative of the subject of politics. Fanon’s experience and interpretation of the Algerian anti-colonial struggle places the lens squarely on the subject, so that our analytical focus moves beyond the epistemological and towards the ontological; from ways of knowing to ways of being, enabling us to ask questions like, who is the subject of politics in colonial conditions? What is the colonial state and how does it govern? Fanon shows us, as we will see below, how governing populations involves racial categorisation and spatialisation, practices prevalent to the present day, in locations of military intervention and the targeting or profiling of populations in the name of security.

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The concept of violence is not confined to its ‘direct’ usage but has a wider meaning that suggests harm more widely conceived and inflicted intentionally or unintentionally beyond the zones of war. Johan Galtung famously distinguishes between ‘direct’ and ‘structural’ violence, where the latter refers to structures, and these can be political-economic or social-cultural, that are so harmful as to prevent or impede the actualisation of human potential.7 Structural violence may not be attributable to defined entities but may be a product of radically unequal socio-political and socio-economic formations the impact of which can far exceed direct violence in terms of harm, including mortality. Gayatri Spivak uses the notion of ‘epistemic violence’ to highlight the exclusion, or even the negation of the voice of the ‘subaltern’ in formations of knowledge.8 We can refer to such epistemic violence in Western-dominated discourses relating to international politics, the state, the legitimacy or otherwise of violence, and peacebuilding practices where the voices of the targeted remain invisible from view, as will be shown below. Methodologically, the conclusion we draw from such ‘metatheoretical’ controversies is that language and the concepts we use in the explanation and understanding of conflict and practices of security cannot be taken for granted, and where they are, then relations of power that produce the taken for granted must come under close epistemological scrutiny. Michel Foucault uses the term ‘discursive formations’ as he unravels the ‘archaeology of knowledge’ that comes to inform the rationality of government from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, particularly in the Western modern polity.9 Modes of power gradually shift from sovereignty, the power to determine who may live and who may die, to disciplinary and biopolitical power, as populations come to be targets of knowledge.10 Contemporary scholarship in international conflict studies is hence interested in how power operates globally, how sovereign power is articulated, and how biopolitical power is implicated in the government of populations, as argued below in relation to the subject of migration. The focus on language raises questions, already evident in Fanon, relating to the materiality of domination.11 Fanon writes of the division of the colonial city in zones that separate the European coloniser from the colonised. He recognises that such separation has constitutive implications, culpable in the formation of the subject. Security practices as these have been evident in the so-called counter-terrorism strategy are not simply discursive, as suggested by ‘securitisation theory’, but have this material articulation, wherein such materials as drones, cameras, border fences, checkpoints, walls, to name but a few, have effects on populations and their lived experiences. New materialist perspectives in international conflict studies seek to unravel, as further elaborated below, the intersection between the material and the discursive, the object and subject of conflict and security.12

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Another conceptual distinction that has profound implications in how we investigate conflict and make claims about its causes, dynamics and outcomes is that of the ‘global’ and the ‘international’.13 The significance of the distinction becomes apparent in questions relating to the governance of conflict and practices that are deemed to be requisite in the provision of security. Ulrich Beck’s World Risk Society points to the transnational, boundary-blurring issues and events that defy conventional understandings of state sovereignty and the clearly bounded political community.14 The COVID-19 pandemic or the climate crisis challenge the ‘methodological nationalism’ of conventional, and particularly, state-centric understandings of politics, highlighting the transnational as potentially a space wherein the ‘exception’, that which exceeds or transgresses the law, resides. Though much transnational transaction and interaction are rule-governed, this is a terrain nevertheless of human interactions, affiliations and loyalties, modes of communication and commerce, that often lie beyond the remit of international norms and rules. Yet the ‘international’ as concept and as juridical-political terrain suggests limits and boundaries, defining ‘inside and outside’, to use Rob Walker.15 Though constituted by deeply sedimented practices and discourses based on sovereign rights, on borders, and the distinction between domestic and international politics, distinguishing between the global and the international raises fundamental questions for international conflict studies. Specifically, wherein lies political authority where questions of legitimacy emerge, how is international conflict governed and by whom, what is the imprint of the colonial legacy on contemporary practices relating to the government of conflict and practices of security, should we distinguish, in reflection on these questions, as Jabri does, between the colonial and the postcolonial international?16 Though authors such as Hart and Negri, focusing on the intersection of interventionist wars and the global political economy, use the term ‘empire’ to highlight global articulations of power, problematising the location of political authority, political community, and ‘government’ is one of the key questions to ask in considering issues such as ‘ungoverned spaces’, migration, surveillance, and data uses, the policing of transnational violence, and calls for justice and human rights.17

6.2

MIGRATION AND BORDERS

Borders and migration take a prominent place in international conflict studies and can be situated at the intersections of power, knowledge, discourse, materiality, subjectivity, and violence. In the contemporary global context, borders are a technique of governance and are designed to be violent. Borders are what makes certain people’s movements migration and other people’s movements adventure; it is what classifies movements as desirable, risky, threatening,

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beneficial and/or disruptive. This valorisation and illegalisation of movements can be seen as part of more widespread practices of ordering that create categories and subjectivities of belonging whilst often marginalising the lives of those already at the margins. At the same time, such practices forefront certain histories and geographies at the expense of others. This is a question of power/knowledge, of epistemic violence. What is included and excluded in our frames of thinking? For instance, in the European context, the term ‘migration crisis’ has become one of the most prominent ways of describing contemporary forced displacement. This securitisation of migration is performative, legitimising certain forms of intervention. Security practices such as push-backs, detention, and deportation are presented as solutions to the ‘threat’ of irregular movements.18 Yet, if it is to be called a ‘crisis’, its manifestation is not the security threat posed by the arrival of people but rather one of people prevented from moving on at the extended borders of Europe, and of being forcefully moved around in border zones. So-called migration management is a combination of being forced to be on the move and of one’s movements being forcefully fractured and curtailed. The reason for the existence of both informal settlements – such as those in Northern France – and more formalised spaces of containment, is not the overwhelming number of people on the move but rather their inability to cross borders legally and safely.19 Critical migration and border studies scholars show how the framing of the ‘crisis’ invisibilises the border violence performed by European states within and outside their territories, both contemporarily and historically. The focus on Europe as the space of ‘crisis’ cuts off a broader geography and history of movement and politics that is both external to, and intricately part of, Europe, including a colonial history marked by centuries of violent, forced displacement, most prominently the transatlantic slave trade. Current migration patterns and governance can only be understood with this history, and the hierarchical and violent structures it produced, in mind. Moreover, by spatially fixing our gaze on Europe, it is easy to forget that most migration takes place outside of the Western world. Desecuritisation, for instance through humanitarian approaches, is often presented as an antidote to the securitisation of migration. Direct, practical acts of solidarity are much needed on the ground, however, as Ida Danewid points out, approaches based on empathy, mourning and solidarity often rely on similarly amnesic frames of thinking.20 The Enlightenment view of a shared humanity disconnects historical links by substituting abstract humanity for historical humanity, thus creating a veil of ignorance about Europe’s violent colonial past and present. This entrenches the idea that this misnamed ‘crisis’ has come from elsewhere, out of the blue, with Europe/ans as the innocent humanitarian ‘doing good’. It is both extraordinary and unsurprising that centuries of violent

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movement, marked by the transatlantic slave trade, colonisation, and Empire, is so often written out of the story. Put differently, this ‘crisis’ is not an exceptional moment; it is intricately linked to Europe’s violent encounter with the Global South. Following Gurminder Bhambra, to challenge both methodological nationalism and methodological whiteness would involve paying more attention to connected histories and entanglements; and, thereby, returning to Spivak, to include the voices of the ‘subaltern’ in the shaping of our understanding of migration and borders.21 Approaches that start with global connectivities, such as those developed by critical, feminist and post/de-colonial scholars enable us to trace the internal and external dimensions of (global) border regimes much more widely, both spatially and temporally. Critical migration and borders scholars show that migration is not about the movement of people from one place to the next as such; it is a political question concerning the governance of movement, space, time and belonging. Indigenous scholars, whose work barely features in mainstream and more critical international conflict studies scholarship, offer crucial insights to our understanding of the intersections of movement, space and belonging by focusing on the violent appropriation of land, whereby those forcefully displaced come to be regarded as trespassers on their own lands.22 Here, we return to the question of whose movements we are counting, valorising, rejecting, (in)visibilising and desiring, as well as whose claims to a space of belonging are regarded as legitimate. A related dimension is the question of which spaces are regarded as legitimate, safe, risky or threatening. The notion of ‘ungoverned spaces’, a variant of the ‘failed’ and ‘weak state’ discourse, gained prominence after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. Presented as a threat to international security due to the absence of clear state governance structures, ‘ungoverned spaces’ are argued to require intervention. From a more critical perspective, we can understand such spaces as being produced through particular interventions: it is the policing of particular people and spaces that produces the idea of a dangerous, ungoverned space.23 Moreover, in the context of migration and borders, such policing and governance takes on specific forms, including neglect and abandonment. For instance, the informal migrant settlements in Northern France have been described as ungoverned spaces, yet this is a result of the state’s deliberate violent action and inaction: regular police raids combined with an unwillingness to provide clean water and other basic services. Similarly, Jessy Nassar and Nora Stel show that, in Lebanon, the manufacturing of refugees’ vulnerability is not merely due to capacity and resource deficits on behalf of the state but also a strategic approach of ‘institutional ambiguity’ and ‘violent inaction’, whilst Martina Tazzioli discusses the governance of the French–Italian border in terms of ‘disjointed knowledges’, of deliberate, partial not-knowing.24

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Extending and enriching Galtung’s notion of structural violence, an emerging body of scholarship describes these processes as slow violence, which includes both the lived experience of being subjected to fundamental uncertainty and degrading conditions over time and the structural conditions that enable it.25 As Thom Davies and Arshad Isakjee discuss with reference to Ann Laura Stoler, these structural conditions of violence have a much broader historical and geographical reach: the demolished migrant settlement in Calais can be understood as the ‘ruins of empire’, as well as the by-product of global inequalities, military interventions, and capitalism itself.26 Facing persistent hostility and uncertainty is exhausting; being subjected to continuous and manifold acts of refusal, active and silent aggression, neglect, and ambiguity wears you down over time. This sense of being drained, exhausted, worn down is a familiar narrative among people who are forced to (not-)move. Leonie Ansems de Vries and Marta Welander have developed the notion of ‘politics of exhaustion’ to capture this form of slow violence, which is simultaneously physical, structural, and epistemic.27 It refers to the ways in which exhaustion is employed as a tool of governance and control and how it is endured and resisted as a lived experience. It highlights the violent nature and impacts of the management of movement and belonging – its accumulated effects over time and across spaces. This includes violence that is direct and physical, violence that slowly creeps up, closing in on you, violence that attaches to your body, violence as neglect and abandonment, and violence that is expressed in terms of humanitarianism.28 Violence hurts, degrades, and maims bodies and, returning to Fanon, it is constitutive of subjectivities. We cannot understand the exhausting violence of migration governance without considering people’s continued struggles to move; to become other than undeserving, victimised, threatening and/or commodified bodies; and, to create alternative spaces and (political) communities.29 These entanglements of power and resistance are also articulated by Akwugo Emejulu and Leah Bassel in their work on women of colour activists in cities across Europe and North America.30 Struggles against the ‘triple crisis’ of austerity, xenophobia and fascism have a huge toll on women of colour, demoralising and exhausting them, however, exhaustion also functions as a form of resistance by being a ‘structure of feeling of mutual recognition’ within precarious collectivities.

6.3

MATERIALIST PERSPECTIVES OF CONFLICT AND SECURITY

Violence that hurts, degrades, and maims – whether physical, structural, or epistemic – tells us something of the entanglement between the corporeal and material. The governance of international conflict calls attention to forms

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of violence that target human life, embodied subjects, and social identities. Moving beyond the inherent corporeality of conflict, recent interdisciplinary approaches to the study of conflict and security have examined the role and agency of ‘things,’ or materiality, in constraining and enabling configurations of violence, power, and resistance.31 Materiality often refers to the tactile objects, technologies, materials, and things of which the world is composed. The ‘material turn’ within international conflict studies considers the political animacy of ‘inanimate’ objects that are implicated in global conflict and security, drawing on feminist, post-structuralist, and postcolonial debates. Analytically, materialist perspectives seek to understand the complex configurations, contingencies, and assemblages of the human and ‘other than human’. Objects and materials are not simply passive, neutral, and mechanistic tools at our disposal. Rather, they shape what we perceive to be real and how we experience the world.32 They harbour their own complex and contested politics, histories, and complicities with scientific and social practices. Objects and things are thus participants and accomplices in the making of political realities. Following Karen Barad, ‘it is vitally important that we understand how matter matters’.33 Where matter is concerned, traditional and rationalist perspectives in global politics have tended to focus on the material capabilities of rational actors and the political insecurities that arise from constraints within the international system (on things like natural resources, arms, and economies). Here, material constraints shape political behaviours and outcomes, with matter as means to an end. Constructivists have considered the ways in which objects and facts acquire meaning. Objects are seen to be constituted and constructed by human subjectivities. By comparison, post-structuralist scholarship has paid attention to the material effects of discourse and language, seeking to challenge the traditional Cartesian divide between the material domain and the realm of ideas.34 Meanwhile, critical, feminist and new materialist perspectives move beyond the human/non-human duality by considering the ways in which objects actively hold power and agency in their own right.35 Material-discursive practices are interactive and intra-active, and it is from here that politics emerges.36 Giving consideration to the ‘social life of things’ involves treating objects as conditions of possibility for the emergence of political (dis)order.37 Passports, processors, and power grids are physical things as much as they are agentic and vital forces. They have constitutive roles in the governance of migration, information, and critical infrastructures. For Jane Bennett, the power grid is more than a planned network of electrical lines and equipment supplying electricity to communities. It is ‘a volatile mix of coal, sweat, electromagnetic fields, computer programs, electron streams, profit motives, heat, lifestyles, nuclear, fuel, plastic, fantasies of mastery, static, legislation, water, economic theory, wire, and wood’.38 Together, these elements form an assemblage of electric

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power and power relations between humans and non-humans. In the context of the Northeast blackout of 2003, no specific cause or agent can adequately explain the mass power outage. The power grid operates as an ecology of lively and violent networked relations.39 Returning to Afghanistan, materiality is intimately bound up in conflict and occupation. For example, emergent objects like improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are not only constitutive of violence and warfare but also inseparable from broader ecologies of electronic refuse and global telecommunications. Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, lethal IED attacks have taken place at a checkpoint in Jalalabad, a mosque in Kabul, and outside the Abbey gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport. IEDs are real weapons yet are not easily defined or knowable.40 Simple in that they contain an instigator and power source, the physical form and affective violence of an IED is perpetually in motion. ‘It could be fertiliser, palm oil, a wooden box, homemade chemicals, a forgotten land mine mated with a cell phone, strung together bits of old copper wire, a nine-volt battery, or a dead goat stuffed with artillery shells rigged to set off a daisy chain of other explosives’.41 Jairus Grove thus argues that IEDs are assemblages of manufactured materials, economies of war, and artefacts of power and resistance. In the process of violently altering their surrounding environments, these objects become native inhabitants and agents in the political world.42 What the materialist perspective encourages us to do is to recognise and question the ‘anthropocentric bias’ rooted in our interpretations of the world.43 As well, it invites us to consider the ontological emergence and significance of objects in present and historical contexts.44

6.4

POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES

Technical objects and scientific systems that govern human life are not confined to the contemporary setting. Tools like maps, censuses, and opinion polls, as well as coercive practices of policing, profiling, and surveillance, can be traced back to colonial modes of disciplinary and social control. Colonial knowledge and forms of violence, whether physical, structural, or epistemic, are profoundly related to the construction of enmity, the global politics of exclusion, racism, and white supremacism. Postcolonial perspectives within international conflict studies seek to decentre Eurocentric and white supremacist conceptions of global politics that underpin conventional security and conflict studies.45 The broad and composite terrain of postcolonial theory stretches across different disciplines and incorporates post-structuralist, Marxist, feminist, and postmodern thought.46 Within international conflict studies, postcolonial approaches engage critically with the legacies of Europe’s colonial and impe-

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rial past and present. They contend with ‘the politics of representation that deny equality to the postcolonial world, that denigrate postcolonial self-determination, and that universalise at the expense of postcolonial difference’.47 Normatively speaking, postcolonial approaches and methodologies seek to decolonise disciplinary knowledge and re-centre postcolonial agency and resistance. The term ‘postcolonial’ is subject to contestation: ‘It might seem that because the age of colonialism is over, and because the descendants of once-colonised peoples live everywhere, the whole world is postcolonial’.48 Though the term implies conditions of an ‘aftermath’ following the formal period of decolonisation, it rather opens an analytical and theoretical entry point for confronting colonialism and its legacies of structural and epistemic violence. A politics of exclusion speaks to the ontological and epistemological subjugation of a racialised ‘other’. Edward Said’s concept of orientalism helpfully captures the power tensions that discursively construct and frame the other/non-West as something to be feared, feminised, governed, and tamed.49 Contrapuntal reading – a method proposed by Said as a form of resistance to Western ideological representations of reality – asks us to recover the concealed structures and frames of imperialism at work in our canonical texts.50 Contrapuntal accounts in international conflict studies therefore focus on decentring the West as the primary referent object in global politics, as well as highlighting dissident voices and anti-colonial/anti-racist resistance in its place. An example is Priyamvada Gopal’s effort to reconstruct the history of British Empire through moments of international resistance, rebellion, and radical acts of dissent.51 Imperial encounters between the Global North and South have sustained discourses of civilisation, progress, modernity, and secular rationality.52 Mark Neocleous discusses how ‘civilisation’ as a category of international power manifests in contemporary police action.53 ‘Civilisation’, as Neocleous says, ‘is back’ in the context of global war, as the policing of populations becomes a civilising imperative.54 At the nexus of war and police in the War on Terror, international law comes to represent the standard of civilisation. Police powers are thus implicated in the violent construction of social order and the racialisation of security and war. Orientalist and racist assumptions rooted in colonial anxieties extend to the neoliberal discourse of state failure. Antony Anghie discusses the intrinsic coloniality of the World Bank’s ‘good governance’ agenda in loan-dependent countries.55 Here, the international development agenda is bound up in the discourse of a civilising mission, amplifying difference and inequalities between the ‘developed’ and ‘deviant’ worlds. Meera Sabaratnam traces the discourse of state failure and collapse in Mozambique, finding failure to be ‘constituted through structural relations of colonial difference’.56 Nivi Manchanda

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describes how the status of Afghanistan as ‘frontier’ and zone of exception has generated framings of state failure ‘laden with the same normative assumptions that accompanied more explicit racial biases and ethnocentric baggage intrinsic to colonial propaganda and conceptualisations of world order’.57 In the current context of a ‘failed’ intervention and US retreat, the renewed language of collapse and failure raises questions of the coloniality of liberal peace projects.

6.5

POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

Emerging in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace can be considered a liberal response to address phenomena such as so-called ‘failed states’, ‘fragile states’, ‘new wars’, and practices of ethnic cleansing and genocide.58 This agenda constituted peacebuilding as a new instrument for the UN for maintaining international peace and security. Initially, it included aims such as securing justice and human rights and promoting social progress and bettering economic standards of life. However, from the outset, this liberal understanding of peacebuilding required a remaking of identities, societies, economies, and polities. Sabaratnam traces how the peacebuilding discourse increasingly moves away from its original aims of securing peace and justice towards a securitisation of ‘state failure’ and promoting state-building, especially after 11 September 2001.59 It is during this process that the inherent contradictions of supposedly universally valid liberal assumptions about modernity and development become apparent and demonstrate their particularity. This discursive shift from peacebuilding to state-building legitimises military interventions and counter-terrorism policies in the Global South. This movement coincides with a new focus on governance, stabilisation measures, and securing free markets (e.g. the US Agency for International Development, UK’s Department for International Trade, the World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). In line with the ‘democratic peace’ paradigm, peacebuilding does not only promote democratic governance, human rights, and independent judiciaries, it is also related to the creation of free markets and the formation of institutions which are predicated on Weberian concepts of the state. While liberal peacebuilding has been described as a more benign version of the ‘mission civilisatrice’, its focus on institutionalisation before liberalisation exposes its eurocentric origins and the continuity of its colonial legacies.60 A critical stance towards the Eurocentric assumptions of liberal peacebuilding has been articulated in research in the wake of the so-called ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding.61 This research presents a critique of universalising assump-

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tions of this project and highlights a bottom-up focus on local agency, context and history, and the underlying power relations of interventions in the Global South. Liberal peace appears here as a neoliberal and neocolonial form of domination, in which ‘only the markets are free.’ Rather than a genuine attempt of promoting democracy and human rights, peacebuilding becomes an instrument to discipline the Global South, a fundamental element of an emerging global matrix of war.62 What appears to be at stake here is that peacebuilding initiatives may lead to the securitisation of populations and locations targeted, dividing the international realm into new zones of peace and zones of conflict along neocolonial lines, rather than leading to an end of conflict and violence. Moreover, the mixed results of peacebuilding operations on the ground pose difficult questions regarding ‘order vs justice’ in fragile post-conflict contexts. After conflict, ‘democratisation’ may increase political competition, while institutional safeguards are still weak. Holding elections may ensure the representation of societal groups but may also lead to dominance over minority groups. The double transition towards peace and democracy presents peacebuilders with a dilemma. Two political objectives – promoting liberal democracy and maintaining a stable peace – may compete, at least in the short term.63 Limited state capacity, at times mixed popular demand for ‘democracy’, as well as the interests of local elites in post-conflict situations to maintain power are all internal factors that challenge the success of peacebuilding operations. Moreover, external factors such as lack of institutional capacity, limited resources of peacebuilding missions, and a decreasing political interest on the part of international society result in peacebuilders often compromising between political stability and democratisation. The ‘peacebuilders’ contract’, a tacit agreement between peacebuilders and local elites, privileges the status quo, rather than a successful transition towards democracy. How we analyse emergent power relations in the post-conflict context, the stakeholders involved, both local and international, and the practices that shape socio-political futures are all significant in investigations of efforts geared towards the governing of conflict and security. The governing of conflict and security is also relevant in relation to responses to the legacies of extreme violence. The shaping of political community in the aftermath of violent conflict has, since the Nuremberg Trials, been one of the most normatively and politically challenging aspects of the post-conflict context. What constitutes ‘justice’ in the post-conflict context and wherein lies the power of decision-making relating to the mobilisation of structures relating to prosecutions of war crimes and crimes against humanity? How are ‘Truth Commissions’ constituted and what roles do the narratives of those affected play in ‘reconciliation’ and the shaping of post-conflict futures. Many of the aims of successful transitional justice read suspiciously similarly to the liberal peacebuilding project: establishing accountable institutions and

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restoring confidence in them, providing access to justice for the most vulnerable in society in the aftermath of violations, ensuring that women and marginalised groups play an effective role in the pursuit of a just society, and creating respect for the rule of law. Facilitating peace processes and fostering durable and sustainable resolution of conflicts may require establishing a basis to address the underlying causes of conflict and marginalisation. However, to the extent that providing amnesties and integrating perpetrators of violence into the post-conflict order has been part of the peacebuilding process, the outcome of reconciliation and transitional justice processes can be heavily predisposed by the peacebuilders contract described above. South Africa’s ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ raised significant questions relating to practices of ‘restorative’ justice, accountability, and the shaping of futures beyond the perpetrator/victim dichotomy. Questions of accountability, judgement, and responsibility are therefore crucial in any investigation of the order vs justice formula constitutive of the post-conflict context. While some have criticised transitional justice as a ‘faith-based approach’ to peacebuilding, given the considerable methodological difficulties of measuring its long-term effects, and how, if at all, it affects local power structures, a more fundamental issue is the metatheoretical question of assuming ‘the truth’ as a singular narrative. Is it even possible to compile a common narrative or understanding? Is a model of short-term catharsis useful for post-conflict societies? These questions highlight the normative and political importance of reflecting the epistemic and ontological assumptions that underlie any approach in international conflict studies. Critical approaches to conflict, security, violence, and its aftermath need to situate themselves between the perspective of the ‘disinterested historian’ and the ‘engaged political mind’.64 As this chapter has demonstrated, international conflict studies as a critical enterprise cannot disassociate itself from the intricate relationship between truth-claims and the larger structures of power and violence in global politics.

6.6

CONCLUDING REMARKS

As is evident from the above, international conflict studies is a research and pedagogical programme that is geared towards the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical investigation of the ‘government’ of conflict and security practices. Using a Foucauldian understanding of ‘government’, the focus is on the discursive and institutional practices implicated in the shaping of responses to conflict and the securitisation of populations. From wars of intervention, to the regulation of populations on the move, to peacebuilding and the management of the post-conflict context, the aim is to unravel complex intersections of subjectivity, agency, power and the production of corporeal difference, and the ways in which the materiality of conflict and security is manifest in such

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productions. The chapter started with Afghanistan and it is appropriate to end with this case study. The airport scenes alone enable us to place the magnifying analytical lens on the blurring of the boundary between ‘war’ and ‘security’. They also reveal the material spatialisation of populations in terms of hierarchies of worth and the right to safety and security. Operations of power in contexts where the distinction between the zone of war and the zone of peace is so transfigured that a ‘politics of exception’, with its constitutive violence, continues to be in operation. Cases like Afghanistan form the core of our empirical/analytical interests in international conflict studies, based on a fundamental assumption of the relational intersections of conflict and security, the local and the global, the transitory and the long-term.

NOTES Vivienne Jabri, War and the Transformation of Global Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Patrick T. Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations (London: 2. Routledge, 2016). 3. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 4. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007), p.28. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, 1970). 5. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin, 1963). 6. 7. Johan Galtung, ‘Violence, Peace and Peace Research’, Journal of Peace Research, 6, 3 (1969), pp.167‒191. 8. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), pp.271‒316. 9. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1969), p.34. 10. Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in James D. Faubion (ed.), Power: The Essential Works of Foucault 1954‒1984 (London: Allen Lane, 2001), pp.201‒223. 11. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Penguin, 1967). 12. Claudia Aradau, Martin Coward, Eva Herschinger, Owen D. Thomas and Nadine Voelkner, ‘Discourse/Materiality’, in Claudia Aradau, Jef Huysmans, Andrew Neal and Nadine Voelkner (eds.), Critical Security Methods: New Frameworks for Analysis (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp.57‒84. 13. Karin Fierke and Vivienne Jabri, ‘Global Conversations: Relationality, Embodiment and Power in the Move Towards a Global IR’, Global Constitutionalism, 8, 3 (2019), pp.506‒535. 14. Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). 15. R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 16. Vivienne Jabri, War and Transformation; Vivienne Jabri, The Postcolonial Subject (London: Routledge, 2013). 1.

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17. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Penguin, 2005); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 18. Didier Bigo, ‘Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease’, Alternatives, 27, 1 (2002), pp.63‒92; Leonie Ansems de Vries and Elspeth Guild, ‘Seeking Refuge in Europe: Spaces of Transit and the Violence of Migration Management’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 12 (2019), pp.2156‒2166. 19. Ansems de Vries and Guild, ‘Seeking Refuge in Europe’; Leonie Ansems de Vries and Katharine Weatherhead, ‘Politics of Knowledge Production in the Global Compact for Migration’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 23, 2 (2020), pp.294‒312. 20. Ida Danewid, ‘White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History’, Third World Quarterly, 38, 7 (2017), pp.1674‒1689. 21. Gurminder Bhambra, ‘Brexit, Trump, and “Methodological Whiteness”: On the Misrecognition of Race and Class’, The British Journal of Sociology, 68, S1 (2017), pp.214‒232; Gurminder Bhambra, ‘The Current Crisis of Europe: Refugees, Colonialism, and the Limits of Cosmopolitanism’, European Law Journal, 23, 5 (2017), pp.395‒405; Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. 22. For example, Mercedes Dorame, ‘I Was Here: Tovaangar’, Arts Cabinet, available at: https://​www​.artscabinet​.org/​migration/​i​-was​-here​-tovaangar. 23. Katharyne Mitchell, ‘Ungoverned Space: Global Security and the Geopolitics of Broken Windows’, Political Geography, 29, 5 (2010), pp.289‒297. 24. Jessy Nassar and Nora Stel, ‘Lebanon’s Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis – Institutional Ambiguity as a Governance Strategy’, Political Geography, 70 (2019), pp.44‒54; Martina Tazzioli, ‘Disjointed Knowledges, Obfuscated Visibility. Border Controls at the French-Italian Alpine Border’, Political Geography, 79, 4 (2020), pp.102‒155. 25. Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). 26. Thom Davies and Arshad Isakjee, ‘Ruins of Empire: Refugees, Race and the Postcolonial Geographies of European Migrant Camps’, Geoforum, 102 (2019), pp.214‒217; Ann Laura Stoler (ed.), Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013). 27. Leonie Ansems de Vries and Marta Welander, ‘Calais Demolition: “Mission Accomplished”, the Politics of Exhaustion and Continued Struggles for Mobility’, openDemocracy (2016), available at: https://​www​.opendemocracy​.net/​en/​mediterranean​ -journeys​-in​-hope/​calais​-demolition​-mission​-accom/​; Leonie Ansems de Vries and Marta Welander, ‘Refugees, Displacement, and the European “Politics of Exhaustion”, openDemocracy, (2016), available at: https://​www​.opendemocracy​.net/​en/​mediterranean​ -journeys​-in​-hope/​refugees​-displacement​-and​-europ/​; Leonie Ansems de Vries and Marta Welander, ‘Politics of Exhaustion: Reflecting on an Emerging Concept in the Study of Human Mobility and Control’, Border Criminologies (2021), available at: https://​blogs​ .law​.ox​.ac​.uk/​research​-subject​-groups/​centre​-criminology/​centreborder​-criminologies/​ blog/​2021/​01/​politics. 28. See e.g. Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (London: Routledge, 2004); Nassar and Stel, ‘Lebanon’s Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis’; Thom Davies, Arshad Isakjee and Surindar Dhesi, ‘Violent Inaction: The Necropolitical Experience of Refugees in Europe’, Antipode, 49, 5 (2017), pp.1263‒1284.

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Leonie Ansems de Vries, Lara Montesinos Coleman, Martina Tazziloli, Doerthe Rosenow and Ronaldo Vasquez, ‘Fracturing Politics (Or, How to Avoid the Tacit Reproduction of Modern/Colonial Ontologies in Critical Thought)’, International Political Sociology, 11, 1 (2017), pp.90‒108. 30. Akwugo Emejulu and Leah Bassel, ‘The Politics of Exhaustion’, City, 12, 1‒2 (2020), pp.400‒406. 31. Claudia Aradau, ‘Security that Matters: Critical Infrastructure and Objects of Protection’, Security Dialogue, 41, 5 (2010), pp.491‒514. 32. Aradau et al., ‘Discourse/Materiality’. 33. Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28, 3 (2003), p.803. 34. Vincent Pouliot, ‘The Materials of Practice: Nuclear Warheads, Material Commonplaces and Committee Meetings in Russian-Atlantic Relations’, Cooperation and Conflict, 45, 3 (2010), pp.294‒311. 35. Roger Mac Ginty, ‘A Material Turn in International Relations: The 4x4, Intervention and Resistance’, Review of International Studies, 43, 5 (2017), pp.855‒874. 36. Aradau, ‘Security that Matters’. 37. Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 38. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), p.25. 39. Jane Bennett, ‘The Force of Things: Steps Toward an Ecology of Matter’, Political Theory, 32, 3 (2004), pp.347‒372. 40. Jairus Grove, ‘An Insurgency of Things: Foray into the World of Improvised Explosive Devices’, International Political Sociology, 10, 4 (2016), pp.332‒351. 41. Ibid., p.333. 42. Ibid. 43. Martin Coward, ‘Against Anthropocentrism: The Destruction of the Built Environment as a Distinct Form of Political Violence’, Review of International Studies, 32, 3 (2006), pp.419‒347. 44. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993). 45. Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, ‘The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, 32, 2 (2006), pp.329‒352. 46. Anja Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 2005). 47. Jabri, Postcolonial Subject, p.8. 48. Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p.12. 49. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978); Meera Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). 50. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage Books, 1993). 51. Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire (New York: Verso, 2019). 52. Roxanne Lyn Doty, Imperial Encounters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). 53. Mark Neocleous, ‘The Police of Civilization: The War on Terror as Civilizing Offensive’, International Political Sociology, 5, 2 (2011), pp.144‒159. 54. Ibid., p.144.

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55. Antony Anghie, ‘Decolonizing the Concept of Good Governance’, in Branwen Gruffydd Jones (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), pp.109–130. 56. Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention, p.4. 57. Nivi Manchanda, ‘Rendering Afghanistan Legible: Borders, Frontiers and the “State” of Afghanistan’, Politics, 37, 4 (2017), p.388. 58. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ‘An Agenda for Peace’, United Nations (1992); Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ‘An Agenda for Peace’, United Nations (1995). 59. Meera Sabaratnam, ‘The Liberal Peace? An Intellectual History of International Conflict Management, 1990‒2010’, in Susanna Campbell, David Chandler and Meera Sabaratnam (eds.), A Liberal Peace? The Problems and Practices of Peacebuilding (London: Zed Books, 2011) pp.13–30. 60. Roland Paris, ‘International Peacebuilding and the “Mission Civilisatrice”’, Review of International Studies, 28, 4 (2002), p.638. 61. Séverine Autessere, ‘Going Micro: Emerging and Future Peacekeeping Research’, International Peacekeeping, 21, 4 (2014), pp.492‒500; Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver Richmond, ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Research Agenda for Peace’, Third World Quarterly, 34, 5 (2013), pp.763‒783. 62. Jabri, War and the Transformation; Jabri, Postcolonial Subject. 63. Christoph Zürcher, Nora Roehner and Sarah Riese, ‘External Democracy Promotion in Post-Conflict Zones: A Comparative-Analytical Framework’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 5, 1 (2009), pp.1‒26; Christoph Zürcher, Nora Roehner and Sarah Riese, ‘External Democracy Promotion in Post-Conflict Zones: Evidence from Case Studies’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 5, 1 (2009), pp.241‒259. 64. Arendt, On Violence.

7. International peace and security James Gow, Natasha Kuhrt and Maria Varaki Something changed in the first half of the 1990s. The critical element in this change was the approach taken by the UN Security Council. Responding to a broad span of changes in global order, the Security Council redefined the meaning of international peace and security, and with it the scope of that which could constitute a threat to it. The UN Charter charges the Security Council with responsibility for defining and authorising action to tackle threats to international peace and security in Article 39, situated in Chapter VII. This is the meeting point of international law, international politics and war, or strategy – as explored below. That meeting point is also the reference point for all the trouble in the world – all conflict and threats to peace and security – irrespective of whether the Security Council takes action on them. The Security Council’s redefinition extended the acknowledged scope of situations that could be judged to be a threat as well as the scope of actions to tackle them – actions that would previously have been prohibited as interference in the internal affairs of the state under the UN Charter and the sovereignty system that evolved over 300 years. The old issue of international peace and security (the Charter was established to save the world from the scourge of war) – inter-state war – was no longer the real threat. Iraq’s invasion and total annexation of Kuwait in August 1990 was the exception that proved the rule. The new threats stemmed from a variety of other sources internal to, and beyond the borders of states.1 The first stages of this change and redefinition came in practice and can be represented in some basic numbers. From 1945 to 1989, the Security Council identified threats to international peace and security and authorised action (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter) implicitly or explicitly ten times. This contrasts with 13 uses of Chapter VII regarding Iraq and Kuwait alone between 2 August 1990 and 13 February 1991. This was a seismic shift in frequency; it was an even greater shift in scope. Conventionally, a threat to international peace and security had been taken to apply only to cases of an act of aggression by one state against another – only the cases of Rhodesia (1966) and South Africa broke that pattern, as in these cases internal policies were also brought into question (although the external dimension was the formal focus). However, the end of the Cold War, and action taken to protect the 96

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Kurdish population in northern Iraq in early 1991, significantly altered what could be regarded as constituting a threat to international peace and security. Radical change was not restricted to Iraq. In the course of 1991, Somalia and the Yugoslav lands would provide further examples – both prompting interventions based on humanitarian rationales, with Yugoslavia in particular a crucible for radical steps and difficult challenges, resulting in well over 100 resolutions on aspects of that situation. In January 1992, this radical shift was confirmed and, in an era of post-Cold War international cooperation, the first ever summit of UN Security Council Heads of Government and State issued a declaration formalising the new approach: The absence of war and military conflict amongst States does not in itself ensure international peace and security. The non-military sources of instability in the economic, social, humanitarian and ecological fields have become threats to peace and security.2

The Security Council’s changed definition had far-reaching implications for states, both as actors collectively and as sovereign individual entities. The altered definition of international peace and security confirmed a shift in attitudes towards ending the absolute protection provided by sovereignty. It also confirmed the need for integrated study of conflict, law, war and politics in international affairs – that is, the study of international peace and security. The core elements of this field of study comprise three elements: one, conceptual understanding of sovereignty as the core and unifying idea in both international politics and international law related to the key ideas of war and conflict, international politics and international law; two, understanding of the UN Charter, including the rights and protections of sovereignty in international society regarding the use of force and interference in domestic jurisdiction; and three, the mission of the UN Security Council to determine threats to peace and security and authorise action to tackle them. This includes the radical changes and redefinition already identified, as well as what happens when situations that clearly represent a challenge are not formally designated a threat by the Security Council, for whatever reason.

7.1

SOVEREIGNTY: THE CORE CONCEPT

Events in the 1990s transformed an international system that had evolved over a period of more than three centuries to ensure the security of states. That system, which culminated in the UN era at the end of the Cold War, was established on the basis of states qualified by sovereignty. Sovereignty has two aspects, internal and external. In terms of the latter, it is normally taken to

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connote freedom from outside interference: where the quality of sovereignty applies, no external actor may rightfully act without invitation. In terms of the former, it is the rights pertaining to supreme authority – the right to make the ultimate and defining decisions over a given territorial-political community. In sum, it is the right of a state not to be told what to do by others and to be able to decide what to do within its own boundaries. In practical use, it has a number of purposes, as Alan James has pointed out.3 It is the qualification of sovereign statehood that is ‘a ticket of general admittance to the international arena.’4 This is why those who do not have it so often seek it and those who have it seek to keep it – especially when weak in other ways. While it can be seen as having different aspects, including legal and political, these are not discrete versions of sovereignty, as some have held.5 It has never made sense to talk of sovereignty’s withering or becoming irrelevant.6 Nor does it make sense to characterise the current situation as ‘post-Westphalian’ – at least in the ‘end of sovereignty’ sense that this term has been used,7 or to say it is the old system working the way it was supposed to work, as some have suggested.8 For all who consider international change in the 1990s to mean the end of sovereignty, it is salutary to note that many prominent analysts drew strong conclusions in this respect in the past.9 It is more purposeful to view sovereignty as an enduring quality that embraces and adapts to change.10 The exact form, fact and incumbents of sovereignty may change or be redistributed over time. However, it remains, because it is the key point of accountability. In both domestic and international terms, sovereignty confers not only ultimate rights, but also ultimate responsibilities.11 In this regard it has been argued that humanity is the A and Ω of sovereignty, whereas others conceive sovereignty as a trusteeship or fiduciary of humanity. Sovereignty furnishes the global structure in which states exist and into which new states may be born. But in the same way that the new state gains rights on acquiring status, it also gains responsibilities. Whilst sovereignty may be subject to different interpretations, its general importance and formal content have remained constant: the key to the Westphalian system was mutual recognition between sovereigns. The content of sovereignty changed in one essential way as the system of which it was the guiding principle was extended. Whereas the Westphalian agreement had been made between sovereigns who were individuals (monarchs), this prescriptive mode of sovereignty had been generally supplanted by a popular one in Europe by the twentieth century – meaning that the exercise of sovereign rights was no longer the prerogative of a single personality, but that of the representatives of the state’s governing institutions. Increasingly, if somewhat hypocritically, the degree to which power holders are seen to embody the interest of the people of a particular state through an ‘act of national self-determination based on the will of the majority’ has become a factor in their being accepted and granted

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recognition as representatives of the sovereign by others in international society.12 With the evolution of the international system based on states, various international arrangements including international organisations began to appear. Each of these in some way acted as a forum for states, but also in some way as a constraint on them. In the course of the twentieth century the position of the state became cemented through the two attempts to create a global organisation to deal with matters of international peace and security, the League of Nations between the two world wars and the United Nations after the Second World War. The UN, in particular, through its codification of sovereignty and statehood as the fundamental elements to be protected in international society, created a framework in which a traditional mechanism for regulating relations between states in a condition of anarchy could be removed: wars of aggression, or territorial expansion, were not possible. The understanding that it was not acceptable to attempt to change borders through a use of force became embedded. Of course, this by no means meant that the possibility of one state trying to do this had been completely eliminated. It did mean that in a number of cases around the world such attempts, even when couched in terms of self-defence, were not recognised: Northern Cyprus, Timor Leste, territories occupied by Israel. The preservation of state boundaries became paramount other than in cases where the states in question agreed peacefully to change them (a mostly unimaginable occurrence). The embedding of the twin norms of non-aggression and non-interference was given further support in other ways. The principles of state sovereignty, mutual recognition by sovereigns and the inviolability of borders were reinforced by the decision of the post-colonial African states to affirm this understanding in the 1963 Charter of the Organisation of African Unity. Although quite probably not a single border in Africa made sense, or, at a minimum, was beyond dispute, the new African states recognised that any other course of action would be a recipe for unending armed conflict across the continent. Although their decision did not remove the shadow of war from Africa, it restricted its scope and placed limits on those who resorted to violence so that it was generally within borders rather than across them. The signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, consolidating the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), also reinforced the increasingly unchallengeable norm of the inviolability of borders. Indeed, the CSCE was the spur to the inviolability of borders becoming a mantra for European security analysts. In part, this was because the Helsinki Final Act was the binding political agreement, which affirmed the borders established in Europe after the Second World War, including the division of Germany and the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States. The Western participants in the process added to an emerging normative layer of stability by inserting provisions for indi-

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vidual human and political rights within the Final Act as a quid pro quo. They were able to do so because of the Soviet desire to gain an agreement. The Cold War itself was also a factor in all of this. The threat of nuclear war meant that across much of the world there was a fear that to breach the norm might be to unleash annihilation. The nuclear-armed standoff between East and West meant that it had become too dangerous for the major military powers on either side of the European divide to risk war. This had implications in other parts of the world where Soviet–Western competition meant that each superpower was cautious, making as sure as possible that direct confrontation would not occur. Developments such as the UN and its Charter, the Organisation of African Unity and its Charter and the CSCE and its Final Act created a normative and organisational framework in which the inviolability of the state as the cornerstone of international life was consolidated. The nuclear shadow of the Cold War had forced states to honour their normative agreements. The importance of maintaining borders was also consolidated in the process of de-colonisation and new state formation in the UN era. By 1996, the UN’s membership had grown from the original 50 to 185 – and by the beginning of the new century it was 193. These new states were formed in five categories, each of which was subject to the provision of uti posseditis juris in international law.13 This meant that when the status of borders was transformed, the newly independent entity kept the territory legally in its possession. For post-colonial states around the world, as well as those states emerging from the collapsed communist federations in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia during the 1990s, this meant that any violent attempts to change borders whose status (or quality) was changing would be contrary to international law and norms.14

7.2

SOVEREIGNTY, STATES AND SECURITY IN THE UN CHARTER AND BEYOND

Although the UN’s formal mission includes the aspirations to develop economic and social cooperation and to promote human rights, the chief purpose concerns international peace and security. The primary purpose of the UN is the maintenance of international peace and security, as identified in Article 1 of the Charter (this mission is both mentioned first and is framed as something achievable, whereas the others are both desirable qualities to be encouraged). This meant creating a framework to protect states and international order as a whole from the external mischief of any state, or states, that did not observe the key concepts of non-interference and domestic jurisdiction. This codification of the sovereignty regime was set out in Articles 2 and 51 of the UN Charter. The latter, found in Chapter VII, confirms the inherent right to

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self-defence, but Article 2 is the reference point for the non-interference and domestic jurisdiction duality. Paragraph (4) of that article stipulates that states shall not use force or any other means ‘inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations’ to act against the ‘territorial integrity or political independence of any state.’ This is reinforced by paragraph (7), which stresses the notion of domestic jurisdiction, even against the United Nations in normal circumstances. Taken together, Article 2 (4) and (7), as well as Article 51, of the UN Charter established the idea that there was no ground for using armed force other than self-defence, or under the authority of the UN Security Council. It was taken for granted in most international discourse that attacks on other countries and undue interference in internal affairs were simply unacceptable (although this did not, of course, mean an ideal world in which there was no interference whatsoever). Within the system of collective security designed in the UN Charter, one body, the UN Security Council is given primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. To ensure this, the UN Security Council is given special powers in Chapter VII of the Charter. These are the prerogative and responsibility to determine threats to international peace and security (Article 39) and having done so to authorise military and non-military responses to those threats (Articles 42 and 41, respectively). What is of greatest importance here is that the framers of the Charter gave the Security Council a position in which its Chapter VII enforcement measures became mandatory and binding in international law, superseding any other aspect of the law, including the rights of sovereignty. This last point is explicitly made in the final clause of Article 2(7) – the very place where the principle of domestic jurisdiction is named. That final clause asserts the principle of domestic jurisdiction does not prejudice the application of enforcement measures taken by the Security Council. In short, it is possible to override the prescriptions of non-interference and domestic jurisdiction in the interests of international peace and security.

7.3

THE CHAPTER VII REVOLUTION

By the 1990s, legal, normative, organisational, and pragmatic factors had consolidated the position of the state in international relations and the inviolability of state borders. This seemed to be reinforced as the unforeseen and sudden end to the Cold War saw opponents begin a new era – George Bush’s ‘New World Order’, in which things would not be perfect, but they would be better. Bush’s ‘New World Order’, with Secretary of State James Baker as chief foot soldier, treading new paths by the day, was based primarily around a conception of the old order working in the way intended at the formation of the UN.15 There was an affirmation of the world order established in 1945.

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There had been change, but this had not heralded a new order, simply the old one working in the way that its authors at the end of the Second World War had wanted,16 and the UN-led action against Iraq seemed as close as could be in the flawed real world to the practical application of the theory of collective security.17 Critics challenged these understandings sharply.18 For older souls, such as Henry Kissinger, the new order was in ‘a period of gestation’ which would not have a final form until sometime in the twenty-first century (or even beyond).19 Whatever the position, it was clear that something had changed. The Security Council’s approach to its Chapter VII authority was, in theory and occasional practice, a formal limitation on state sovereignty, or a confirmation of such limitation. Although generally unnoticed for 40 years, UN Security Council enforcement authorisation under Chapter VII meant an exception to the core provisions of the state sovereignty system. However, by the 1990s, state to state war had been effectively eliminated, Iraq and Kuwait, and conflicts over the legacy of partition, such as India–Pakistan and Eritrea– Ethiopia, notwithstanding. The reality appeared to be that the central problem of war and order throughout history – armed conflict and competition between states – appeared almost eradicated (although, of course, its return could not be ruled out). In recognition of this, the Council adopted a new approach to peace and security. This approach was driven by and focused around major international events which presented complex practical, political and ethical challenges: the Kurds of northern Iraq, the Yugoslav war (particularly in Bosnia and Hercegovina), Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia and, in a different, but critical context, Libya.20 Accordingly, the UN Security Council passed Chapter VII resolutions on a range of problems, approving a remarkably broad and innovative range of measures to deal with them. The Security Council resolutions on Bosnia and Hercegovina, Libya, and Somalia were radical departures in terms of sovereignty in international relations: the extradition of suspected terrorists from Libya (Resolution 748, 1992); the restoration of peace and security within a country (Somalia, Resolution 733, 1992); arms supplies and involvement in war with reference to the former Yugoslavia (Resolutions 713, 1991; 757, 770, 781, all 1992; 816, 820, 836, all 1993). Further, with reference to Somalia, Libya, and then the creation of international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, previously unthinkable definitions of a threat to international peace and security were given. However, although it became clear that the delineation of Chapter VII situations could be far broader than had conventionally been the case, the limits to the expanding understanding of what could entail a threat to international peace and security were not clear.21 What had become clear was that the delineation of Chapter VII situations could be far broader than had conventionally been the case. However, there

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was no indication of what the limits were to the expanding understanding of what could entail a threat to international peace and security. Even if the measures of the early 1990s were high tide marks which would take some time to reach again, or to establish as regular water levels, the fact that they had been made meant that it was certain that at some time in the future when another major tide-turn occurred in the international system, this would be a starting point. The Security Council’s radical measures affecting the privileges associated with the rights of sovereignty involved three areas – military-political intervention, justice, and governance. Military-political intervention changed enormously and was accompanied by judicial measures (inter alia to create ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda) and taking on full responsibility for governance in Kosovo and East Timor, in addition to partial responsibility in other places. This change ran throughout the 1990s. Although a number of critics have casually and erroneously judged that there was a great spurt of activity in the first part of the 1990s, which then fell away, the reality has been different. The scale and scope of interventions expanded throughout the period, while some of the most radical UN Security Council actions were taken in the second half of it. Although often not noticed by scholars who judged there to be an end to such activity in or around 1995, radical resolutions continued into the second half of the 1990s. Those in the second half included the series of resolutions against Afghanistan between 1996 and 1999, Sudan in 1996 – perhaps the most radical of all Security Council determinations – Kosovo in 1998–9, East Timor in 1999; and the reiterated resolution over Bosnia and Hercegovina first made in 1995.22 As the twenty-first century arrived with big bangs in New York and Virginia in September 2001, the trend did not stop, with new resolutions (1368 and 1373) appearing to confirm an important shift regarding terrorism and self-defence, as well as non-state aggressors, at least implicitly. Security Council resolutions in these cases were essential departures in terms of sovereignty and, crucially, the management of international peace and security. Even where the Security Council had not initially sanctioned collective action, it was able to add to an emerging arrangement where regional bodies took practical responsibility for crisis situations. In those cases, the UN’s role was limited to monitoring the activity of the regional force. In the cases of Bosnia, Georgia, Liberia, and Kosovo, the Security Council authorised action, but regional arrangements began to work with the UN as an organisation and then on their own, under a Security Council mandate (with some UN observers alongside). Regional activity filled a gap between the needs of a situation, UN organisational capacity to act, and the UN Security Council’s ability to authorise action.

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The new use of Chapter VII powers, turning on the nexus of international security, international politics, and international law, represented a new stage in efforts to protect states and international society. By redefining what constituted a threat to international peace and security – and, by definition, therefore, to the states that formed international society – the UN Security Council revolutionised the governing principle that protected states and the order upon which they depended. The old notion, underpinned by sovereignty, had been to protect the state against interference within its domestic jurisdiction and to maintain order by taking measures to stop external action – most notably armed aggression – against states, which thereby disturbed the peace. The priority was the need to tackle problems with an internal source. This meant preventing internal disturbance infecting the international body and affecting the majority of states that depend on the order, whether or not this was contingent overspill from internal conflicts disrupting order.23 It also meant tackling regimes that posed questions for the international system. And it meant tackling more nebulous not-state threats, irrespective of the state boundaries from which they emanated. Especially during and after the NATO campaign in Kosovo, questions were raised about whether there existed a legal right, or duty, to humanitarian intervention. If so, who should decide about the existence or not of the need, or the justness of the cause? Who should act and under whose authority? Most significantly, what is the role of the UN and in particular of the Security Council, assigned with ‘the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.’24 Within this context, the Government of Canada responded to the request of the Secretary-General for a new consensus to ‘forge unity’ around the principle and process involved.25 Together with a group of scholars and foundations, Canada announced at the General Assembly in September 2001 the establishment of The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS).26 The Commission was tasked with a variety of questions surrounding the legal, moral, political dimensions of humanitarian intervention and to make recommendations.27 The final report, entitled ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ was completed just before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.28 The crux of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was that: ‘sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe – from mass murder and rape, from starvation – but that when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states.’29 R2P found its way into the Secretary-General’s September 2004 report, ‘A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility’, and in March 2005, the Millennium Summit report, ‘In Larger Freedom, Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All’ reaffirmed the emerging norm (as

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emphasised in the previous report of the High Level Panel, para. 203) of the Responsibility to Protect incumbent on the state concerned and secondarily by the international community acting under UN auspices.30 Finally, in September 2005 the General Assembly issued the World Summit Outcome.31 In paragraphs 138–139, the General Assembly reiterated the primary responsibility conferred upon the State concerned to protect people within its own borders, and a secondary responsibility to be undertaken by the international community where the state failed to exercise its responsibility, but only if expressly authorised by the Security Council to do so.32 Almost four years later in January 2009, the Secretary-General published his report on the implementation of the R2P concept where he outlined a three pillar strategy: Pillar I was the protection responsibilities of the State (sect. II); Pillar II was international assistance and capacity-building (sect. III); and Pillar III was timely and decisive response (sect. IV).33 The first pillar reflects the first three sentences of paragraph 138 of the Outcome document that: Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it.34

UN Security Council Resolution 1674, in April 2006, on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (POC), was the first official invocation of R2P by the Security Council, whereas the landmark Security Council Resolution 2150 on the Prevention and Fight against Genocide, highlighted the importance of the R2P concept more broadly. Similarly, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution on R2P in June 2009, whereas the mandate of a special adviser on R2P was established in 2007. Since 2006, there have been calls for the application of R2P in several crisis situations, including Darfur, Central African Republic, Burma, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria, and Gaza. Especially with regard to Libya and Syria, the Human Rights Council also emphasised the role of R2P. On the one hand, the SC resolution on Libya tested the limits of R2P regarding the scope of the protection of civilians and its implication for a legal ‘right’ of regime change beyond the strict idea of security.35 Several states opposed the over-stretching interpretation of civilian protection, whereas the subsequent inaction in Syria was also read as ‘collateral damage’ from the hyperactivity in Libya.36 The Syria situation on the other hand, reflects the old debate on the morality of the veto powers before the Security Council and the alternative responsibility to bypass those impediments in situations of gross violations of human rights that reach the threshold of core international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.37

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There, the juxtaposition of jus ad bellum and jus in bello rhetoric, and the call for international criminal intervention as a tool to end impunity but also to contribute to regime change, revealed an interesting normative trend, where the mixed usage of several legal norms obfuscates political motives and interests in the name of humanity.

7.4 CONCLUSION Two decades into the twenty-first century, the concept of the threat to international peace and security has evolved further. Phenomena such as massive forced displacement and statelessness, protracted civil and internationalised wars, climate change and degradation, terrorism and extreme ideology, poverty and inequality, pandemics but also misinformation/disinformation campaigns during peace and war times have raised serious questions about the future of international peace and security. In an era of globalisation and intense interconnection, the answer for some politicians is to build actual or artificial borders while invoking a conservative/populist understanding of state sovereignty (e.g. Make America Great Again and Brexit). Multilateralism appears to be challenged, while illiberal leaders claiming to act ‘in the name of the people’ doubt some of the fundamental premises of the post-Second World War and post-Cold War liberal international order. The Russian expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a grim reminder of the fragility of international peace and security. Ukraine’s sovereignty was violated and a brutal conflict ensued, in which there were widespread reports of deliberate targeting of civilians and other alleged war crimes. The concept of a threat to international peace and security reflects a more nuanced picture where traditional elements such as territorial sovereignty merge with contemporary ones of human security and protection. Additionally, there appears to be an ideological conflict between a liberal (albeit imperfect) conception of international order and an illiberal one where human rights, democracy, and tolerance are under threat. As we write the final sentences of this short chapter, the question of a nuclear escalation may have returned. Some red lines have already been crossed and the vision of the drafters of the UN Charter that enshrined the cornerstone principles of non-intervention and non-use of force that underpinned international peace and security need to be firmly reiterated and defended against illusionary voices of limitless power and domination.

NOTES 1.

For discussion on which the present analysis draws, see James Gow, ‘A Revolution in International Affairs?’, Security Dialogue 30, 3 (2000), pp.1‒10.

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

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‘Statement of the Heads of State and Government of the United Nations Security Council’, United Nations Security Council (S/23500), 31 January 1992. Alan James, ‘Sovereignty in Eastern Europe’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 20, 1 (1991) pp.81–89. Michael Ross Fowler and Julie Marie Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and the Application of the Concept of Sovereignty (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p.12, quoted in Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p.16. Krasner, in Sovereignty (pp. 9‒25), emphasises two versions of sovereignty, what he calls international legal sovereignty and what he terms Westphalian sovereignty, but he omits to note that these are merely two faces of the same coin. See e.g. Gidon Gottlieb, Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflicts and the Decline of Sovereignty (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993). Cf. Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanduno (eds.), Beyond Westphalia?: State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). See G. John Ikenberry, ‘The Myth of Post-Cold War Chaos’, Foreign Affairs, 75, 3 (1996), pp.79‒91. For a summary of such views in the first half of the twentieth century, see Alfred Cobban, The Nation-State and National Self-Determination (London: Collins, 1969), p.134. Georg Sørensen, ‘Sovereignty: Change and Continuity in a Fundamental Institution’, in Robert Jackson (ed.), Sovereignty at the Millenium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp.168‒182. See Harvey Starr, Anarchy, Order and Integration: How to Manage Interdependence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), p.86. See James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.28. Benedict Kingsbury, ‘Claims by Non-state Groups in International Law’, Cornell International Law Journal, 25, 3 (1992), pp.481‒513. See James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (London: Hurst and Co., 1997), Chapter 4. James A. Baker III with Thomas M. Franck, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989‒1992 (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1996), claimed that in a three and half year period, while he was pathfinder-in-chief, the ‘very nature’ of the international system was transformed. Ikenberry, ‘Post-Cold War Chaos’, p.81. Collective security must be understood as a particular concept, based on the mission to prevent or limit war in the international state system. It is intended to operate according to a mechanism where all states have a vested interest in peace and so agree that should any one of their number forget or overlook this vested interest and commit and act of aggression against another state, all states would join together to restore the status quo ante. This was the idea that underpinned the creation of the United Nations and which came closest to reality in practice after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Collective security is sometimes used to refer to collective defence arrangements such as NATO, given that the Alliance is collective and concerned with security. However, given the specificity of the concept of collective security, it is preferable to avoid such usage. For discussion

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of the concept, see Ines L. Claude Jr, Power in International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962). 18. Ken Booth, ‘Human Wrongs and International Relations’, International Affairs, 71, 1 (1995), p.117; Robert Kaplan ‘The Coming Anarchy’, The Atlantic Monthly, 273 (1994), pp.44‒76; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Scribner’s, 1993). 19. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), p.806. 20. See: Paul Fifoot, ‘Functions and Powers, and Inventions: UN Action in Respect of Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention’, in Nigel Rodley (ed.), To Loose the Bands of Wickedness: International Intervention in Defence of Human Rights (London: Brassey’s, 1992); Jarat Chopra and T.C. Weiss, ‘Sovereignty is No Longer Sacrosanct: Codifying Humanitarian Intervention’, Ethics and International Affairs, 6 (1992), pp.95‒117; Gregory H. Fox, ‘New Approaches to International Human Rights: The Sovereign State Revisited’, in Sohail H. Hashmi (ed.), State Sovereignty: Change and Assistance in International Relations (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); Rein Müllerson, Ordering Anarchy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 2000). 21. The Libyan case concerned the extradition of suspected terrorists to either the US or the UK from Libya in connection with the Lockerbie bombing incident (Resolution 748, 1992). Tripoli’s failure to hand over the two suspects was taken by the Security Council to constitute a threat to international peace and security. This seemed to be straining the limits of the Security Council’s power – even appearing to be an abuse, given that the US and the UK were Permanent Members of the Security Council. However, Libya’s challenge to this action at the International Court of Justice resulted in a finding that the Council was supreme – in effect, sovereign: it defined international law regarding matters of international peace and security when it took action under Chapter VII. This confirmed both the Security Council’s powers and set a tide mark for the meaning of the key phrase ‘threat to international peace and security’: it could even mean the presence of two individuals within a country. Libya’s appeal to the International Court of Justice was rejected on the grounds that, in matters of international peace and security, the Security Council held the trump cards. 22. See Security Council Resolutions 1076, 1189, 1193, 1214 and especially 1267 and 1269 (15 and 19 October 1999 respectively) on Afghanistan; 1070 on Sudan; 1199, 1203 and 1244 on Kosovo; 1264 and 1272 on East Timor; and 1031, 1088, 1174 and 1247 on Bosnia and Hercegovina. 23. NATO Secretary General Robertson, ‘Interview with Jonathan Dimbleby’, London Weekend Television, 11 June 2000. 24. See Article 24 of UN Charter. 25. See ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001). 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., p.viii. 30. Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, ‘A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility’, United Nations (U.N.Doc.A/59/565), 2 December 2004; Kofi Annan, ‘In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All’, United Nations General Assembly (U.N. Doc. A/59/2005), 21 March 2005, p.135.

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31. See Resolution 60/1, United Nations General Assembly, 24 October 2005. 32. Ibid., paragraphs 138‒139. 33. Ban Ki-moon, ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect’, United Nations General Assembly (U.N. Doc. A/63/677), 12 January 2009. 34. Resolution 60/1. 35. See Alex Bellamy, ‘Libya and the Responsibility to Protect: The Exception and the Norm’, Ethics & International Affairs, 25, 3 (2011), pp.263‒269; Spencer Zifcak, ‘The Responsibility to Protect after Libya and Syria’, Melbourne Journal of International Law, 13, 1 (2012), pp.59‒93; Bruno Pommier, ‘The Use of Force to Protect Civilians and Humanitarian Action: The Case of Libya and Beyond’, International Review of the Red Cross, 93, 884 (2011), p.1063. 36. Graham Cronogue, ‘Responsibility to Protect: Syria, The Law, Politics, and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention Post-Libya’, Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies, 3, 1 (2012), pp.124‒159. 37. Zifcak, ‘Responsibility to Protect’, p.58.

8. International Relations and War: complexity, interdisciplinarity and analytical plurality Pablo de Orellana International Relations and War (IR & War) refers to a set of questions concerning international politics at their intersection with conflict. As offered to our students in the Master’s course of the same title, it concerns an interdisciplinary space between the usually more separate study of International Relations (IR), War Studies, History, and international practices such as diplomacy. Our take on this complex and challenging field involves engaging with a set of issues that could be summarised as an advanced investigation into the nexus between international politics and violence, seen both historically and contemporarily. This chapter introduces and considers the key issues at stake in thinking about the nexus between international politics and violence, and the tools necessary to analyse this political and practical space. The international politics–violence nexus can be thought of as a function of the relationship between the ideas that drive practices, and the impact of practices on these ideas. Studying it necessitates approaches and analytical methods from various disciplines, which is why at War Studies we research and study IR & War as an interdisciplinary set of concerns. Advances in scholarship and its tools to analyse international politics and conflict over the past three decades, particularly since the end of the Cold War, have led many to reject simplistic visions of international politics and violence as functions of specific interpretations of human nature, be it evil and self-interested, driven by the desire for survival, or good-natured, driven by respect for human dignity. The impact of these ideas is itself a powerful example of how ideas about international relations can shape their practice, suggesting that humans do as they think rather than as they are. If, for example, one thinks that international relations is a zero-sum struggle for ethnic survival, they will act in consequence, and this behaviour, particularly if widespread, will appear convincing evidence that the world is indeed driven by ethnic survival. However, our interdisciplinary approach suggests, in its inclusion of history, that states have existed and still exist for many reasons besides ethnic defence, raising the 110

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need to explore for whom and why practices such as government, diplomacy and war are performed, how they are executed, and how their practice affects them in return. We are dealing, therefore, with a machinery consisting of concepts and practices. This sounds theoretical because it is. Not necessarily the theories of scholars, though, but rather in reference to the ideas that order those practices. Even when habitual, no political action is carried out without reference to a system of thought that impels it (driving it to being done), makes sense of it (why it must be), and governs its practice (how). Diplomacy is an excellent example of this mutually constitutive cycle known as theory–praxis: the practice of diplomacy represents the state’s government and its interests. Conversely, the state exists internationally because its representatives claim it does and put its existence in practice by doing relations with others.1 This loop of theory and practice produces the state in its international sense, and thus also international relations. This means that it is crucial to always keep in mind the ideas behind practices, but also how practices shape concepts of politics, including the separation between national and international. Nowhere is the power of the theory–praxis link more visible than in practices of violence. When practised on behalf of the state they take on a sacred status due to their conceptualisation as performed on behalf of the collective for its survival, defence and other interests. And yet, war and other forms of violence on behalf of a collective remain deeply political practices, ‘a continuation of politics by other means’,2 that in turn shape politics through the very threat of their existence – ‘war by other means’.3 Nor is the separation from domestic politics clear-cut, as evident in civil wars, revolutions and insurgencies, all performed on behalf of the collective identity and yet at least partly against it, revealing that in such events the separation between inside/outside is malleable, changeable and contingent and should not be taken as given. Such is the power of the ideas driving our political actions. This chapter first surveys the key issues and challenges to the study of the IR–war nexus identified in the scholarly literature. This section explores the unusual examples of a medieval Italian city-state and the Afghan Taliban to discuss the emergence of ever more sophisticated appreciation of social, political, and conflictual complexity that killed off early 2000s dreams of a simplified understanding of international relations that followed the end of Cold War bipolarity. The second section explores these emerging approaches from the perspective of their contributions to understanding and analysis of the IR and War nexus, before briefly surveying emerging challenges to contemporary international relations and conflict, which range from ethno-nationalist ideologies to the impact of cyber communications. In conclusion, this chapter reiterates its case for embracing interdisciplinary, theoretical and analytical plurality, complexity and the tools needed to decode it.

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A MEDIEVAL REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION AND TALIBAN INSURGENCY: EXPLORING KEY ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WAR

A key issue never to take for granted is the state. Why and how do they exist? In 1192, the tiny city of Noli, Italy, rebelled against its feudal masters, the House of Del Carretto. Though only four square kilometres and counting only a few thousand inhabitants, it remained free of aristocratic masters, established a thriving republic with an elected governing council, and armed a fleet. It achieved remarkable commercial success, wealth, and, in a sign of very real medieval influence, it even gained its own bishop. This was helped by major international alliances with the Church and Genoa, which ensured Noli’s independence and republican structure until 1792, when Napoleon invaded the North of Italy.4 The Taliban, on the other hand, emerged from the civil war that followed the 1989 Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. As with other Mujahideen groups, their anti-Soviet stance predated the Soviet invasion, and centred on the contestation of Afghanistan’s 1960s‒70s liberal social reforms. The Taliban insurgency fought other groups and achieved power in the 1990s, and again in 2021, defying the expectations of analysts and scholars alike. Examples like these are difficult for traditional IR theories, especially Realist (because they question the naturality and existence of the state as contingent), Liberal (because it is not based on claims for immanent rights) and Ethno-nationalist theories (because they do not make reference to an ethnic nation). They, and many others, call for broader, less structural perspectives that can analyse and appreciate cases that do not conform to the Western nation-state frame, and problematise its assumptions. Neither Republican Noli, nor the Taliban Emirate nearly 1,000 years later, were built on the claim of Classical Realist interests, Neo-Realist structured state struggles, or Liberal rights and trade. The idea behind Noli’s republicanism was Guelphism, a medieval Italian ideology that advocated a city-state based on assemblies of locally elected notables, rather than Imperial, monarchical or aristocratic control. The Taliban fought on the basis that saving the souls of Afghans required the imposition of their severe vision of Islamic law, thus making religious governance the governance of the state. These examples show how the state, the central unit of the study of international relations and war, is by itself insufficient as a frame of reference, conceptualisation, and analysis to understand its constitution, emergence, and relations with others. This type of analysis does not only problematise Liberalism and Realism. The War on Terror, which did not concern state-to-state war as such and had huge impacts on the countries waging it, laid to rest early 2000s ideas of

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simplifying the study of IR after what had been thought was the structural hiatus of the Cold War. Among these, we find the Liberal frame in which the whole world was heading for a peaceful free-trade future known as ‘the End of History’,5 and conversely the neo-Spenglerian ethno-nationalist ‘Clash of Civilisations’,6 which presaged a return to a world order where identities struggle for survival. They too were based on claims about human nature in interpreting the dynamics of international politics and conflict. Noli, the Taliban and other examples do not only challenge the vision of natural essence and destiny in politics, but force us to acknowledge that the line between the domestic and the international is constituted. Citizens of Noli did not see themselves as religiously, ethnically, or culturally different from their neighbours in the states of Savona, Genoa, or Finale, but nonetheless sought and obtained independent control over their city affairs. Nearly a millennium later, the Taliban’s insurgency built on the backlash against the 1960–70s liberalisation of Afghan society and the Soviet war to propose the strictest and most pervasive interpretation of religious and traditional life. For effective understanding of such complex political forces, it is necessary to address interrelated and cross-sectional concerns, from Nolese medieval trade to Taliban religious revivalism, their cross-border dimensions, and the ways in which they constitute, impact, and result from other dynamics. Key scholarly advances address this deficit, not always in rejection of previous approaches and sometimes in combination, by studying the relationship between ideas, politics as actions, and political practices, and the ways in which they make and are made by international relations. How actors from states to insurgents practise conflict raises questions that cannot be answered with state-centric models alone. Noli, like many Italian republics, swelled its ranks with professional mercenaries, with the lack of state control, accountability, and even potential for conflict promotion that such an approach entailed.7 The Taliban also cross traditional state lines not only in being an insurgency, but also in their cross-border bases in Pakistan, funding, links to even less conventional groups, and their recruitment of volunteers from Central Asia and beyond. This is one of the reasons that the Revolution in Military Affairs, a military doctrine that envisaged that advanced smart use of technology-enhanced force would make large-scale ground force operations obsolete, has partially failed. The Taliban, as with the Iraqi insurgency in the 2000s, showed that a politically determined ground campaign could be effective, revealing the extent to which the Revolution in Military Affairs was only relevant to some state-to-state conflicts and that no victory of arms can achieve a political goal and settlement on its own. Many twenty-first-century ‘unconventional’ conflicts hold the same lessons, from Russian hybrid warfare in its ‘near abroad’ to the use of state-sponsored mercenaries to influence conflicts such as Libya, challenging the linearity of war

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misleadingly established by the contrast between the total (but rare) nature of the Second World War and ‘small’, ‘unconventional’, or ‘civil’ wars, raising the need to pay attention to the many links and dynamics between political actions and all forms of violence such as terrorism, sexual violence and raiding when studying war.8 This raises more dimensions to consider: a plethora of identities, from social, to ethnic, to cultural and gendered – not just as cases of injustice, but as vital aspects of the constitution and practice of conflict. In the latest wave of nationalism it is evident how such issues, whether concerning equality status for women and minorities, or the determined drive of ethno-nationalists to prevent it and return to past supremacy, are key drivers of politics. They have vast domestic effects but, furthermore, also international ones, and can impact the structure of international relations, as with the Visegrad Group’s rejection of European norms or China and Russia’s open rejection of international norms, which transpose the destruction of rights-based equalities at home to relationships among states. These considerations raise the need to question what makes something international. A focus on practices is vital. A rebellion in Noli made it a Republic, which then enacted its independence in diplomacy, alliances, even participating in a crusade. The Taliban went from insurgents, to state, back to insurgency, and after their 2021 victory back to statehood, which they enacted in international practices. In both cases their accession to power turned domestic actors into international actors. The converse is also true, and the international makes the national: Noli needed help to remain independent from their former feudal overlords, and a powerful alliance with Genoa helped them achieve the survival of their domestic Republicanism, while the post-Napoleon 1815 Congress of Vienna ended Noli’s independence. We are therefore looking at a complex matrix of violence, practices, ideas; mutually constitutive and yet discontinuous and ever changing. The field, however, has evolved to analyse it: as embracing multi-level and intersectional complexity is not an option, it’s a vital analytical necessity. Though approaches like Realism, Liberalism, and Marxism feel incomplete in their capacity to provide answers, their questions on the management of power, rights, and wealth remain vital. Renaissance theorist and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli raised similar concerns, arguing that politics were defined by violence, circumstance, and skill: a vast array of practices, individuals, contingencies and ideas – not just the ‘Machiavellian’ instrumentalism his work is frequently reduced to.9 Having rejected subjective essentialisation built around reductive claims to universal dynamics such as human nature, racial struggle, or even the nature of states, it does remain relevant to ask why such claims are so politically attractive to theorists and politicians. Machiavelli would have

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answered that simplicity is popular and populist, as he suggested when analysing two Florentine populist movements.10 Embracing interdisciplinary complexity, as this chapter advocates, necessitates accounting for the practice of power, from governance to violence; the impact of ideas such as those claiming to be human nature; claims to rights, distribution, wealth, poverty, identity and its meanings; and the discourses through which they are enacted in society. An historical perspective on politics and war is necessary too, as none of these is timeless and unmoving. During the Cold War political, military, and diplomatic thought was highly structured. Each perspective excluded from their analytics factors not inherent to its structural drivers: power and threat in Realism, rights and trade in Liberalism, capital accumulation in Marxism. Driven by the questions explored above, however, later twentieth-century European critical thinkers challenged conceptualisations of society and its attributes as completely self-sufficient structures. Post-structural thought had an immediate impact on the study of literature and language, thinking about self, psychology, culture, society, power, governance, and the norms informing them. These conceptual and methodological challenges enabled analysis of how society idealises, constitutes, implements, and enforces norms. This helped account for the role of governmentality, political ideas, racial, geographical, and other constructions of identity in social, political, historical, and literary practices,11 the construction of democratic ideas,12 the social and political construction of gender,13 history,14 and the ways in which social structures put them in practice.15 From the 1980s onwards these were imported into Political Science, International Relations and War Studies to research ideas of conflict and threat,16 state-making,17 the impact of identity on contemporary politics and violence,18 the impact of colonialism in the postcolonial era,19 diplomacy,20 and the construction of entire countries in political histories.21 These advances made it possible to analyse how key concepts like sovereignty are constructed and maintained. As the Cold War ended, with the emergence of Constructivism the mainstream of American IR too drew closer to accounting for the social construction of power politics.22 In approaches that acknowledge the social construction of conflict and international relations like the English School, however, the challenge remains methodological. This problem lies at the very heart of IR and War Studies. Being mid-twentieth-century derivatives of Political Science and History, they lack their own methodological toolkit and have long drawn on those of others. Therefore, on our quest to analyse IR, conflict, and security, we continue to draw on, adapt and learn from concepts, methods, and approaches from other disciplines like History, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Literature. The validity and contribution of each development must be proven, which is why debate between

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different perspectives and traditions is vital and, as Bourdieu put it, helps us ‘pay the empirical price’.23 To discuss how the above-outlined interdisciplinary approaches work, what they would focus on, and the insights they would seek, it is worth returning to the Medieval Republic of Noli and today’s Taliban. That they are not ‘normal’ international actors helps highlight that uniqueness of circumstances, contingencies, and politics should be embraced in understanding each international actor, not rejected in favour of broad common denominators.

8.2

EMBRACING ANALYTICAL COMPLEXITY: ANALYSING STATEHOOD, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WAR

The Taliban fought an insurgency against the most advanced forces in the world and won a political victory. This is inseparable from the conditions that framed the conflict: an intervention, short of an all-out effort, to discipline Afghanistan with loosely defined objectives. The vagueness of its objectives, combined with limited domestic consent and support, raise the question of what the purpose of military force is, what its politics are for the country sending the force, as well as for the subject, and, more specifically in this case, what the role of military operations was in the broader context of the War on Terror. First, enquiry about war should be inseparable from how it is and has been thought of in different places across time.24 Second, it is a mistake to see its practice as entirely divorced from governance, as demonstrated by the Taliban and other rebels’ demonstrations of their capacity to govern as key to their victories, and studied through sociological tools in the emerging sociological literature on Military–Civilian relations.25 This in turn raises the need to understand its political and social conditions of possibility, and their impacts on military practices. These conditions concern far more than morale; they are political. They feed back into military practice, from training games, to the visibility of war itself, and even in extreme tactics such as suicide attacks, which highlight the extent to which even the minute practice of war is political, conceptual, and personal.26 The latest Afghanistan war has been examined as a security operation, imperial, hegemonic, and even an exercise in futility lacking concrete political objectives.27 While the War on Terror included several of these to varying degrees, it was also enabled by ideas of ethical conflict from the 1990s, which the decade-long global set of interventions in the 2000s ended up undermining.28 It might appear difficult to know how and why Noli was motivated to war, but it did happen beyond immediate defence, for example when it joined the crusades. As with Afghanistan in 2001, this was clearly not because the Emir of Egypt was about to invade Noli. These dynamics can be researched

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through their lasting cultural impacts, in relation to the historical record, which reminds us that these approaches are to be seen as part of a plethora, related to one another, and productively cutting across each other. Tony Blair argued that invading Afghanistan and Iraq was needed to prevent potential future terrorist attacks. Whether true or not, such discourses help locate the contiguity of war not only with politics, but also with other practices of power, particularly control and security. These cannot be divorced from how the threat is conceptualised, especially when whole countries and their populations came to be the subject of security efforts, military and otherwise. These are not simply images of danger but involve representation and government of postcolonial subjects that can in turn lead to resistance. These discourses drew on a history of viewing Muslim subjects that is worth researching for its contemporary impacts, and influence on security policy. The Critical Security literature has worked extensively on linking these threads, from war to the many aspects of the securitisation of subjects, spaces, infrastructures, and even ideas, a complex web of subjectivity in which even fantasy plays a role.29 Studies have explored the consequences of securitisation on what they purportedly defended, including democracy, accountability, safety, and human rights.30 The example of Noli reminds us that the renaissance city-state could not have securitised anyone because these practices necessitate and emerge from modern structures of government. In a key example, the control of subjects in human movements such as migration, Noli would not have asked a visiting Dante Alighieri for a passport upon entry, demonstrating the importance of examining security practices.31 A vital state attribute, borders, only truly exists if processes are there to claim and practise it. A border guard asking for your passport practises the authority that a state claims over individuals, demonstrating how governmentality is implicated in governing human bodies, their life, and identity – biopolitics.32 This line of questioning raises the vital role of gender in security discourses and international practices more broadly, often less visible but formative of key ideas and discourses in the deeply and often brutally gendered practices and study of war and security.33 Renaissance Noli not requiring passports for entry also challenges the ‘givenness’ of modern international practices. They do not occur unless there are ideas as to why and how to have them, and which allocate them in relation to identity and the state. A core conceptualisation is identity and difference, which produces in turn how we think of nation, gender, social roles and expectations, sovereignty and even entire locales of the world. The way in which each identity is constructed at a given time is vital to contemporary security, and can and should be investigated. Older ideas of identity such as race, empire and imperialism impact contemporary conceptualisations of security. Crucially, the postcolonial literature would warn of assumptions that identity – and thus state, security, etc. – are the same everywhere.34 Being so

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radically different, Taliban ideas of state and identity are a telling example and researching them and their history not only reveals their origins, but most importantly their functioning.35 Looking bottom-up is also of vital importance, for politics such as anti-migrant nationalism emerge with and through social practices, norms and behaviours that are constituted by and with top-down political discourses.36 Understanding the political construction of identity allows analysis of its uses in international practices. In diplomacy for example Noli punched above its tiny weight by leveraging its relationships across the Mediterranean. This remains true of many diplomatic turnarounds today, and research has shown precisely how communicating descriptions of identity, especially of enemies and friends, why you should join us against so-and-so in other words, can achieve such outcomes.37 Often ignored, treated as a machinery at the disposal of a great strategist, the human means of diplomacy should be treated as a vital part of the constitution of international relations,38 as should the material means of diplomacy.39 Crucially, diplomacy itself should be considered as a sociological field of practice, participation in which depends upon delicate practices, rules, norms, sites, and hierarchies.40 Diplomacy can often – as shown by Taliban Mullahs turned negotiators in Doha, their links to international Jihadi networks, or Noli’s far-sailing merchants carrying diplomatic letters across the Mediterranean – transcend its formal settings by adjoining and entering relevant fields of practice, their norms, habits and interests.

8.3

THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WAR

What does the future hold for the study of international politics and conflict? We should first highlight the emergence of novel material challenges. Though the threat of cyberwar might have been overstated and has simply joined existing conflict, sabotage, and intelligence arsenals, the impact of internet communications is substantial. Most aspects of web-enabled communication are not entirely new, what is novel is their speed and intensity. On the one hand, they can radicalise individuals effectively without organisational commitment, resources, or traces, as shown by ISIS and far-right terrorists.41 Crucially, this means that visible threats like ISIS will have longer lives and greater resilience than expected. On the other hand, it has shown, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and in conspiracies such as Q-Anon, vast capacity to divulge misinformation, and furthermore provide adherents with the discursive means to perpetuate it and develop resilience to countermeasures. When directed by states, campaigns such as Russia’s intervention in the 2016 US Presidential election with the hacking of the Podesta emails, can have significant impacts. Further, encrypted communications have emerged as

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a challenge to law enforcement and anti-terrorism, but also provide safe means of communication, especially across borders, for a variety of less nefarious activities.42 More novel is the speed, scale, and intensity of data collection and movement enabled by the internet, and economic, defence and functional dependence upon it. What could small capabilities like renaissance Noli and Taliban Afghanistan do about their lack of control over the internet? Though such actors cannot curtail, censor, or reinvent the internet as China is doing, they can cut it off, as the Taliban did to close off reactions to protest suppression in Kabul in September 2021, and North African regimes did in 2011. More concerning, however, is the fate of the vast amount of data being collected by countless organisations including governments, private businesses, various data brokers if you are reading or bought this book online, and many others from NGOs to hacker collectives, not to mention governments. When reaching power, the Taliban accessed the vast biometric database accumulated by NATO and allies, which should serve as a rejoinder to the broader benefits of securing data safety and accountability, reigniting debates as to the ultimate value of privacy. Vast challenges await so long as extraction, profitability and unaccountability remain strategic, governmental and legal priorities. The greatest material threat is likely to be climate change and its management. Though the climactic and material impacts are predictable, due to government inaction short of slowing the trend the dynamics it generates are less so. It will stretch international organisations and collaboration to breaking point far more than the COVID-19 pandemic did, which returns us to a key political issue. The response to the pandemic was marked by the increasing influence of nationalist politics and governments around the world, which led to denialist, zero-sum, or simply uncollaborative and competing solutions rather than collaboration. Though the loose assemblage of international institutions currently in place is far from ideal and suffers countless issues, it has held in place by key norms from late 1940s Liberalism such as the unacceptability of annexations, which China and Russia are currently seeking to overturn, and human rights. It has, furthermore, been strained by the dominance of 2000s neoliberal (supply-side free-market) economics, which has aggravated issues from conflict to health and in turn bred increasing inequality and resistance. Contemporary nationalists seek the destruction of norms at the heart of international institutions such as the assumption of equal rights among states, human rights and rules-based relations, which they propose to replace with a return to unregulated survivalist competition.43 If nationalists lead climate change responses, they will reject collaboration to address it, as occurred with the pandemic, further weaken international institutions such as they are, and reject internationalist approaches in favour of nationalist solutions, essentially pushing the problem elsewhere. When unable to address the causes of disaster,

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populist nationalists might have no option but to keep radicalising, potentially leading to internal and external conflicts and to the collapse of several democracies. They might even come under the influence of their extreme wings, known as New Right accelerationists,44 who propose to deal with a collapsing natural world by unleashing a global race war for survival, in the hope of founding pure societies after the apocalypse. These politics, their actors and dynamics should be studied as ideas, practices, societies, and through their impacts. The challenge, I fear, will not be analytical, but a policymaking one.

8.4

CONCLUSION: ANALYTICAL PURGATORY, ANALYTICAL DIVERSITY AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY

The approach here outlined is, of course, my own suggestion. It should remain just that, for you to challenge. Many more are possible, and it would be fair to say that none can grasp the totality of the questions we have outlined on their own. That is the point: we need a plurality of competing and collaborating perspectives to both raise questions and develop analysis. It is challenging because its complexity, interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, and even intertemporality must be understood if what one seeks, hopefully some type of solution to a problem, or perhaps peace, is to be a realistic hope. As a colleague of mine once suggested, no one approach can capture it all. She summed up the problem of addressing the issues of researching, theorising, and analysing international politics and war using an Indian parable: a group of blind men learn about an elephant by touching it, each of them groping at a different part of the body. One describes the creature as a snake, another as a fan, another as a tree trunk. They suspect each other of being dishonest, not realising that only together they have the fuller picture of the subject in question.45 This is one of the reasons why, though I too have my own research interests, passions even, and strong reasons to believe that the ideas of the international drive all else, I too remain a blind scholar and must work with others that have learnt about the rest by exploring another part of the problem. Therefore, this work only makes sense in an environment and scholarly approach that is interdisciplinary, plural, and energetically able to bring together a vast array of analytical perspectives, methods, and thus answers. Finally, let us return one last time to the tiny late medieval and renaissance city-state of Noli. A winding dusty old path leads up to its castle, one of several fortifications that assured its independence. When walking up the steep hill one is faced with the question: what did it take to make townspeople and mercenaries climb up these several hundred metres to fight? The list, like the path, is winding and long: ideas of conflict, of gender, of Noli’s identity no doubt, even if not a national one, fear of conflict, practices, wealth, customs, struc-

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tures of coercion, social links of obligation, affective and emotional structures, technology, even geology. The old path is called via del purgatorio: ‘purgatory lane’. This is an appropriate name for the analytical plurality we too must face to understand their wars and those of our time.

NOTES Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot and I. B. Neumann (eds.), Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p.28. Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended (London: Penguin, 2003), p.47. 3. 4. F. Bandini and M. Darchi, La Repubblica di Noli e l’importanza dei porti minori del Mediterraneo nel Medioevo (Borgo San Lorenzo: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2004). 5. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1993); Paul Musgrave, ‘The Beautiful, Dumb Dream of McDonald’s Peace Theory’, Foreign Policy, 26 November 2020. 6. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Pocket Books, 1997). 7. Mervyn Frost, ‘Democratic States, War and Private Security Companies’, in Joakim Berndtsson and Christopher Kinsey, The Routledge Research Companion to Security Outsourcing (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp.171‒181; Birthe Anders, ‘The Morality of Private War: The Challenge of Private Military and Security Companies’, Parameters, 44, 4 (2014), pp.162–164. 8. Andreas Krieg, ‘The UAE’s “Dogs of War”: Boosting a Small State’s Regional Power Projection’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 33, 1 (2021), pp.152–172. 9. His appropriation by twentieth-century Realists is unjustified, as he saw the national/international as fluid and dependant on what government made of it. See Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi Sopra La Prima Deca Di Tito Livio (Nabu Press, 2009). 10. Gisela Bock, ‘Civil Discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine’, in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurisio Viroli (eds.), Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.181–201. 11. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003). 12. Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso Books, 2020). 13. Judith Butler, ‘Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions’, The Journal of Philosophy, 86, 11 (1989), pp.601–607. 14. Paul Veyne, Writing History: Essay on Epistemology, translated by Mina Moore-Rinvolucri (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1984). 15. Pierre Bourdieu, Science de la science et réflexivité. Cours du Collège de France 2000‒2001 (Paris: Liber, 2001). 16. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (2nd edn, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). 17. Michael J. Shapiro, Reading the Postmodern Polity: Political Theory as Textual Practice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). 18. William E. Connolly, Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 19. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Psychology Press, 1994). 1.

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20. J. Der Derian, Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992). 21. For an introduction see the helpful Jenny Edkins and Nick Vaughan-Williams (eds.) Critical Theorists and International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2009). 22. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, 46, 2 (1992), pp.391–425. 23. Bourdieu, Science de la science et réflexivité; Athanasios Gkoutzioulis, ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: On Foucault’s Notions of Power, Subjectivity, Freedom and Their (Mis)Understanding in IR’, Global Society, 32, 1 (2018), pp.88–110. 24. Jens Bartelson, War in International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 25. Vladimir O. Rukavishnikov and Michael Pugh, ‘Civil-Military Relations’, in Giuseppe Caforio (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of the Military (New York: Springer, 2006), pp.131–149. 26. Nicholas Michelsen, Politics and Suicide: The Philosophy of Political Self-Destruction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). 27. Stephen M. Walt, ‘The Top Five Debriefing Questions About Afghanistan’, Foreign Policy, 9 July 2021. 28. Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2016); Maja Zehfuss, War and the Politics of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 29. For an introduction see Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Claudia Aradau, Jef Huysmans, Andrew Neal and Nadine Voelkner, Critical Security Methods: New Frameworks for Analysis (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). 30. Kirstie Ball, David Lyon and Kevin D. Haggerty, Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). 31. Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (eds.), International Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 32. Jef Huysmans, ‘The European Union and the Securitization of Migration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 38, 5 (2000), pp.751–777; Leonie Ansems de Vries, Re-Imagining a Politics of Life: From Governance of Order to Politics of Movement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). 33. Christine Sylvester, ‘The Art of War/The War Question in (Feminist) IR’, Millennium, 33, 3 (2005), pp.855–878; Victoria M. Basham, ‘Gender, Race, Militarism and Remembrance: The Everyday Geopolitics of the Poppy’, Gender, Place & Culture, 23, 6 (2015), pp.883‒896; Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 34. Bhabha, Location of Culture. 35. Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Axel Heck, ‘Images, Visions and Narrative Identity Formation of ISIS’, Global Discourse, 7, 2–3 (2017), pp.244–259. 36. Emma McCluskey, From Righteousness to Far Right: An Anthropological Rethinking of Critical Security Studies (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019). 37. Jonathan Fisher, ‘Managing Donor Perceptions: Contextualizing Uganda’s 2007 Intervention in Somalia’, African Affairs, 111, 444 (2012), pp.404–423; Pablo

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de Orellana, ‘Retrieving How Diplomacy Writes Subjects, Space and Time: A Methodological Contribution’, European Journal of International Relations 26, 2 (2020), pp.469–494; Pablo de Orellana, The Road to Vietnam (London: I. B.Tauris, 2020). Iver B. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). Jason Dittmer, Diplomatic Material: Affect, Assemblage, and Foreign Policy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017). Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Vincent Pouliot, ‘Power in Practice: Negotiating the International Intervention in Libya’, European Journal of International Relations, 20, 4 (2014), pp.889–911; Vincent Pouliot, International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Brandon Colas, ‘What Does Dabiq Do? ISIS Hermeneutics and Organizational Fractures within Dabiq Magazine’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 40, 3 (2017), pp.173–190. Craig Jarvis, Crypto Wars: The Fight for Privacy in the Digital Age: A Political History of Digital Encryption (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2020). Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen, ‘Reactionary Internationalism: The Philosophy of the New Right’, Review of International Studies, 45, 5 (2019), pp.748–767. Accelerationists are responsible for several acts of terrorism such as the 2019 Christchurch shooting by Brenton Tarrant. Prof Rachel Kerr, the founder of the MA in International Relations and War, in her introductory lecture.

9. International Relations today: a long list of theories! Mervyn Frost Where does the discipline of International Relations (IR) stand today? As we look back over the past 60 years of War Studies, it is also a good opportunity to take stock of a discipline that has recently marked its centenary. What follows is a provocative thumbnail sketch based on my reading of syllabi, textbooks, journals, and monographs in IR over a period of 45 years. A cursory reading of these would suggest that this social science is engaged in an ongoing struggle to assess a rather large range of rival theories all aimed at enhancing our ability to explain and understand international affairs. A quick look at the syllabi for introductory courses in the discipline would confirm this. This preoccupation with theory which has continued from the birth of the modern discipline after the First World War, is, on the face of it, very odd. To see this, let us engage in a thought experiment. Imagine someone, not yet a scholar in IR, with an interest in international affairs deciding to read for a degree in IR. What prompted this step might have been a movie, a history book, a particularly dramatic event or simply an engagement with the endless flow of news about world politics across the many different media available these days. It seems reasonable to assume that on arriving in an academic department devoted to the subject a person might expect to engage with significant international events, historical or contemporary. That this is not a far-fetched assumption is borne out by what I read day in and day out in the personal statements of students from around the world who apply to read for degrees in IR here in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. Here is what I take to be a typical list of what might be of interest to would-be students of the subject: the causes of the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the ongoing war in the People’s Republic of Congo; the rise and demise of the bipolar world order, the emergence of the practice of nuclear deterrence, the unfolding of the process of de-colonisation by erstwhile empires, the spectacular increase in the number of sovereign states in the world, an examination of the processes that lead to the establishment of international organisations such as the UN and the EU, the rise of new great powers such as China and India, the phenomenon of 124

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failed states (mainly in Africa), the increase in the scale of refugee flows in several continents, the international dimensions of the climate crisis, the significance of the emergence of new social media for world politics in general, and the dramatic rise of global capitalism (with an ever greater proportion of the total global capital falling into the hands of fewer and fewer people). The list goes on and on. What happens though when students arrive to begin their degree programmes in IR is surprising. Instead of engaging directly with the topics listed, they are introduced to a whole series of theories, concepts and methods that have been developed to throw light on what happens in the international domain. The list of real-world problems is far removed from the reading required of the student. An obvious question arises at this point: Is knowledge of this wide range of theories a necessary first step to equip incoming students to become expert in the analysis of real-world events in international affairs? Would it not be better to introduce students to the best available theory of international affairs and then teach them how to apply this to real-world problems? Why has there been a 100-year debate about the merits of the rival theories? Surely the best brains in the field ought to have weeded out weak theories by now and settled on which of the contenders is the strongest. Instead of a ‘weeding out’, the opposite has happened. There has been a proliferation of new theories that have been added to the already large canon. This expansion continues apace. How might we interpret this phenomenon? Does it signal an abject failure of the discipline? Does it indicate that those who pay good money to read for degrees in IR are wasting their cash? In search of answers let us look more closely at the century of struggle that has bedevilled the discipline. When I first entered the discipline, the focus of the standard textbooks was typically on the following theories: realist theory, neo-realist theory, liberal theory, neo-institutional theory, the so-called ‘English School’ approaches, and Marxist theory. These were presented as tools which would enable the novice to make sense of the activity in the international domain. Broadly speaking they were aimed at explaining why things happened as they did in the real/ empirical world of international affairs. Some of the theories were thoroughly positivist (involving the collection of data, the development of covering laws which were then to be tested against the data) whereas others were empirical in the sense extolled by historians who focussed on what individuals did, that is, on their actions. These could be studied in an objective empirical way. The novice would soon realise that the platter of theories on offer was not being presented as a rich ‘pick and mix’ spread to be adopted or not according to taste. Instead, the theories were presented as rivals – each claiming that the others were wrong in fundamental ways. Each theory was linked to a set of ‘super-professors’ who published standard texts and sought to recruit students to their schools of thought. To complicate matters further, each of the theories

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came bundled with rival ethical positions which set out the primary values that were (or should be) pursued by actors in the international domain. For example, realists asserted the primacy of ‘security’ and ‘order’ which had to be pursued by all means, and, at the limit, by military force. Liberal theories asserted the primacy (and virtue) of individual rights and the use of these to pursue economic power in the global free market. This value might be pursued by individuals, corporations, and/or states. The ethical position associated with the liberal stance was one that extolled the virtue of the liberties that actors in the market enjoyed. Marxist international theory made the case for revolution on a global scale that would usher in a post-capitalist world in which equality would be secured for all. The traditional approaches took the international domain to be populated with entities that could be observed empirically prior to the development of theories designed to explain how they interacted with one another. Typical of the primary entities taken as ‘the given’ were states, international organisations, corporations, individuals and so on. The traditional theorists then sought to develop theories to explain the inter-relationships between these actors that we have all encountered in the real world. The theoretical approaches to the study of international facts that I described in the previous paragraph are what scholars entering the discipline might have encountered 40 years ago. Since then, a whole new tranche of theories has been developed in IR. An umbrella concept that more-or-less captures what is common to these theories is ‘critical.’ These ‘critical’ theories accuse the traditional theories of failing to take into account the role of theory itself in the constitution of the international social facts which are the object of study for scholars in IR. Sometimes, instead of referring to the constitutive role of theory, reference is made to the constitutive role of languages, discourses, or narratives. These terms are often used interchangeably. What critical theories stress (and it must be noted that there is a range of different theories in this class) is that the things which IR scholars take to be the objects to be studied (‘the facts’), are actors and their actions. These are informed by theories which the actors hold about the social world in which they find themselves. So, for example, superpowers and great powers relate to one another in terms of a theory about how actors like them maintain order and balances of power. The reality created by these actors rests on the language (discourse, narrative) they use to describe the social world in which they find themselves. This language includes theories about how things work in the international domain. A scholar studying these international actors must therefore understand the ideas that guide their actions. This is taken to be true of all the components of that social reality that comprises what is sometimes referred to as the ‘the international’. The facts to be studied (wars, trade, diplomacy, international organisations, states, global political movements, and so on) consist of people interacting

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with one another in terms of certain theories/languages/discourses/narratives which they hold, and which have been developed through long complicated histories. In other words, scholars do not first ascertain some international facts and then attempt to explain them using their preferred theory, instead they have to ascertain what theories constitute the actors and their actions. The key question then for someone launching an inquiry into some sphere of activity in the international domain must be: What are they doing? To answer this, the scholar has to gain an understanding of the language the actors use to make sense of their actions – to give meaning to what they do. So, when trying to understand an individual action such as a government’s decision to go to war, they must first understand the language in which the actor (in this case a government) portrays the decision itself and the actions that follow it, as an instance of ‘going to war.’1 A key point, in this line of argument, is that the language is not a ‘framing’ of a reality that was known prior to understanding the language – a reality that was in some sense naturally given. Instead, the language must be understood as itself ‘doing’ something, in this case ordering the world in one way rather than another. An implication of this is that a different language/theory/narrative/ discourse could structure the social world of the international in a different way. Theorists who have taken this ‘critical’ turn, point out that some constitutive narratives in contemporary IR do things that are ethically objectionable. For example, the narratives are silent about whole classes of people such as women (and people occupying other gender identities) and about ethnic and religious groups and their role in world affairs. Furthermore, they often hide the key role of those who own the lion’s share of global capital and fudge the links between wealth and authority. In short, critical theorists highlight how the languages that constitute our international arrangements are never neutral. Why is this point about what languages/discourses/narratives do important? It puts a stop to the following kind of rhetorical move, the move made by realists, for example, to say that the international domain that they present is given, fixed, or natural – that this international order is the reality which we have to confront. The critical theorists say in effect, yes, it is the real world, but it is made real by the language used by the participants in it. Languages are not static and given for all time. They can be changed and indeed they do change over time. The modern state system is the outcome of a long history involving many battles along the way. The crucial upshot of this is that the critical theorists’ focus on the constitutive role of language opens a space for politics where politics is understood as thought and action directed towards changing the constitutive rules of a given social practice. In summary then the critical theories to which novice IR scholars are introduced are designed to make them self-reflexive about the role that theory itself

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plays in the international arrangements in which they find themselves and to explore the possibility of reforming our international practices seen as social wholes.

9.1

A PITFALL TO AVOID

The insight about the role of language, theory, discourses, and narratives in the construction of the social realities that IR scholars study is important. However, a superficial interpretation of the insight may lead to a gross misunderstanding of the object being studied. Such a superficial reading is one which suggests that the language user(s), having gained the insight can simply change the language and thereby change the reality. It might be taken to suggest that the society of sovereign states (SOSS) which is constituted by the language of this practice as used by the participants in it, could be changed by some simple act of changing the language. The error here is that this suggests that the participants in the practice (all of us) are independent of the practice and can create new realities by changing our language(s). What is wrong with this interpretation of the relationship between actors and the languages they (we) use to construct the social realities in which they (we) live is that individuals, both lay people and scholars, are not free-standing sovereigns who can use the tool of language to remake their world by changing the language in which they speak about it. Instead, actors in world affairs (and that includes all people everywhere) are always constituted as the actors they are within some social whole in which they have a specified status and a range of legitimate actions available to them (and conversely a range of actions that are prohibited). One way of saying this would be to say that actors (all of us) are ‘caged’ within the practices within which they hold statuses that are of value to them and within which they uphold the ethical values that are important to them. As an example, consider an academic who values her status as such within the wider practice of academic life. This involves her pursuing and upholding a certain theory (discourse, narrative) about the institution in which she finds herself, this will include a set of core values. She cannot renounce these values, walk away from the practice, and still claim to be an academic in good standing. There is a very real sense in which she is locked into the practice. The language in which she participates in the practice of academic life is not a language which she has somehow chosen and which she uses to ‘frame’ her activities in this practice. The language is constitutive of the actors and their activity in this practice. Consider a different example taken from the world of sport. To participate in a sport like tennis (any other example would do just as well) a person must show herself to be qualified to play, she does this by acquiring knowledge of the rules of the game and the values intrinsic to it. These are not

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‘frames’ which she brings to bear on this activity but, are constitutive of the game and all the participants in it (this includes players and spectators). Applying these insights to the international domain, it is clear that we are all participants in the SOSS. This is a highly sophisticated practice with an elaborate set of rules which define what is to count as a state, how a state is to recognise other states, what laws are to be followed by states, when, if ever, states are authorised to go to war against other states, what controls the governments of states may place on people and goods crossing their borders, and so on. In this practice we individuals hold specific statuses as citizens of one or another state. One’s standing as a ‘citizen’ grants one a set of rights and binds one to a specific set of duties. In their inter-relationships, states are bound by a complex body of international law. Underlying this practice is an ethical position according to which the freedom of each sovereign state is something of high value within the practice of states. Here again the language used by the participants in this set of relationships is not some kind of optional ‘frame’ that can be brought to bear on the relationships between all the states in this practice. The language (theory, discourse, or narrative) is a constitutive component of this social whole, the SOSS, and in it we are all constituted as actors of a certain kind. My status in it is not the result of some voluntary act of framing carried out by me. In my case I am a British citizen and at the same time also a South African citizen. These are facts about my international status. To repeat the central point here, the pitfall to be avoided when taking the constructivist or constitutive turn is of assuming oneself or others to be free-standing agents who are able to pick and choose constructing/constitutive discourses at will. To be a social agent is always to be constituted as such in a social practice and this is always both enabling and constraining. A key task for a participant is to gain a thorough knowledge of both the enabling and constraining features of the relevant social practice. IR scholars are citizens who seek such thoroughgoing knowledge. The search for sound knowledge in the international domain is more complicated than has been indicated thus far. It is not like the simple task of seeking out the rules pertaining to a given sport. In the international domain complexity is produced by the fact that the two major global social practices, the society of states and the global rights practice (sometimes called global civil society) are macro practices. They are practices of practices. The society of states encompasses within itself all the other myriad social formations in which people participate. A person might simultaneously participate in the following social practices: family life, the life of a social club, university, corporation, church, sports club, and a trade union. All of these are subsumed in the macro practice that we know as the society of states. In other words, any given actor is constituted simultaneously in a number of different social formations each with its own enabling conditions and constraints. Each of them has built into

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it an ethical value slope. In a fast-changing world these practices are often confronted with new circumstances which might call for it to reconstruct or reform itself. For all participants in these multiple practices there is an ongoing imperative to find a way to co-ordinate and harmonise one’s own life within the multiple practices within which one finds oneself. The other macro practice in which everyone is a participant is the global rights practice (sometimes referred to as global civil society). This includes in it the global free market in which rights holders buy and sell stuff, including their own labour. This, too, is a macro practice subsuming within it a myriad of social practices. Here, too, tensions and contradictions might emerge for individuals trying to square what is enabled and what is constrained in all their other social practices with what the macro practice requires of them. Who one takes oneself to be, is determined by the practices within which one is a participant. At the macro level are tensions that emerge for people (all of us) who simultaneously participate in the society of sovereign states and in the global rights practice. What is required of one as a citizen of a sovereign state, might sit uneasily with what is required of one as a rights holder in the global rights practice. This comes to the fore when one considers what one owes to migrants streaming across the border of one’s state.

9.2

AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE STRUGGLE OF THEORIES IN IR

Earlier, I pointed to the range of theories to which incoming students of IR typically are introduced. These include: classical realism, structural realism, defensive realism, English School approaches to IR (pluralist and solidarist), liberal institutionalism, interdependence theory, the inter-paradigm debate, critical theory, constructivist approaches, post-modern theory, post-structural theory, feminist approaches to IR (there are several), neo-imperial theories of IR, post-colonial theories, and philosophical realist approaches to IR. How does this ongoing dispute about theory aid students in their analysis of the pressing international problems that interest them? As already indicated, one interpretation of the struggle might be that it is a contest to find the best overall theory to be used to explain, understand, and then solve the problems listed. This might be seen as an attempt to follow the ‘hard’ sciences where scientists are expected to conduct their inquiries making use of the best available theory. They typically do not engage in an endless debate about outdated or discredited theories. This interpretation of the 100-year debate about theory in IR fails for several reasons. It is certain that the ‘big names’ in this debate about theory are not agreed on criteria by which good theories can be distinguished from bad ones. Furthermore, the ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies used in the rival theories are presented and understood in ways that are clearly

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incommensurable. Thus, positivist theories that produce covering laws to explain data are not comparable on these measures to English School theories (and the same applies to many of the other theories were they to be put in a ‘head-to-head’ contest). If there is no agreement on criteria which could be used to pick the best available theory, why then do scholars in IR insist on presenting the whole array of theories to their students? One possible answer might be to argue that they are not being presented as in competition with one another, but that the different approaches offer different perspectives on the subject. Sometimes this point is made using a metaphor taken from optics. For example, the claim is sometimes made that different theories use different lenses to study international objects. This answer must be rejected because the proponents of the different theories deny the merits of the other theories and present their own as better. They do not see themselves as offering one perspective that is as good as others. Here the student is faced with the lack of clear criteria for determining what counts as the best ‘lens’ through which to view our international arrangements. The comfortable ‘many lenses’ metaphor must be rejected. Another possibility would be to suggest to students that they should simply choose the theory that they like the best. The choice of theory then would simply become a matter of taste. I find that many of our students, do, indeed, regard the choice in this way. This understanding of the smorgasbord of theories must also be rejected. To adopt this stance would be to give up any claim to be searching for theories that would advance our knowledge. At the limit this would simply equate ‘knowledge’ with ‘taste’. No scholars in IR would endorse this. Is there a different way of interpreting the long range of theories presented to incoming IR students year in and year out? In passing, it must also be pointed out that the spread is made all the more bewildering because the theorists are not ad idem about what counts as a theory. What follows is a setting out of a way in which we could make sense of the parade. I must stress that the interpretation which follows is my own and is not how the theorists involved have understood their own contributions. My sense is that they are still committed to the view that they are engaged in a competition to find the best theory. In search of a better interpretation of what is being done in offering the platter of theories to incoming students, let us start by considering the audience to whom the theories are presented. The audience is in the first place made up of the students taking the courses in IR for which they have enrolled. However, the audience is wider than this and includes all the participants in our international practices who might be interested in finding out how the practices within which they are located work. Everyone, everywhere, is in some measure a part of this wide audience. As outlined above, they/we are all citizens in the SOSS

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and rights holders in global civil society. In these roles they know how to go about their daily lives, and they know how to understand the actions of other participants in these practices. IR theorists then may be understood as addressing (offering their theories to) an audience of people who are already participating in international relations. They know how to participate in the global practices but, they do so, for the most part, without having a deep/profound/thorough understanding of the practices in which they act. With these insights, we are now able to indicate the role that theories of international relations play in this sphere of activity. The theories should be seen, I suggest, as presenting to participants an elaboration of the rules internal to the practices in which the participants are already active. The test of the veracity of such theories is whether they make sense to the participants to whom they are addressed. The role of ‘theory’ here is similar to the account a professor might give to a student, newly entered into university life, about the institution of the university. Such an account might explain to freshmen students how to understand the relationship between the various components that make up a university seen as a whole. It would explain the roles of Deans, Provosts, Professors, Faculties, Schools, Departments, and so on. Such a ‘theory’ of university life would thus provide a guide to those participants ignorant of these details. It would, one might say, set out the institutional structure of university life to the freshman students. A full account would also set out the ethical features in the practice of university life such as the core value which is the advancement of knowledge, the publication of findings and the teaching of the skills necessary for original research. Returning now to the list of theories presented to students newly enrolled in IR courses we should interpret these, not as in competition to produce a single best theory and not as a set of lenses offering different perspectives of a single object (what we might term ‘The International’), but as providing an elaboration of the institutional structures of the different global practices within which we are all already participating. Realist theories give us an elaboration of the institutional structure of the society of sovereign states within which we already understand ourselves to be actors. Although we know ourselves to be citizens of sovereign states and we know how to go about our everyday lives in this practice, we might never have sought out (‘found out’ or ‘thought about’) the intricacies of the practice of sovereign states, considering questions such as: What qualifies as a state? Who qualifies as a citizen of a state? Can citizens resign from or leave the practice of sovereign states? When, if ever, is it appropriate for states to go to war? When are military alliances authorised? What responses to imbalances of power are legitimate? What, if anything, do strong rich states owe to weak and struggling states? Are states subject to international law or independent of it? What ethical values are constituted in states and the system of states? There

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are, of course, many other appropriate questions that could be listed. In seeking answers to these questions, realists of different ilks might not agree on what the appropriate answers are. In the end, though, their answers are addressed to the audience of participants in the practice of states and must convince this audience. The debate about the appropriate answers is ongoing and likely to remain so. Liberal theories provide rights holders in global civil society with an elaboration of the constitutional structure of this society in which they enjoy their rights. They spell out what rights participants in it enjoy, the relationship between positive and negative liberties, the tensions between different rights, the relationship between rights and law (both domestic and international) and importantly an elaboration of the relationship between rights holders and the states within which they find themselves. Some liberal theorists see states as posing a fundamental threat to individual rights whereas others see the state as essential for the preservation of rights. Critical theories should be understood not as displacing realist and liberal theories of international relations, but as enriching them. They present to us, who are participants in the global practices of SOSS and global civil society, a deeper insight into what we are involved in as participants in these practices. The major insight is to point out what the language (discourse, narrative) that constitutes these practices does. Specifically, it points out silences, exclusions, and hierarchies that it maintains. The key point to understand here is that the critical theories speak to us as participants in these practices. They provide an elaboration of what is achieved within the current constitution of practices in which we find ourselves. The silences, exclusions and hierarchies are found to be ethically objectionable in terms of values that are internal to these practices. So, for example the exclusion of people on grounds of their gender, race or physical disability is judged wrong in terms of values internal to the rights practice. What these critical theories do not do, is judge the practices from some external ethical position. The arguments find resonance with the participants as they are currently constituted. The new effect of the insights offered by these theories is to open a space for political reform of the practices to solve the problems exposed by their theories. The reforms posed on a global scale are akin to what is proposed on a micro scale within universities at the moment where progress on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda is sought. The EDI agenda seeks reform of the existing structures and is not seeking the destruction of universities as currently constituted to be replaced by some revolutionary new form of educational institution. Marxist theories (there are many different ones) are also addressed to the audience we have been considering, the participants in the practices of states and the global rights practice. They point out how ongoing participation in the global rights practice, which includes in it as an essential component the global

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free market economy, results in a greater concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands. This capital is a power in the hands of the few which can be used to manipulate the market and to manipulate states. By exposing this dynamic structure of power, Marxist theory calls on us, in the light of what the theory has exposed, to embark on a programme of radical change (and at the limit, revolution).

9.3 CONCLUSION I set out to interpret the practice in the discipline of IR of offering students new to the discipline, not an engagement with the pressing international problems of our time, but an engagement with a seemingly never-ending debate about the appropriate theory to be used when seeking to explain and understand international affairs. The debate about theory has been going on for over 100 years now, yet instead of an agreement being reached on the best theory, there has been an ongoing expansion of the theories to be considered. In this short article I have rejected the following suggestions about how the theory-struggle might be interpreted. First, that it is a contest among social scientists out of which, in due course, a ‘best’ theory will emerge. Second, that the list of theories presents us with different perspectives (lenses) on a single object. This does not explain the rivalry between the theories. Third, the theories on offer present students with a ‘pick the one you like’ choice. This interpretation would end any pretension to ‘science’ that the discipline might have. What this article suggests is that the smorgasbord of theories presented to students may be interpreted as offering them, as participants in the two global practices, an elaboration of the internal constitution of these practices. Realist theories unpack the constitutive rules of the practice of sovereign states indicating what might metaphorically be called ‘the rules of the game’ for participants in this practice which spell out what states are, how they are constituted in the practice, what counts as appropriate conduct in it, and so on. A full discussion of these expands on statehood, sovereignty, borders, wars, international law, citizenship, government, and so on. Liberal theories expand on the ‘rules of the game’ in the global rights practice (global civil society) specifying what rights are constituted in it, what the internal dynamics of it are, paying specific attention to the dynamics of the global free market and so on. The elaboration also considers the relationship between this practice and the practice of sovereign states. Critical theories explore in detail the effects of the languages (discourses, narratives) used in the constitution of the global practices in advancing (or in failing to advance) the core values embedded in these practices. They highlight how they hide (obscure) the role of certain actors in world politics such as women, people classified racially or people with disabilities.

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Finally, the array of theories offered to scholars new to the field of IR are not to be interpreted as gladiators in an arena from which a victor will emerge in good time, instead, each must be seen as offering to the participants in the global practices an elaboration of the ‘rules of the game’ that constitute these practices. A proper understanding of contemporary international relations requires students to have knowledge of the realist elaboration (and the contests surrounding these) of the constitution of the global practice of sovereign states and an understanding of liberal approaches which set out the constitution of the global rights practice. Only after having a thorough knowledge of these can students then advance to consider the critical theories that offer a more fundamental elaboration of what is achieved or prevented by the constitution of the practice of states and that of the global rights practice.

NOTE 1. The locus classicus on language and the construction of social reality is in John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995).

10. National Security Studies John Gearson, Hillary Briffa and Joe Devanny During the post-Cold War period, the United Kingdom and allied states have redefined their threat perceptions multiple times, most notably following the collapse of the Soviet Union and in the post-9/11 turn towards counter-terrorism (CT) and counter-insurgency (COIN). The most recent period of redefinition has seen reduced emphasis on CT and COIN and commensurate increase in focus on the threat from hostile states, competition with Russia and particularly China, and greater emphasis on the domains of cyber and space. The most recent shift was vividly highlighted in 2021 by both the collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government and the announcement of the Australia-UK-USA (AUKUS) agreement.1 During this period of shifting threat perceptions, the UK and other states have similarly evolved their respective processes for adapting strategically and implementing policies to address the contemporary landscape of threats and opportunities. This process has become synonymous with a ‘national security approach’. Partly as a response to the changing threat environment, governments have dropped previously rigid divisions between domestic/ internal and external/international security, in favour of an umbrella concept of national security. This emerging goal of adopting a national security approach has advanced significantly in Britain and elsewhere, but it remains very much a work in progress. Whilst it is commonplace in commentary on US foreign policy to debate the emergence of presidential ‘doctrine’,2 it is much less common for UK premierships to coin analogous doctrines – Tony Blair was a notable exception in setting out a ‘Doctrine of the International Community’ in a speech in Chicago in 1999.3 Similarly, the US national security apparatus is sufficiently salient and long-standing to have commanded several book-length treatments, which is not true in the same way of its UK counterpart.4 Even so, the national security apparatus at the centre of the UK government is substantially influenced by the habits, mind, and agenda of the Prime Minister, so the evolution of the national security approach in the UK has inevitably been affected by transitions of premiership.5 The Department of War Studies at King’s College London has contributed to this evolving national security approach in the UK. It has helped to narrow the academic/policy-making gap, thanks in no small part to the example offered by 136

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successive heads of the Department, and in particular Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, to a generation of scholars and a number of policy-makers and their advisers. Academics from the Department contributed expertise to the ground-breaking Strategic Defence Review (1998) and to subsequent Strategic Defence and Security Reviews up to and including the 2021 Integrated Review (a national security review in all but name), and influenced decisions at key moments in the evolution of the national security approach in the UK. A professor from the Department, John Bew, joined No.10 Downing Street as a full-time foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The Department as a whole has managed to combine this proximity to power with critical distance, also producing contemporary analysis of the developments in UK strategy under Johnson.6 All this forms the background to the emergence of the discipline of National Security Studies at King’s, exemplified by the 2016 launch of a postgraduate National Security Studies programme, which now attracts more than 125 students per year – making it one of the largest taught modules in War Studies. Designed to bring together security policy practitioners in the public and private sectors and postgraduate students with an interest in policy, the course focuses on cross-governmental responses to national security challenges and is structured around key themes such as strategy, counter-terrorism, and ethics in national security. The insights from King’s academic staff are complemented by guest lectures from former security practitioners (many of whom are visiting professors in the Department), including former Security and Intelligence Coordinator Professor Sir David Omand, and former National Security Advisers Professor Lord Peter Ricketts and Professor Sir Mark Lyall Grant. To some extent, the emergence of a national security approach in the UK can be attributed to the deeply embedded Atlanticism of the UK political elite and the strength of US influence on British political culture. There is now, for example, a clear answer to the question of whom the US national security adviser (NSA) should call to speak to a British counterpart, as the recent memoirs of one US NSA demonstrated, namely the UK national security adviser.7 But, in other respects, the UK’s journey towards a national security approach can be interpreted as a pragmatic response to issues within the machinery of government, part of a broader, longer-term effort to improve inter-departmental coordination in Whitehall, occasionally inflected by personalities and politics. This essay explores the dynamics of that process from the UK perspective.

10.1

WHAT IS NATIONAL SECURITY?

National security has long been recognised as an ‘ambiguous symbol’ – its meaning contested according to different notions of what the term should

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signify.8 These meanings are shaped within the structural context of economic, political, and social relations within a state.9 For much of the Cold War, UK security was perceived through the prism of the Soviet threat and the persistence of domestic terrorism associated with Northern Ireland.10 In the decade after the end of the Cold War, new theoretical approaches to security gained influence in academia (gaining influence more slowly within government), emphasising non-military dimensions of security and further dispelling the notion that the concept of security was uncomplicated or apolitical.11 At the same time, in common with the US, the UK made significant expenditure reductions in defence and intelligence. The nature of security came to be discussed in different ways in this period: no longer solely thought of in terms of the state, the concept embraced individuals and groups and encompassed the inter-dependencies implicit in globalisation. Furthermore, the delivery of security was not perceived solely as the responsibility of the state, but also of the private sector and non-governmental organisations. From the UK perspective, the appropriation of the concept of national security as a framework for strategy and implementation reflected much of this evolving post-Cold War context. Globalised threats and opportunities highlighted the need for structures and processes that transcended the traditional Whitehall divide between domestic and foreign policy. In the UK, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the impact of the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ and the deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq made the hardest end of security a much more salient and controversial political issue. In this respect, the emergence of the UK’s first National Security Strategy in 2008, and the more far-reaching National Security Council reforms of 2010, were efforts to realign the machinery of government to be fit for purpose – an argument used more recently by Boris Johnson in justifying the merging of the Department for International Development (DFID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which had been separated by Tony Blair’s New Labour over 20 years before.12 During the 1990s and 2000s, terrorism, the rise of non-state actors, and what became fashionable to term ‘wicked problems’ pressed up against economic constraints, widening concepts of responsibility to protect (R2P), and later notions of duty of care across all levels. If the concept of national security had broadened so much, the question arose of how to confine it within reasonable bounds and thereby retain its utility?13 What has become increasingly apparent for many national security analysts and practitioners is that no single agency or department can deliver the desired outcomes on their own. Success requires inter-departmental coordination and collaboration. As the multi-faceted response to the coronavirus pandemic highlighted, national security encompasses issues as diverse as public health, cyber security, and the domestic contingencies role of the armed services. As

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the concept broadens, however, there is a practical challenge in maintaining strategic focus. Nor is there an immutable, permanent solution, for whilst the underlying ‘categories’ of national security are ‘static, the challenges they denote are not’.14 Debates continue about how far national security approaches, in effect, represent an unwelcome securitisation of too much of public policy in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, where, strikingly, the structures adopted in recent years have been applied to a diverse range of challenges, including, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.15 As a result, a generation of practitioners have increasingly focused on the management of risk in national security policy and planning.16

10.2

THE EVOLVING ROLE OF THE STATE WITHIN THE NATIONAL SECURITY APPROACH

With the exception of Theresa May’s six years as Home Secretary before becoming Prime Minister in 2016, in the last 40 years few Prime Ministers have entered office with significant national security-related experience. Once in office, Prime Ministers have inherited the machinery of their predecessors, and some have chosen to recast it in their image or have enabled trusted lieutenants to do so on their behalf. Although the committee memberships, secretariat sizes, nomenclature, and associated acronyms have changed over the last century, the central machinery of government has a relatively continuous history from the early twentieth-century origins of the Committee of Imperial Defence and subsequent creation of a Cabinet Secretariat in 1916.17 This machinery, which emerged as an incremental response to the fact that the looser arrangements of the Victorian and Edwardian eras were not fit to meet the challenges of the early twentieth century, became something of a model for later US developments, culminating in the US National Security Act of 1947.18 Notwithstanding this trans-Atlantic historical footnote, the passing of the National Security Act in the US led to the establishment of a National Security Council, a Central Intelligence Agency, and unified Armed Services under the Department of Defense. These reforms are regarded by many as a pivotal event in the global emergence of national security approaches. They were a response to specific US circumstances, conceived during war-time, and coming out of a debate within the US government about how to avoid the administrative chaos of the Roosevelt years. Whilst these reforms were designed to improve coherence and coordination, it is unsurprising that they did not end the tensions implicit in the US system of competing institutional actors.19 Not only did different presidents have different conceptions of how they wanted their administrations to operate, but so too did their Cabinet-rank and other senior appointees. The role of the National Security Adviser itself has been shaped

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by the different conceptions, capabilities, and relationships that its different incumbents have brought to it: NSAs have been seen (and seen themselves) as ‘honest brokers’, wily bureaucratic operators, and occasionally as leading actors within an administration, interpreting and shaping a president’s intent.20 Whilst the context is different and the global impact much less pronounced than in the US example, the UK experience of an emerging national security approach has featured many of the same dynamics and themes. National security, as it has evolved in the twenty-first century, has become an expansive and expensive policy area, focused on dealing with a concept – security – which is highly subjective, with individual, national, and international levels. Security is fundamentally about perception. And for the public, that perception has increasingly become one of insecurity, despite the top-level sources of insecurity (nuclear war) being much less likely since the end of the Cold War, and only really resurfacing as a national security concern in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Government’s perceived and actual ability to control events has diminished, and with the rising global prominence of mass and digital media, and the impact of non-state actors and emerging technologies, the state is less dominant than it once was in the security landscape. As such, states have come to define and prioritise risks with reference to a wide variety of stakeholders and necessary partners to manage and mitigate those risks. States must, for example, collaborate with the private sector to access the necessary capabilities and harness the benefits of innovation in science and technology.21 This lesson was reinforced emphatically by the coronavirus pandemic emergency, raising questions not only about the short-term fitness for purpose of existing processes, but also about the longer-term integration of a broad range of actors into national security risk-management.22 The process of assessing and managing national security risks must be sufficiently open to command public confidence and avoid group-think, but must also draw on sensitive sovereign capabilities over which adequate scrutiny has been slow to emerge and uneven in its execution.23 What is required, therefore, is something much broader than a ‘whole of government’ approach to national security – as difficult as coordination can be within government. Consequently, practitioners’ vocabularies have expanded to include the notion of ‘whole of system’ or ‘fusion’ approaches to national security. This has, however, proved historically hard to deliver: genuine partnership between government, citizenry and other actors in the UK outside of government, such as the private sector, facilitated by true collaboration across departments has been undermined, at least in part, by the wiring of central government, in which political, ‘financial and bureaucratic loyalties stream vertically upwards, rather than across departments’.24

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National security is therefore not just about elites and decision-makers but also about the private sector, civil society, citizens and the resilience of communities to the challenges and risks they face. Academic discussion has increasingly focused on how the other stakeholders and the public writ large could be brought into the process in meaningful ways, and the objective of creating resilient societies as powerful elements of national power through the creation of long-term public support and openness is being explored.25 Executing such a complex approach requires a strong strategic sensibility, as well as robust democratic accountability and upholding the integrity of institutions involved in this process. Comparative analysis of the Brazilian case can help us see the challenges of this approach: from the totalising concept of national security pursued under military rule, to the looser process discernible since the return to civilian rule, described by some scholars as approaching the ‘neglect’ of national security, and fraught with problematic civil–military relations.26 Strategy was perhaps easier when national security had been conceived of in more static, institutional terms during the Cold War. The ‘lack of fixed form’ discernible during the first post-Cold War decade brought what one influential scholar dubbed a ‘revolution in strategic affairs’ as the relationship between the political and military spheres shifted, opening up new possibilities to apply capabilities to achieve national strategic outcomes.27 The problem was that the structures and processes of national security in many states appeared ill-suited to responding to these challenges, as both the 9/11 commission in the US and the 2016 UK Iraq Inquiry would subsequently make clear.

10.3

CONTEMPORARY NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE UK

In Britain, a series of post-Cold War expenditure reviews sought to extract a ‘peace dividend’ in the form of cuts to the armed forces and intelligence agencies. Economy and efficiency thus spurred the pursuit of a ‘joint’ approach to defence by the three armed services. By the middle of the 1990s, the concept of ‘jointery’ (the three services working more closely together) was embedded in the Ministry of Defence. One example was the decision in 1997 to replace the three separate staff colleges with a new Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) in 1997. The new joint institution was supported by independent academics, working in partnership with directing staff from the military. This academic collaboration, with the early involvement of the Department of War Studies, ultimately led to King’s College London being awarded a long-term contract to support the JSCSC, creating a sister department, the Department of Defence Studies, which together form the King’s School of Security Studies.

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NEW LABOUR: TOWARDS A NATIONAL SECURITY APPROACH

The process of enhanced coordination between the armed services had proceeded under the Major government (1990–97), amidst a wider context of expenditure reduction and strategic reappraisal. From 1997, under Tony Blair (1997–2007) and Gordon Brown (2007–10), the New Labour governments accelerated this process of reform, particularly during Blair’s second term (2001–05). Blessed with a commanding parliamentary majority and more auspicious fiscal context, Blair’s impact on Britain’s national security strategy – avant la lettre – was significant, both in the organisation and instrumental use of British power and influence. One significant development was Blair’s creation of the Department for International Development (DFID) in 1997. DFID’s growth as an increasingly influential actor in the UK government was a major theme in the development of the national security approach, as Blair and then Brown tried to better integrate and coordinate the efforts of DFID, the FCO and Ministry of Defence, using the full Whitehall toolkit of different committees, joint units, and jointly administered funds.28 The expanding development assistance budget, jointly administered pools of funding, and increasing need for UK departments to collaborate (with each other and with international partners) in humanitarian and stabilisation operations in Afghanistan and Iraq were drivers for much of the inter-departmental reform process in this period. To some extent, institutional reluctance and difficult relationships held back progress, but an improvement was discernible in the routine collaboration between civilian and military actors, policy departments, and the intelligence and security agencies, arguably on an elevated scale as compared with the first post-Cold War decade. A generation of junior and middle-ranking officials emerged with significant experience of close interaction with colleagues from other agencies and departments. Another imperative that shaped the national security approach in the late 1990s and early 2000s was the recognition that Britain’s civil contingencies and emergency-management processes needed to be improved. This was perhaps best demonstrated by the creation of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) in 2001, which emerged from work on the Y2K bug scare, the fuel protests by tanker drivers in 2000, and an epidemic of Foot and Mouth disease in 2001. During this last crisis, the Army supported the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Such events appeared to demonstrate that the UK’s post-Cold War emergency-management policies and structures (which had seen a rapid dismantling of civil defence structures in the 1990s) were not fit for purpose.

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The fuel crisis, in particular, influenced ministers, mindful of both the strategic and political implications. It was the first time a UK government had recognised the extent to which a modern economy was dependent on complex global supply-chains, and how just-in-time value-engineering had reduced the buffering that stocks of goods and works-in-progress would have provided in a previous era.29 The responsible Cabinet minister – the Home Secretary – was advised to manage the crisis as if it were a major terrorist incident, given the availability of procedures and processes to deal with information-management and decision-taking in a crisis. Whilst this was theoretically straightforward, its arrangements proved cumbersome and revealed gaps in communications between local and central government and the need for more effective central direction in an emergency.30 Whatever the progress made in the following decade, these were complaints echoed by David Cameron in his retirement – Cameron claimed that a major lesson of his premiership was that the prime minister needed to act decisively to ensure coordinated and energetic effort.31

10.5

NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE CONSERVATIVES: CAMERON, MAY AND JOHNSON

Politically and academically the concept of national security in its wider form was gaining support towards the end of the New Labour period, with increasing calls for a reform of national security structures and supporting advisory roles at the centre of government. As the new leader of the Conservative Party in opposition from 2005, David Cameron appointed the then Dame (subsequently Baroness) Pauline Neville-Jones, a former senior diplomat, as his national security adviser. A review committee recommended in December 2006 the establishment of a National Security Council and proposed that ‘cross departmental spending pools should be adapted to support a national security approach’.32 The Brown administration subsequently made tentative steps towards institutional reform through the creation, in 2007, of a network of committees under the umbrella of National Security, International Relations and Development (NSID); the creation of an external advisory panel (the National Security Forum, overseen by the then Security Minister Lord West, a former First Sea Lord); and the production, in 2008, of the UK’s first National Security Strategy.33 There was a sense, however, that whilst sensible in theory, the net effect of Brown’s national security innovations was less impressive than it might have been, with the caveat that they were relatively short-lived.34 In one sense, namely the ‘power of the prime minister’,35 national security is a striking example of a wider truth about UK government: prime ministers can and do change the machinery, rhythm and direction that is set from the centre of government.36 David Cameron was no different: the new approach under his

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premiership was to introduce two cycles of consistently branded, quinquennial National Security Strategies and Strategic Defence and Security Reviews (SDSR). This strategic review and implementation process was overseen by another innovation introduced on the first day of the new coalition government of 2010, the National Security Council, that Cameron chaired regularly.37 To shepherd this NSC process, a National Security Adviser (NSA) role was created. Whilst other models for the reform were available – and indeed were discussed by the Conservative party in opposition – the NSA role was intended as an evolution rather than a revolution within Whitehall. It was not intended to substantially change the Whitehall system of lead departments in the delivery of national security policy. It was, rather, intended to provide better coordination of this system, clarify and enhance the role of the centre in advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet on national security issues, and try to drive effective implementation of decisions by the relevant lead departments. And yet, according to one former Conservative political adviser, during the 2010 SDSR process the newly enhanced National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office struggled to constrain the independent actions of large departments, such as the Ministry of Defence, and ensure optimal coherence across government.38 Of course, transitions in premiership can bring new departures in machinery and process. In the years since Cameron’s 2016 resignation, his approach to national security has been adapted significantly by his successors. Initially as a response to tragic circumstances – the illness and death of former Cabinet Secretary Lord Heywood – Theresa May decided she did not need a full-time NSA. Understandably in the initial circumstances, but unwisely as time went on, May permitted her new Cabinet Secretary, Mark Sedwill, to retain his NSA role alongside his wider responsibilities.39 Departing from Cameron’s quinquennial cycle, Sedwill managed a National Security Capability Review in 2018 – initially intended as a full SDSR-style review, but ultimately complemented by a separate defence paper. The Capability Review highlighted the flexibility of the UK system, able to depart from a fixed cycle when circumstances necessitated it, but also indicated that new personnel at the centre – in No.10 and the Cabinet Office – could bring a commitment to reconsider assumptions made by their predecessors.40 Sedwill’s effort to introduce a ‘fusion doctrine’ appeared to be another incremental step in (or elegant description of) the same evolutionary process. It remains to be seen how much of it survives under the administrations of Johnson and his successors, following the streamlining of national security management enacted by the then-NSA (March 2021‒September 2022), former Ministry of Defence permanent secretary, Stephen Lovegrove. Similarly, it remains to be seen whether Johnson’s Integrated Review comprises a strategy fit for the 2020s, or if there is a disconnect between its expansive ambitions – to establish Britain as a science and technology superpower, or to enhance the

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UK’s relevance to the strategic situation in the Indo-Pacific – and the material ability of the British state to achieve those ends.41 Since May’s resignation in mid-2019, further changes in national security machinery and processes were evident under her successor, Boris Johnson. As in other aspects of his premiership, in national security Johnson challenged conventions established under his Conservative predecessors. When Mark Sedwill retired in 2020, Johnson first tried to appoint his Brexit adviser, David Frost, as his national security adviser. Frost would have held the role as a newly ennobled member of the House of Lords, but neither as a minister nor as a career official. This would have made the role a more explicitly political appointment, in one sense akin to its longer-standing US counterpart, albeit without any of the precedent and in some ways reflective of an internal debate in the Conservative Party on the role that preceded its establishment in 2010. Johnson’s decision to appoint Frost as NSA was sensibly reversed, with Lovegrove becoming the NSA, as an orthodox civil service appointment, shortly after the conclusion of Johnson’s Integrated Review. Frost was given a more conventional ministerial role, appearing – until his resignation – to exercise more influence in the Cabinet committee system than his stature as a minister of state would usually have warranted. This perhaps reinforces a long-standing perception of the centre of British government as a kind of court: official roles matter, but so too do personal relationships with the prime minister. Ironically, a key driver of Cameron’s establishment of an NSC had been to move away from the informal ‘sofa’ style of decision-making that characterised the Blair governments. These issues recurred under Johnson’s premiership, when a parliamentary inquiry found that Johnson intended to devote to national security affairs only 65 per cent of the time that his predecessors had devoted, with the NSC meeting less often under his leadership. As the UK’s first NSA, Lord Ricketts, lamented regarding the NSC under Johnson: ‘Tools are of no use if they are left in the shed’.42 For a system that relies so much on strong, central grip and focus, this development and the reasons for it were concerning.43 After the brief and turbulent Liz Truss premiership (September‒October 2022) – during which Lovegrove was replaced as NSA by the career diplomat Tim Barrow44 – the national security machinery appears to have settled down under Truss’s successor, Rishi Sunak. This chapter of contemporary history highlights how consequential elite political dynamics can be for the functioning – or malfunctioning – of a national security system.45

10.6

THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF NATIONAL SECURITY APPROACHES

As previously highlighted, the scope of contemporary national security is clearly broader than simply preparing to win wars. States must be ever more

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creative in pursuing their various ends. Whilst this essay has focused predominantly on the British approach, there is growing recognition that national security will mean different things to different actors – implicit in the term ‘national’ – and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, within or between states. For example, in Australia’s Border Force Act (2015) refugees were identified as a national security concern,46 whilst the central security issue for a state like Jordan is presently the access to and conservation of water.47 For Pacific small island developing states, whose territory is being encroached upon by rising sea levels, climate change has become an existential concern.48 This challenge is not restricted to far-off shores, but has dominated the political debate in the recent elections of states vulnerable to flooding, such as Germany and Belgium. Over 14,500 kilometres apart, both Brazil and India were prioritising economic development, conceiving of national security in far broader terms than territorial defence.49 Looking ahead, for the discipline of national security studies, there is thus an urgent and burgeoning research agenda to understand how national security is conceived of within a particular country.50 Who is involved, why, how and with what consequences? How does historical memory shape the path dependence of a particular country? What instruments do states use (including, but not limited to, military power), and how are they used? What is the context under which states privilege one kind of instrument and with what effect? Is there published documentation, an adviser or infrastructural apparatus, or is national security practised in ways other than those discussed in this essay? As we have argued, the field of national security in the US is not the same as in the UK, and this will differ again in France, Thailand, or Singapore.51 These differences of national context suggest a comparative approach to the analysis of the dynamics and forces at play in contemporary national security practice.52 A comparative approach will therefore be important to derive policy-relevant lessons for the future.

10.7 CONCLUSION National security policy-making and strategic planning occurs in an intrinsically political context of complexity, uncertainty, and risk. As Colin Gray wrote: ‘national security is and has to be hostage to the wisdom in policy choice that derives from a political process’.53 Whether explicitly or implicitly, the strategic documents produced under the Conservative or Conservative-led governments since 2010 have framed this process around a trilemma: the pursuit of competing national objectives to enhance security and prosperity and the promotion or projection globally of Britain’s values. The fluctuations in UK policy towards China under Cameron, May and Johnson were perhaps the most striking example of the systemic constraints on UK strategic

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choices.54 From incurring US displeasure by joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015, to incurring Chinese (and, indeed, French) displeasure by curtailing (under US pressure) the role of the Chinese company Huawei in British telecommunications network infrastructure, or by partnering with the US and Australia to pursue nuclear submarine and other high-tech partnerships in 2021, few strategic relationships have undergone such a rapid reset. Of course, the post-referendum course of Britain’s relationship with the EU is another major change of strategic significance. Like other aspects of Brexit, the various national security-related implications will continue to be negotiated and re-negotiated over the next decade and beyond. The scratchy diplomacy between Johnson’s government and Europe occurred within a broader strategic framework of ‘Global Britain’ that emphasised the opportunities for the UK to play a meaningful geopolitical role – and enhance its domestic prosperity – by engaging in an Indo-Pacific Tilt.55 In reality, the two perspectives are inter-dependent and not subject to the starkly existential either/or choice in which they have been framed polemically within some commentary on the significance of ‘Global Britain’ and the Integrated Review. To successfully pursue a global role, Britain must make a success of its place in Europe.56 Conversely, part of what makes Britain a significant European power is its distinctive set of interests beyond Europe. There is scope for constructive resolution of this major issue in UK national security strategy under the Sunak administration, but it requires diplomacy that transcends some of the more fractious episodes of UK–EU relations under Johnson. The significant impact of personalities and elite politics in shaping the national security apparatus should caution against the apparent confidence of some politicians and scholars alike that the 2010 national security reforms in the UK will endure as a ‘vital’ and ‘cherished’ component of even future Conservative administrations.57 To a significant extent, Boris Johnson defined himself as prime minister implicitly against the record of his two Conservative predecessors. Future incumbents, whether from the same party or another, may do the same, with potential implications for the national security machinery. Whilst these contingencies of personality and geopolitical position are specific to the UK experience, careful study of the ways in which these actors and factors shape the UK’s national security approach can nonetheless produce knowledge about national security that can inform understanding and reflective practice in other countries. The converse is, of course, true: the UK can and should learn from the examples and experiences provided by other countries. Perhaps the most instructive dimension of the last decade of UK experience is the impact, in a liberal democracy, of very different approaches to party statecraft, and the extent to which different strategies to win and retain power domestically can lead (intentionally and unintentionally) to significant shifts in wider national strategy.58

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Successful implementation of a national security approach requires profound changes in the ways of thinking amongst decision-makers, advisers and career officials. According to one US author, what is needed is a cohort of ‘strategic artisans’, with the intellectual breadth and professional competence to operate across the domestic and international siloes of national security policy.59 Mindful of the role of education in developing such a cohort, the Department of War Studies launched its National Security programme in January 2016. It aims to educate and inspire the current and next generations of national security practitioners in the UK and (increasingly) overseas. This programme is international by design, incorporating the insights of students, (public and private sector) practitioners, academics and visiting professors from different national backgrounds. A major theme of the programme’s learning strategy is a comparative approach, highlighting that there are lessons to be learned from the national security experience of states of all sizes. The National Security Studies programme develops the knowledge and understanding necessary to meet the complex evolving challenges of contemporary national security, which have been described by one of the Department’s visiting professors, former Chief of the UK Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Sir John Sawers, as requiring both a fundamental change in the ‘way we think about security’ and ‘hard, diligent, principled effort by all of us’.60 As with the UK’s international reputation for Professional Military Education, so too can the development of postgraduate and executive education in National Security Studies be seen as a component of Britain’s soft power. Just as academics researching the national security approach will continue to contribute to knowledge and understanding about the dynamics that shape it, so too will generations of former students from War Studies contribute to national security practice, whether in the public or private sector, or in sub-national, state, regional, or multilateral forums. In its thought-leadership and convening power, the Department of War Studies will continue to help to shape the understanding and reflective practice of national security in the coming decades. In doing so, staff and students will be building on 60 years of policy-relevant academic inquiry and education regarding some of the world’s most difficult challenges.

NOTES 1. 2.

Hillary Briffa, Joe Devanny and John Gearson, ‘Editor’s Introduction,’ in Hillary Briffa, Joe Devanny and John Gearson (eds.), The Integrated Review in Context: One Year On (London: Centre for Defence Studies, 2022), p.5. Michelle Bentley and Maxine David, ‘Unpredictability as Doctrine: Reconceptualising Foreign Policy Strategy in the Trump Era’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 34, 3 (2021), pp.383‒406.

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Lawrence Freedman, ‘Force and the International Community: Blair’s Chicago Speech and the Criteria for Intervention’, International Relations, 31, 2 (2017), pp.107‒124. 4. John P. Burke, Honest Broker? The National Security Advisor and Presidential Decision Making (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009); John Gans, White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019). 5. Joe Devanny and Josh Harris, The National Security Council: National Security at the Centre of Government (London: Institute for Government, 2014); Joe Devanny and John Gearson, ‘Introduction’, in Joe Devanny and John Gearson (eds.), The Integrated Review in Context: A Strategy Fit for the 2020s? (London: Centre for Defence Studies, 2021), p.6. 6. Joe Devanny and Philip A. Berry, ‘“Gulf Security is Our Security”: Global Britain and UK Gulf Strategy, 2010‒20’, Defence Studies, 21, 2 (2021), pp.141‒161; Joe Devanny and Philip A. Berry, ‘The Conservative Party and DFID: Party Statecraft and Development Policy Since 1997’, Contemporary British History, 36, 1 (2021), pp.86‒123; Joe Devanny and John Gearson (eds.), The Integrated Review in Context: A Strategy Fit for the 2020s? (London: Centre for Defence Studies, 2021); Devanny and Gearson, ‘Introduction: Defence and Security in Focus,’ in Devanny and Gearson, The Integrated Review in Context: Defence and Security in Focus; Briffa, Devanny and Gearson, ‘Introduction’, in Briffa, Devanny and Gearson, One Year On. 7. John Bolton, The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020). 8. Arnold Wolfers, ‘“National Security” as an Ambiguous Symbol’, Political Science Quarterly, 67, 4 (1952), pp.481‒502. 9. Peter Gowan, ‘A Calculus of Power’, New Left Review, 16 (2002), p.53. 10. Peter Hennessey, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Penguin, 2002); Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (4th edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Peter Neumann, Britain’s Long War: British Strategy in the Northern Ireland Conflict: 1969‒89 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 11. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998); Nick Ritchie, ‘Rethinking Security: A Critical Analysis of the Strategic Defence and Security Review’, International Affairs, 87, 2 (2011), pp.355‒376. 12. Devanny and Berry, ‘The Conservative Party and DFID’. 13. Emma Rothschild, ‘What is Security?’, Deadalus, 124, 3 (1995), p.70. 14. Devanny and Harris, The National Security Council, p.5. 15. Daniel Deudney, ‘The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation to National Security’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 19, 3 (1990), pp.461‒476. 16. David Omand, Securing the State (London: Hurst, 2010), p.9. 17. Devanny and Gearson, Defence and Security in Focus, pp.8‒9. 18. Alfred D. Sandler, ‘Truman and the National Security Council: 1945‒1947’, The Journal of American History, 59, 2 (1972), p.369. 19. Stanley L. Falk, ‘The National Security Council Under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy’, Political Science Quarterly, 79, 3 (1964), pp.424‒425. 20. Burke, Honest Broker?; Bolton, The Room Where it Happened; Henry A. Kissinger, The White House Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

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21. Hugo Rosemont, ‘Private Sector Engagement after the Integrated Review’, in Devanny and Gearson, Defence and Security in Focus, pp.73‒74; Valtteri Vuorisalo, ‘UK Integrated Review: Perspective on Technology’, in Devanny and Gearson, Defence and Security in Focus, pp.69‒72. 22. Lawrence Freedman, ‘Strategy for a Pandemic: The UK and COVID-19’, Survival, 62, 3 (2020), pp.25‒76; Filippa Lentzos, Michael S. Goodman and James M. Wilson, ‘Health Security Intelligence: Engaging Across Disciplines and Sectors’, Intelligence and National Security, 35, 4 (2020), pp.465‒476. 23. Andrew Defty, ‘Coming in from the Cold: Bringing the Intelligence and Security Committee into Parliament’, Intelligence and National Security, 34, 1 (2019), pp.22‒37; Joe Devanny, ‘The Russia Report tells us that Intelligence Oversight in the UK is at Risk’, School of Security Studies, King’s College London (2020), available at: https://​www​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​the​-russia​-report​-tells​-us​-that​-intelligence​-oversight​-in​-the​ -uk​-is​-at​-risk. 24. Daniel Korsi, ‘British Civil–Military Integration’, The RUSI Journal, 154, 6 (2009), p.14. 25. John Gearson and James Gow, ‘Security, Not Defence, Strategic, Not Habit: Restructuring the Political Arrangements for Policy Making on Britain’s Role in the World’, Political Quarterly, 81, 3 (2010), p.416. 26. Alfred C. Stepan, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Raphael C. Lima, Peterson F. Silva and Gunther Ruditz, ‘No Power Vacuum: National Security Neglect and the Defence Sector in Brazil’, Defence Studies, 21, 1 (2021), pp.84‒106; Joe Devanny and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, ‘Politics and Civil–Military Relations: Where Next for Brazil under Bolsonaro?’, School of Security Studies, King’s College London (2021), available at: https://​www​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​politics​-and​ -civil​-military​-relations​-where​-next​-for​-brazil​-under​-bolsonaro. 27. Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp.9‒10. 28. Devanny and Berry, ‘The Conservative Party and DFID’, pp.90‒93. 29. Omand, Securing the State, p.63. 30. Omand, Securing the State, p.64. 31. David Cameron, For the Record (London: William Collins, 2019), pp.273‒276. 32. Pauline Neville-Jones, ‘An Unquiet World: Submission to the Shadow Cabinet’, National and International Security Policy Group (2007), p.9, available at: http://​ image​.guardian​.co​.uk/​sys​-files/​Politics/​documents/​2007/​07/​26/​securityreport​ .pdf. 33. Devanny and Harris, National Security Council, pp.20‒22. 34. Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst, 1945‒2010 (London: Penguin, 2010), p.398. 35. George Jones, ‘The Prime Minister’s Power’, Parliamentary Affairs, 18 (1965), pp.167‒185. 36. Josh Harris and Jill Rutter, ‘Centre Forward: Effective Support for the Prime Minister at the Centre of Government’, Institute for Government (2014); Devanny and Harris, National Security Council; Devanny and Gearson, A Strategy Fit for the 2020s?. 37. Catarina P. Thompson and David Blagden, ‘A Very British National Security State: Formal and Informal Institutions in the Design of UK Security Policy’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 20, 3 (2018), pp.573‒593.

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38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

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Mark Phillips, ‘Policy-Making in Defence and Security’, The RUSI Journal, 157, 1 (2012), pp.28‒35. Joe Devanny, ‘Mark Sedwill’s Three Hats: The Pros and Cons of No Longer Having a Full-Time National Security Adviser’, Civil Service World (2019), available from: https://​www​.civilserviceworld​.com/​news/​article/​mark​-sedwills​ -three​-hats​-the​-pros​-and​-cons​-of​-no​-longer​-having​-a​-fulltime​-national​-security​ -adviser. Devanny and Gearson, A Strategy Fit for the 2020s?, p.5. Devanny and Gearson, A Strategy Fit for the 2020s?; Devanny and Gearson, Defence and Security in Focus; Briffa, Devanny and Gearson, ‘Editors’ Introduction’, in Briffa, Devanny and Gearson, One Year On. Peter Ricketts, Hard Choices: What Britain Does Next (London: Atlantic Books, 2021), p.115. Devanny and Gearson, Defence and Security in Focus, p.5. Tevye Marks, ‘FCDO Second Perm Sec Named National Security Adviser,’ Civil Service World (2022), available from: https://​www​.civilserviceworld​ .com/​professions/​article/​tim​-barrow​-fcdo​-second​-perm​-sec​-appointed​-national​ -security​-adviser. Denisa Delic, ‘What next for Global Britain Under a Truss Premiership?’, Foreign Policy Centre (2022), available from: https://​fpc​.org​.uk/​what​-next​-for​ -global​-britain​-under​-a​-truss​-premiership/​. Gregory Brown, ‘No Advantage? Lessons from Australia’s Experiments in Asylum Policy’, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 17, 1 (2016), pp.20‒27. Hussam Hussein, ‘Whose “Reality”? Discourses and Hydropolitics Along the Yarmouk River’, Contemporary Levant, 2, 2 (2017), pp.103‒115. Hillary Briffa, ‘The Integrated Review and the View from Small States: Time to Think Smaller?’, in Devanny and Gearson, Strategy Fit for the 2020s?, pp.86‒92. Leandro Bolzan De Rezende, Paul Blackwell and Marcos Degaut, ‘Brazilian National Defence Policy: Foreign Policy, National Security, Economic Growth, and Technological Innovation’, Defense & Security Analysis, 34, 4 (2018), pp.385‒409; Ian Hall, ‘India’s 2019 General Election: National Security and the Rise of the Watchmen’, The Round Table, 108, 5 (2019), pp.507‒519. Thierry Balzacq, Peter Dombrowski and Simon Reich, Comparative Grand Strategy: A Framework and Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Hillary Briffa, ‘Small States and the Challenges of the International Order’, in Seth Center and Emma Bates (eds.), After Disruption: Historical Perspectives on the Future of International Order (Washington, D.C.: Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 2020), pp.50‒59. Andrew M. Dorman and Joyce P. Kaufman (eds.), Providing for National Security: A Comparative Analysis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). Colin S. Gray, Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p.54. Joe Devanny, ‘Co-Ordinating UK Foreign and Security Policy’, RUSI Journal, 160, 6 (2015), pp.20‒26; Kerry Brown, ‘The British “Integrated Review” and the Issue of China’, in Devanny and Gearson, Strategy Fit for the 2020s?, pp.44‒49. Alessio Patalano, ‘The Indo-Pacific “Tilt” and the Return of British Maritime Strategy’, in Devanny and Gearson, Strategy Fit for the 2020s?, pp.50‒52; William Reynolds, ‘The Review, Defence and the Indo-Pacific “Tilt”:

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Constraining and Engaging in the Region’, in Devanny and Gearson, Defence and Security in Focus, pp.24‒31. 56. Gesine Weber and Anand Menon, ‘UK–EU Defence Cooperation’, in Briffa, Devanny and Gearson, One Year On, pp.24‒28. 57. Cameron, For the Record, p.142; Thompson and Blagden, ‘Very British National Security State’, p.586. 58. Devanny and Berry, ‘The Conservative Party and DFID’, pp.106‒11. 59. Michael Welken, ‘Educating National Security Leaders for Working in the Interagency Process’, in Gabriel Marcella (ed.), Affairs of the State: The Interagency and National Security (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2008), p.447. 60. John Sawers, ‘War Studies Annual Lecture: The Limits of Security’, King’s College London, 16 February 2015.

11. Science and international security Hassan Elbahtimy and Filippa Lentzos Always important, science and technology are playing an increasingly prominent role in international affairs. Studying and understanding their impact on global politics draws on and fuses insights from multiple disciplines. Security Studies has traditionally focused on the big questions of war and peace in international politics. Exploring arms dynamics and their symbiotic relationship with technological change has occupied a central stage in understanding patterns of use, threat, and control of weapons internationally. Additionally, a critical turn in Security Studies has spawned new approaches to the study of security, war, and weapons. Of particular relevance to the topic of science and international security is the growing field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Through its emphasis on the social and political embeddedness of science and technology and their inherent social construction, the field provides a different perspective through which the complex interplay of science and security can be scrutinised. This chapter brings together strands of literature from Security Studies and STS to showcase how each has developed conceptual and empirical approaches to study the intersection between science, technology, and international security. The chapter is divided into two main sections. In the first section, the chapter focuses on how Security Studies has addressed the implications of advances in nuclear technology on international politics. Nuclear weapons have stretched the destructiveness of modern technological war to the extreme. The section explores how concepts like the nuclear revolution, proliferation and arms control provided gateways into understanding the scope and implications of technological change defined by mutually assured destruction. The second section brings in approaches from STS that highlight the political and social constituents of technology, and which discursively ascribe meaning and significance to it. It provides a brief history charting some of the pioneering studies and key milestones that shaped the field’s outlook and trajectory. It also explores how thinking about ‘security’ has come to form part of the canon of STS from the social construction of military technology to the role of regimes of secrecy, ambiguity, and strategic ignorance in shaping security practices. The chapter finishes by briefly looking forward and setting out some of the key questions that will shape this space over the coming years. 153

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An introduction to War Studies

SECURITY STUDIES AND THE NUCLEAR AGE

Security Studies has always maintained an interest in science and technological developments, not least because weapons of war – and the means of countering them – have evolved in step with the scientific and technological trends of their time. Indeed, this symbiotic relationship is key to making sense of the processes and outcomes of conflict. The interest in understanding the influence of arms on international politics expanded with the growing destructiveness of advanced weapons, perhaps best epitomised by nuclear weapons. This section sets out to explore some of the key themes and concepts that Security Studies developed in response to nuclear weapons. Studying the impact of nuclear weapons on international politics has left a significant footprint in Security Studies as a discipline. Moreover, it has set the template for exploring the link between technologically advanced weapons and security. This section focuses on three broad themes: (a) strategy and weapons utility, (b) proliferation, and (c) control including approaches to disarmament and arms control. 11.1.1 The Nuclear Revolution The dropping of nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 demonstrated the large-scale physical destruction these weapons can cause and raised questions about their impact on international politics and security. The ‘nuclear revolution’ evolved as a concept to reflect the transformative effects of nuclear terror on the nature of warfare and consequently global politics. The idea of revolutionary change brought about by nuclear weapons was articulated by Bernard Brodie in 1946 in his book The Absolute Weapon. His argument was summed up in a statement widely quoted since: ‘Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them.’1 With the advent of nuclear weapons and their spread to more states, ‘deterrence’ emerged as a central concept in nuclear strategy. Insights by Brodie and other early strategists on deterrence were followed on and expanded by a cadre of civilian strategists, not hailing from military institutions, that shaped the early policy debate about nuclear weapons.2 Civilian strategists offered a new toolkit of methods drawn from other disciplines including microeconomics, game theory, and behavioural sciences that delivered various insights into nuclear dynamics that had a defining influence on nuclear strategy.3 Nuclear weapons also posed interesting questions to some core International Relations concepts. Robert Jervis, for example, postulated that achieving a reliable and secure nuclear second-strike capability could have a dampening effect on the security dilemma between states leading to less intense competition.4

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Deterrence occupied a central stage in nuclear debates but that did not go uncontested. In practice, it seemed that the idea of mutual vulnerability, implied under mutual deterrence, was never truly accepted by policy makers or military establishments. As Brendan Rittenhouse Green demonstrated, despite commitment to nuclear deterrence as a policy, various actors pushed for an expansion of nuclear arsenals beyond the requirements for minimum deterrence.5 Arguments were put forward in support of nuclear warfighting through limited nuclear war scenarios backed by a belief that escalation could be controlled, and an all-out nuclear war could be averted.6 Efforts to reject the logic of nuclear vulnerability led to calls for investment in missile defence systems – which demanded further technological innovation. On the other hand, criticism was levelled at the idea of a ‘nuclear peace’ kept in place through acceptance of mutual nuclear deterrence between the great powers. For example, John Mueller had contested the central role attributed to nuclear weapons in keeping peace between the great powers during the Cold War. Instead, he advanced competing explanations for that peace such as the satisfaction of the big victors of the Second World War with the status quo, among others.7 Critiques were also levelled over the notion of ‘control’ over nuclear weapons that is inherent in the acceptance of deterrence.8 An examination of how close the world came to nuclear war at various points during the Cold War highlights the importance of ‘luck’ in averting such outcomes.9 Rather than cold strategic calculation, Nick Richie suggests that political culture and values, that are inherently contingent and malleable, are key factors informing our attitude towards nuclear weapons.10 The debate between opponents and defenders of the ‘nuclear revolution’ continue to animate debates about nuclear policy till this day.11 11.1.2 Fear of Proliferation The spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – collectively described as weapons of mass destruction – has attracted considerable scholarly and policy attention. Interest in proliferation peaked by the end of the Cold War as non-proliferation became a widely recognised pillar of the Post-Cold War order. Yet it started much earlier with the realisation that nuclear secrets could not be entirely contained and that other states, including ones starting from a less sophisticated scientific base point, could put themselves within reach of weapons of mass destruction relatively quickly – chemical and biological weapons posed less scientific hurdles than nuclear. The fear that accompanied this realisation is perhaps best captured by Kennedy’s pessimistic prediction in March 1963 that 15 to 25 states might obtain nuclear weapons by the 1970s.12 Consequently, scholarly debates about the drivers and the consequences of the spread of weapons of mass destruction expanded, along with

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demand from the policy world for analytical insights into the phenomenon of proliferation. Earlier studies had focused on the drivers for proliferation, particularly the security dimension, but lacked a holistic framework that would bring together and make sense of different explanations of the phenomenon.13 Scott Sagan’s 1997 article developed that larger framework and consequently occupied a central place in the growing literature on the causes of proliferation.14 Given the earlier predominance of ‘security’ as a variable in understanding proliferation, Sagan’s multi-factor framework pushed to the spotlight other factors that were previously ignored including domestic politics and normative factors. Sagan’s wider reflections on how to study proliferation dynamics, including the challenge posed by the veil of secrecy usually surrounding nuclear issues, also opened spaces in the academic debate to seriously engage with the methods used to study proliferation.15 To this day, this article remains one of the most cited in the field. The expanding literature on proliferation drew on various methods and approaches leading to a rich tapestry of variables posited to influence and shape the phenomenon of nuclear proliferation. Etel Solingen highlighted how regime security intersects with political economy to influence decisions on nuclear weapons acquisition.16 Psychological dimensions were brought to the fore by Jacques Hymans who conceived of the decision to acquire nuclear weapons as a ‘revolutionary’ decision akin to a ‘jump in the dark’, challenging analyses based solely on rational calculations and highlighting the role of the leadership profile, psychology, and ideology of leaders.17 Maria Rost Rublee highlighted, through applying historical sociology approaches, the role of norms in informing proliferation decisions.18 The literature also expanded to include the internal workings of nuclear programmes – how they are run and managed. This drew on research from sociology and management studies to understand the complex institutional arrangements that influence the success or failure of weapons programmes.19 As a whole, this literature presented a complex image of proliferation that embeds the phenomenon into political, normative, economic, and institutional contexts. While ‘proliferation’ as a concept is now widely used, it is not without critics. Frequently, the term is understood to imply some automaticity where ‘nuclear dominos’ or ‘proliferation chains’ have become common metaphors summarising how ‘proliferation begets more proliferation.’ However, as pointed out by Potter and Mukhatzhanova, forecasts about the rampant spread of nuclear weapons have frequently failed to materialise.20 Elsewhere, the concept of proliferation was critiqued from various theoretical perspectives. Kenneth Waltz went against the orthodoxy by arguing that the spread of nuclear weapons can lower the propensity for war and thus contribute to peace and long-term stability rather than necessarily being a dangerous prospect.21

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Benoît Pelopidas explored how an approach to nuclear policy that defines its key problem as one of proliferation limits the range of options available in addressing broader global nuclear vulnerabilities.22 Others, such as David Mutimer, have drawn on post-structuralist critiques to argue that a discourse around proliferation promotes solutions that are doomed to fail.23 Other critical voices emerged challenging some of the implicit assumptions behind proliferation. For example, drawing on postcolonial thought, the concept of ‘ambivalence’ was introduced by Itty Abraham to capture the indeterminate nature of nuclear policy particularly in postcolonial states where nuclear programmes can serve multiple functions beyond a security framing, including as a signifier for modernity.24 Gabrielle Hecht’s ‘nuclearity’ exposes the social construction of what is considered ‘nuclear’; situating nuclearity on a technopolitical spectrum that can shift in time and space.25 Shampa Biswas’s ‘nuclear desire’ captures how a notion of inherent and primordial inclination for or affinity to nuclear weapons can be projected onto some postcolonial states.26 While the bulk of the literature on proliferation focused on nuclear weapons, some of it extended to examine proliferation of chemical and biological weapons seeking to capture related drivers and trends.27 All of this also informed various options to apply controls and manage nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction under the broad rubric of arms control. 11.1.3 The Promise of Arms Control So ingrained is arms control in international experience, that it is sometimes used as a term to describe the whole field despite being only a part of it. International practice has provided many prominent examples of arms control arrangements, whether bilateral, regional, or multilateral. The concept saw its rise with a golden age of civilian strategists who employed a diverse toolkit to study it, and, in the process, produced seminal contributions on the value of nuclear arms control. This includes Hedley Bull, whose work drew on traditional/classical approaches, Thomas Schelling, who employed modelling and game theory, and Patrick Morgan, whose research incorporated behavioural approaches.28 The bilateral US–Soviet Union (later Russia) arms control process is a fertile area for study and analysis. Advocates emphasised the role of predictability and information sharing in arms control that can produce stability and allow better crisis management while sceptics argued that incompatibility of interests between states cannot be ameliorated by arms control.29 The concept of arms control is also in tension with other concepts like disarmament, and an early axis of debate on these issues was whether the more limited aims of containing the prospect of war were more achievable and desirable than efforts to promote disarmament.30 With time, new concepts and explanations made their

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way into the debate on weapons control. The role of ‘epistemic communities’ of experts who are part of a socialisation process was developed by Emanuel Adler as a way to understand the role of process, change and transformation that made arms control possible.31 Ideas and beliefs rather than just material factors or weapon balances factored into a different narrative of the process of arms control.32 Krause argues that ‘governmentality’ has replaced sovereignty as a way to understand the reach and effects of arms control.33 Outside the bilateral framework, interest was directed to big multilateral control regimes developed in relation to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and, most recently, the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). All of these treaties developed international regimes of cooperation among members and led to specialised literature on the issues facing these cooperative efforts. This includes the review process of the NPT and the push and pull between member states on the priorities of the regime (particularly when it comes to disarmament).34 For the CWC and BTWC, research has explored, among other things, how advances in science and technology have influenced the threat landscape.35 More recently, the TPNW, with its blanket prohibition of nuclear weapons, triggered debate about the humanitarian turn in arms control and the tension between deterrence and disarmament.36 11.1.4 Unboxing Science and Technology Traditional analyses of security, war, and the prevention of war, whether this be in the domain of weapons of mass destruction or elsewhere, have tended to treat any science and technology involved as a closed ‘black box’. This has foregrounded an understanding of technology as a given while focusing on its material consequences rather than the role of human agency and social structures in shaping technological choices. Over the past 10–15 years, however, Security Studies scholars – often hailing from Critical Security Studies – have started asking new questions about the link between technology and security. This interest is, at least in part, a response to the prominence given to emerging technology in debates regarding security futures. In 2020, for example, United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres highlighted the threat to security posed by the rapid rise of new technologies such as military applications of artificial intelligence.37 In some cases, scholars have rejected conventional approaches to security, critiquing the theories, epistemologies and implications of technological determinism and instead embraced studying technology through the prism of social constructivism.38 This has brought scholars of International Relations closer to the approaches taken by Science

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and Technology Studies. But what is STS? And how has this area of scholarly activity developed over time?

11.2

APPROACHES FROM STS

Science and Technology Studies is a dynamic field broadly focused on the social and political contexts and dynamics of science and technology. It is productively interdisciplinary, with contributions from sociologists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists, and, as a result, is extraordinarily diverse and innovative in its approaches. This is also true of the field’s contributions to studies on security, where STS scholarship challenges commonplace presumptions about science and technology, and continues to innovate and adapt methods, tools, frameworks, and ideas to emerging security concerns. 11.2.1 A Brief History of STS The field of STS as we know it today has grown out of two principal strands of work. One was a philosophically radical project to understand science and technology as discursive, social and material activities. The other, more activist strand focused on critically addressing policy, governance, and funding issues with a view to reform science and technology in the name of equality, welfare, and environment. The two strands have been characterised as the ‘High Church’ and ‘Low Church’ of STS.39 The foundational work of the High Church is Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.40 Emphasising the social and active nature of scientific knowledge, Kuhn opened up the possibility of looking at science as a social activity. Early STS work focused on controversies in science, where knowledge is undetermined, and where ideas, methods, data, and materials can be given a range of interpretations compatible with the competing positions. Controversies like cold fusion,41 nuclear energy,42 the choice between different missile guidance systems,43 and the lethality of supposedly non-lethal weapons44 were used to demonstrate that truth has no causal power that draws scientific beliefs towards it. Instead, consensus develops out of persuasive arguments, social pressures and the like. Early work also focused on the processes through which knowledge in this area is constructed. Pioneering STS scholars moved into laboratories to observe and participate in the central scientific activities of experimentation, collection, and analysis of data, and refinement of claims. Through rich detailed case studies, these laboratory studies demonstrated how the construction of data is heavily marked by skills and cultures and by routine negotiation in the lab.45 Later work developed sophisticated conceptual tools for exploring the development and stabilisation of knowledge and technologies; concepts

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like ‘co-production’46 and ‘co-construction’47 highlighted the constant intertwining of the cognitive, the material, the social, and the normative in issues of science and technology, and the ‘boundary work’48 that goes on at the edges of disciplines, methods, and other social divisions. Less concerned with understanding science in and of itself, and more with making science accountable to public interests, the activist-orientated Low Church originated in the work of scientists concerned with ties among science, technology, the military, and industry. For them, the goal was to challenge the structures that allowed nuclear physics to contribute to the development of atomic weapons, that allowed chemistry to be harnessed to various environmentally disastrous projects, or that gave biology a key place in the industrialisation of agriculture. Activist movements in the 1940s and 1950s produced the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and organisations like Pugwash, in which progressively minded scientists and other scholars discussed nuclear weapons and other evolving global threats, and international security policy. Recognising that the benefits, costs, and risks of science are often very unevenly distributed, 1960s activists created organisations like the Union of Concerned Scientists and Science for the People. In the academy, the Low Church became ‘Science, Technology and Society,’ a diverse grouping united by its combination of progressive goals and orientation to science and technology as social institutions. Key questions were aimed at promoting science and technology that benefit the widest populations. How can sound technical decisions be made through genuinely democratic processes?49 Can innovation be democratically controlled?50 How should technologies best be regulated?51 To what extent, and how, can technologies be treated as political entities?52 What are the dynamics of public technical controversies, and how do sides attempt to control definition of the issues and the relevant participants?53 An assumption behind, and also a result of, research on Science, Technology and Society is that more public participation in technical decision-making, or at least more than has been traditional, improves the public value and quality of science and technology. Today, the field of STS combines both the High and Low Church approaches, focusing on topics of clear political importance, and placing politics, and the interactions between science, technology and public interest, front and centre as sites of study, rather than mere context. 11.2.2 Security From an STS Perspective Security has formed a part of STS scholarship and engagement since its inception. The decisive contribution of scientists to the Second World War dramatically changed the role of science and technology in future military affairs. The highly organised and concentrated war efforts resulted in a variety

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of ground-breaking new technologies, from radar and the atomic bomb to penicillin, and led post-war military research and development to become a large-scale institutionalised process with a multi-billion dollar budget, spanning national laboratories, a defence industry, military services labs and university labs. Some of the early STS work in the security realm focused on the role and impact of this military investment in the scientific enterprise. Some of the landmark security-related STS studies contextualised how security concerns can be understood in terms of broader historical, cultural, and discursive contexts, emphasising the socially constructed nature of technologies, weapons and threats. Social construction can be hard to understand in a scientific context. It does not, for instance, imply that presidents, missiles, and mushroom clouds are figments of the imagination. But, as Hugh Gusterson explains, groups of people have to share and communicate about entities in the world – whether these are physical entities such as nuclear missiles or abstract entities such as nuclear deterrence – through language and other mediating forms of representation, and in the process of representing the world, we construct it. Gusterson provides a helpful example through the many ways to see a missile: ‘It can be a Peacekeeper or an MX, a token of security or of vulnerability, a technical diagram or an image in a nightmare, a small pointy dot seen from above or a massive metallic phallus seen from the side, a number in a chart or a reason for not having children.’54 The point is that it is possible to represent anything in the world, from a missile to the notion of peace, in a number of different ways, and as he explains, ‘[o]ur often unthinking representations of the world are partial constructions of it. These partial constructions are not only produced by us; they also, as social entities that precede us, produce us as people.’55 His classic ethnographic study of a nuclear weapons lab – the Lawrence Livermore National Lab – illustrates that: ‘In a context in which policymakers, international relations experts, nuclear weapons scientists, and antinuclear activists have sought to persuade us that there is only one way to understand the world and that they knew what it is, the contribution of anthropology is to disturb comfortable understanding of the world by showing the simultaneous plausibility and arbitrariness of multiple ways of understanding and living in it.’56 Donald MacKenzie, in his pioneering study of nuclear missile guidance, also provided ‘a technological “window” into crucial divides in nuclear thinking’ and demonstrated how the technology is a historical product and a social creation.57 For MacKenzie it was important to show that the nuclear world is not the product of technology developing autonomously: ‘It is not brought about by benignly rational decision making, even on “our” side, and it is not the result of a coherent malign conspiracy.’58 And the technology is not self-sustaining thereafter either. As he puts it, although trivially true that nuclear weapons ‘cannot be uninvented’, they are social up to the point of

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invention but not after. A technology’s conditions of possibility are always social. His key point is that ‘to see the mundane social processes that form the nuclear world is to see simultaneously the possibility of intervening in them, of reshaping that world.’59 There are also studies of how objects become dangerous in the chemical field. Caitríona McLeish and Brian Balmer, for instance, charted the history of nerve gas, showing that converting a discovery of a pesticide in the civilian sector into a nerve gas for military use was not a simple handing over of technology.60 Instead, a network of different secrecy regimes (commercial and military), institutional goals, and research practices had to be actively connected and reconfigured to enact the transfer. Interviews with scientists involved in weapons programmes and potential dual-use research demonstrated that, while dual uses are frequently represented as a simple act of replication, tacit knowledge and other important micro- and macro-level sociotechnical factors are important in conducting science and turning the resulting knowledge into dangerous weapons. Ian Hacking’s The Social Construction of What? built further on this argument.61 Focusing on the framework of science within which questions can be posed and answered, and circling back to some of the early STS work on the role and impact of military dollars but from the vantage point of the turn of the century, Hacking emphasised that the sheer amount of investment and resources going into weapons research means that this is where much of our new knowledge is brought into being. He argued that the new knowledge determines the content of science and the particular questions we are able to ask at specific times, closing off certain possibilities and opening up others. To illustrate the idea of frameworks or ‘forms’ of science, Hacking turned to the coming into being of the nucleus, as a real possibility, in the years 1890–1912. He suggested that, in 1870: […] it was not thinkable that an atom should be constituted by an infinitesimally small concentration of mass in a void at whose outer limits are the remaining parts of the atom. Certain possibilities did not exist for us, but only gradually entered the field as electrons came to be postulated and then known. Even when Rutherford did have the nucleus in 1911, he was very slow in talking about it, and did not at first draw much attention to it at the small congresses of the day. It really took him two or three years – not to countenance the nuclear as a fact, but to think of it as a possibility. The fact that the atom has a nucleus was less of a problem for Rutherford than to transform a form of knowledge in order to make an atom with a nucleus a possibility (and simultaneously a known fact).62

Returning to the idea of knowledge determining particular forms of science, he noted, referring specifically to nuclear weapons, that: ‘When so much knowledge is created by and for weaponry, it is not only our actual facts and

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the content of knowledge, that are affected. The possible facts, the nature of the (ideal) world in which we live become determined. Weapons are making our world, even if they are never exploded. Not because they spin off new materials, but because they create some possibilities and delimit others, perhaps forever.’63 In the realm of biological weapons, Kathleen Vogel’s pioneering study on assessing bioweapons threats demonstrated how, post-9/11 and Amerithrax, US bioweapons analysts and policy makers produced, and then reinforced, a technological frame and set of analytic practices that emphasised a diffuse, increasing and technologically advanced set of bioweapons threats to US national security.64 This analytic and policy focus prompted the collection and evaluation of primarily technical information, and the use of technical and quantitative methodologies like computational modelling and simulations, lab experimentation for assessing bioweapons threats, and quantitative risk assessment models. Vogel showed that the reliance on technical knowledge to inform bioweapons assessments produced conclusions focused on narrow technical issues, which were then prioritised in policy forums. This outcome further served to strengthen and mobilise the existing technological frame and set of analytic practices, all of which continue to rely on material factors, quantitative methodologies, and technical solutions. Yet, as she pointed out ‘by omitting social factors, this work provides only a partial understanding of the status of state and terrorist bioweapons programs – one that tends to predict ease of bioweapons development and use. In contrast, factoring in the social context of scientific work, such as tacit knowledge, laboratory disciplines, organisational management, institutional norms and research practices, makes bioweapons development and use much more complex, difficult and contingent.’65 More recent STS engagement on security has focused on non-knowledge and the strategic use of ignorance.66 Those seeking to guard information often seek to maintain a state of ignorance, as well as induce one. Intelligence, counterintelligence, international diplomacy, covert operations, and other activities associated with the maintenance of secrets are characterised by moves and countermoves intended to deceive, disguise, and beguile. Agencies of the state can go to extraordinary lengths to hide their capabilities (or the lack of them) from others. For example, in Cold War British chemical weapons programs, authorities were particularly concerned that the Soviets would discover not what they possessed but that Britain had no stockpile of chemical weapons.67 Conditions of ignorance can create a ‘surplus of ambiguity’ in which performativity and attempts to construct sources of authority figure highly, as seen in debates about nuclear weapons development.68

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11.3 CONCLUSION Through the twentieth century, the pursuit of national and international security was largely synonymous with the use of science and technology to design and deploy powerful weapons. From the battleships and chemical weapons of the First World War to the radar systems and atomic bombs of the Second World War to the intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear arsenals of the Cold War, scientists and engineers transformed the nature of warfare and, by extension, global politics. Security Studies and STS analyses of the relationship between socio-political contexts and developments in science and technology, making extensive contributions to understanding the complex consequences for national and international security and for the social, economic, and political dynamics of modern societies. Today, science and technology remain crucial to contemporary national and international security. Digital technologies and emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, genomic technologies and cutting-edge biotechnologies, additive manufacturing, and space technologies are refashioning old questions and raising new ones on the links between technology, society, and global order. How can the opportunities and risks of these advances be identified and assessed? How are these technologies interacting and converging, and to what effect? Do they carry the potential to disrupt the existing order or be a tool to stabilise it? How do they enhance or undermine peace and security? How can they be most effectively governed and regulated? Can we tweak existing governance frameworks or do we need entirely new ones? Insights from Security Studies and STS will be important in answering these questions, and in conceptualising and responding to the global security challenges that science and technology developments provoke in the future. Running alongside these developments is a shift in the realms of knowledge and information. Just as the national Security States of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe built vast information architectures to serve their needs, so, too, the rise of information societies is reconfiguring the power of states across the world to gather information as they pursue expanded security. New data streams, including on all kinds of biological data, that most personal of data, are rapidly becoming accessible, and corruptible. Misinformation and active disinformation are playing ever more significant roles in how developments in the science and security space are understood and responded to. They are putting added strains on established methods of political signalling and communication and, in the process, complicating crisis management and opening new risks for nuclear escalation and war. Exploring processes and dynamics of data gathering and knowledge-making, of information authenticity and

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trustworthiness, and of uncertainty and ambiguity will be key to understanding the relationship between science and security in the future.

NOTES Brodie Bernard, The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt, 1946), p.76. Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1957); Albert Wohlstetter, ‘The Delicate Balance of Terror [Condensed from Foreign Affairs, January 1959]’, Survival, 1, 1 (1959), pp.8‒17; Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960); Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). 3. Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp.235‒230. 4. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), p.45. 5. Brendan Rittenhouse Green, The Revolution that Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 6. Robert Powell, ‘Nuclear Brinkmanship, Limited War, and Military Power’, International Organization, 69, 3 (2015), pp.589–626. 7. John Mueller, ‘The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the Postwar World’, International Security, 13, 2 (1988), pp.55‒79. See also Ward Wilson, Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons (Boston: Mariner Books, 2014). Scott Sagan, The Limits of Safety (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). 8. 9. Benoît Pelopidas, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Luck: Three Sources of Overconfidence in the Manageability of Nuclear Crises’, European Journal of International Security, 2, 2 (2017), pp.240‒262. 10. Nick Ritchie, ‘Valuing and Devaluing Nuclear Weapons’, Contemporary Security Policy, 34, 1 (2013), pp.146‒173. 11. Recently, Kier Lieber and Daryl Press have argued that advances in accuracy and remote sensing are heralding a new era where effective counterforce capabilities (i.e. targeting an opponent’s nuclear weapons) can lead to a successful disarming strike therefore undermining mutual deterrence. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence’, International Security, 41, 4 (2017), pp.9‒49. This argument is developed more fully in Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020). For a critique, see: Campbell Craig and S. M. Amadae, ‘The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age’, Journal of Strategic Studies (2021). 12. John F. Kennedy, ‘News Conference 52’, 21 March 1963, available at: https://​ www​.jfklibrary​.org/​archives/​other​-resources/​john​-f​-kennedy​-press​-conferences/​ news​-conference​-52. 13. An earlier approach to quantification was Stephen M. Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). George H. Quester, The Politics of Nuclear Proliferation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); William Epstein, ‘Why States Go – and Don’t Go – Nuclear’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1. 2.

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

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430, 1 (1977), pp.16‒28; Richard K. Betts, ‘Paranoids, Pygmies, Pariahs & Nonproliferation’, Foreign Policy, 26 (1977), pp.157‒183. Scott D. Sagan, ‘Why do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb’, International Security, 21, 3 (1997), pp.54‒86. In particular, he drew on the concept of ‘equifinality’ to show the diversity of factors influencing proliferation. Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) and Solingen, ‘The Political Economy of Nuclear Restraint’, International Security, 19, 2 (1994), pp.126‒169. Jacques E. C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Maria Rost Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). Jacques E. C. Hymans, Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). William C. Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, ‘Divining Nuclear Intentions: A Review Essay’, International Security, 33, 1 (2008), pp.139‒169. Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better: Introduction’, The Adelphi Papers, 21, 171 (1981), p.1; Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability’, Foreign Affairs, 91, 4 (2012), pp.2‒5. Benoît Pelopidas, ‘The Oracles of Proliferation: How Experts Maintain a Biased Historical Reading That Limits Policy Innovation’, Nonproliferation Review, 18, 1 (2011), pp.297‒314. David Mutimer, The Weapons State: Proliferation and The Framing of Security (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000); David Mutimer, ‘Reimagining Security: The Metaphors of Proliferation’, in Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds.), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (London: Routledge, 1997), pp.187‒222. Itty Abraham, ‘The Ambivalence Of Nuclear Histories’, Osiris, 21, 1 (2006), pp.49‒65. Gabrielle Hecht, ‘Nuclear Ontologies’, Constellations, 13, 3 (2006), pp.320‒331. Shampa Biswas, Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). Gregory D. Koblentz, ‘Regime Security: A New Theory for Understanding the Proliferation of Chemical and Biological Weapons’, Contemporary Security Policy, 34, 3 (2013), pp.501‒525; Seth W. Carus, ‘A Century of Biological-Weapons Programs (1915–2015): Reviewing the Evidence’, The Nonproliferation Review, 24, 1‒2 (2017), pp.129‒153; Geoffrey Chapman, Hassan Elbahtimy and Susan B. Martin, ‘The Future of Chemical Weapons: Implications from the Syrian Civil War’, Security Studies, 27, 4 (2018), pp.704‒733. Hedley Bull, The Control of the Arms Race: Disarmament and Arms Control in the Missile Age (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1961). In his critique for arms control, Colin Gray shifted the focus away from weapons as the problem and into incompatible political dynamics. Colin Gray, House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

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30. Philip Noel-Baker, The Arms Race (London: John Calder, 1958); Hedley Bull, ‘Disarmament and the International System’, Australian Journal of Politics & History, 5, 1 (1959), pp.41–50; Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), pp.1–2; Alva Myrdal, The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977). 31. Emanuel Adler, ‘The Emergence of Cooperation: National Epistemic Communities and the International Evolution of the Idea of Nuclear Arms Control’, International Organization, 46, 1 (1992), pp.101‒145. 32. James H. Lebovic, Flawed Logics: Strategic Nuclear Arms Control from Truman to Obama (Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). 33. Keith Krause, ‘Leashing the Dogs of War: Arms Control from Sovereignty to Governmentality’, Contemporary Security Policy, 32, 1 (2011), pp.20‒39. 34. Nina Tannenwald, ‘Justice and Fairness in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime’, Ethics & International Affairs, 27, 3 (2013), pp.299‒317; Liviu Horovitz, ‘Beyond Pessimism: Why the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Will Not Collapse’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 38, 1‒2 (2015), pp.126‒158; T. V. Paul, ‘Systemic Conditions and Security Cooperation: Explaining the Persistence of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 16, 1 (2003), pp.135‒154. 35. J.P. Perry Robinson, ‘Difficulties Facing the Chemical Weapons Convention’, International Affairs, 84, 2 (2008), pp.223‒239; Paul F. Walker, ‘Abolishing Chemical Weapons: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities’, Arms Control Today, 40, 9 (2010), pp.22‒30; A. Kelle, K. Nixdorff and M. Dando, Controlling Biochemical Weapons: Adapting Multilateral Arms Control for the 21st Century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Fillipa Lentzos, ‘Hard to Prove: The Verification Quandary of the Biological Weapons Convention’, The Nonproliferation Review, 18, 3 (2011), pp.571‒582. 36. John Borrie, ‘Humanitarian Reframing of Nuclear Weapons and the Logic of a Ban’, International Affairs, 90, 3 (2014), pp.625‒646; Rebecca Davis Gibbons, ‘The Humanitarian Turn in Nuclear Disarmament and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’, The Nonproliferation Review, 25, 1‒2 (2018), pp.11‒36; Nick Ritchie and Kjølv Egeland, ‘The Diplomacy of Resistance: Power, Hegemony and Nuclear Disarmament’, Global Change, Peace & Security, 30, 2 (2018), pp.121‒141. 37. António Guterres, ‘Remarks to the General Assembly on the Secretary-General’s priorities for 2020’, 22 January 2020, available at: https://​www​.un​.org/​sg/​en/​ content/​sg/​speeches/​2020​-01​-22/​remarks​-general​-assembly​-priorities​-for​-2020. 38. Caroline Holmqvist, ‘Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 14, 3 (2013), pp.535–552; Columba Peoples, Justifying Ballistic Missile Defence: Technology, Security and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Mark B. Salter and Can E. Mutlu, ‘Psychoanalytic Theory and Border Security’ European Journal of Social Theory, 15, 2 (2012), pp.179–195. 39. Steve Fuller, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge: The Coming of Science and Technology Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993). 40. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

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H. M. Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know About Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 42. James M. Jasper, ‘Gods, Titans and Mortals: Patterns of State Involvement in Nuclear Development’, Energy Policy, 20, 7 (1992), pp.653‒659. 43. Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1990). 44. Brian Rappert, Non-Lethal Weapons qs Legitimizing Forces? Technology, Politics and the Management of Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 2003). 45. H. M. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (London: Sage, 1985); Karin D. Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981); Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (London: Sage, 1979); Michael Lynch, Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985); Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). 46. Sheila Jasanoff (ed.), States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order (London: Routledge, 2004). 47. Peter Taylor, ‘Building on Construction: An Exploration of Heterogeneous Constructionism, Using an Analogy from Psychology and a Sketch from Socioeconomic Modeling’, Perspectives on Science 3, 1 (1995), pp.66–98. 48. Thomas F. Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 49. Frank Laird, ‘Participatory Analysis, Democracy, and Technological Decision Making’, Science, Technology & Human Values, 18, 3 (1993), pp.341–361. 50. Richard Sclove, Democracy and Technology (New York: Guilford Press, 1995). 51. Joseph Morone and Edward J. Woodhouse, The Demise of Nuclear Energy?: Lessons for Democratic Control of Technology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 52. Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 53. Dorothy Nelkin, Controversy: Politics of Technical Decisions (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979). 54. Hugh Gusterson, Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p.2. See also, Hugh Gusterson, People of the Bomb: Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 55. Ibid., p.2. 56. Ibid. 57. Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1993), p.2. 58. Ibid., p.4. 59. Ibid. 60. Caitríona McLeish and Brian Balmer, ‘Discovery of the V-series Nerve Agents’, in Jonathan Tucker (ed.), Innovation, Dual-Use and Security: Managing the Risks of Emerging Biological and Chemical Technologies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012) pp.273–287.

41.

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I. Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). 62. Ibid., p.171. 63. Ibid., p.167. 64. Kathleen Vogel, Phantom Menace or Looming Danger? A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). 65. Ibid., p.9. 66. Brian Rappert, Sensing Absence: How to See What Isn’t There in the Study of Science and Security (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Brian Balmer, Secrecy and Science: A Historical Sociology of Biological and Chemical Warfare (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); Linsey McGoey, Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World (London: Zed Books, 2019). 67. Brian Balmer, ‘Keeping Nothing Secret: United Kingdom Chemical Weapons Policy in the 1960s’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 33, 6 (2010), pp.871‒893. 68. Hugh Gusterson, ‘Nuclear Futures: Anticipatory Knowledge, Expert Judgement, and the Lack that Cannot be Filled’, Science and Public Policy, 35, 8 (2008), pp.551‒560. 61.

12. Strategic Communications: shaping a new century Neville Bolt Twenty years into its life, the prominence and importance of Strategic Communications cannot be questioned – the concept has been embraced by governments and international organisations – yet it remains a highly contested and under-researched field of study. This chapter seeks to provide an overview of how Strategic Communications has evolved as an area of theory and practice, as well as some insight into how the research agenda in this field might develop in the coming decades. The chapter is structured in three parts. The first section considers the major debates that have shaped this emerging field over the past two decades. The second charts the trajectory of development of Strategic Communications in its short life to date. The third and final section explores how its theorists and practitioners are preparing for what promise to be turbulent decades in politics and geopolitics.

12.1

SURVEYING THE FIELD

The field of Strategic Communications is an emergent area of research in the academy.1 Increasingly self-reflexive, it develops theoretical and conceptual foundations to underpin the way political communications is practised by political elites and media experts across both public and private sectors. As a practice, it has been driven by professionals who instrumentalise basic precepts. Theorists see Strategic Communications as a way of understanding influence and applying it to select audiences with the intention of achieving a strategic effect, namely to change the way they think and behave. Searching for its essence, the Terminology Working Group of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence defines it as ‘a holistic approach to communication based on values and interests that encompasses everything an actor does to achieve objectives in a contested environment’.2 More instrumentally, James Farwell defines it as ‘the use of words, actions, images, or symbols to influence the attitudes and opinions of target audiences to shape their behavior in order to advance interests or policies, or to achieve 170

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objectives’.3 And where actions communicate, so too does a failure to act also send out a signal, consciously or unconsciously. These attempts to define Strategic Communications serve as useful anchors for the concept, but are by no means fixed or beyond challenge. Born of successive crises in international politics and a failure to understand why Western, kinetic force was unsuccessful in defeating long-term, ideological social movements and winning over foreign populations, key lines of inquiry have emerged among scholars, think tanks, and military doctrine writers. Predominantly, these are: (i) what is Strategic Communications, as differentiated from other forms of political communications – public diplomacy, information operations, political marketing, nation branding, public relations, and propaganda? Each of which draws on a specific literature, albeit often confusing and overlapping, and sometimes inattentive to and unquestioning of terminology; (ii) What is the relationship between persuasion and coercion in the context of Strategic Communications, exemplified in the now popular contrast between the attractions of so-called ‘soft power’ and what is termed ‘hard power’ – force as threat and punishment?; (iii) Is Strategic Communications a mindset, bureaucratic and technocratic process, or a tool-bag of techniques scalable according to budget? This is a debate that has occupied governmental and trans-governmental conversations recently; and (iv) How can process, capacity, and member states be synchronised across the NATO Alliance in response to hybrid threats and systematic disinformation campaigns from hostile actors. 12.1.1 What is Strategic Communications? The term remains elusive. DIME (Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economics) has been used, particularly in the US, as an umbrella acronym to capture the concept and express key elements of governance while underlining the significance of information and communications in a changing world.4 The UK, meanwhile, favours DME (Diplomacy, Military, Economics), arguing that information, far from being a distinct pillar of governance, sits within the DNA of each dimension of power projection.5 What makes these discussions problematic is a tendency to define the concept according to what it is not, rather than what it is – a weakness not uncommon in scholarly and policy literature.6 Hence it is not marketing,7 branding,8 or propaganda. As a political concept, however, ‘there is not much theorizing and research that manages to bridge the gap between public relations, political communication, and political science theory and research’.9 Public Diplomacy – ‘processes by which international actors advance their ends abroad through engagement with publics’10 – is a ‘soft power’ that employs attraction and persuasion towards foreign populations,11 through

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educational, sporting, scientific, trade-focused, cultural, and touristic diplomacy. Whether part of or distinct from Strategic Communications, it has fallen foul of governmental turf wars and their proprietorial definitions (US State Department versus Department of Defense, for example).12 Once Strategic Communications is prised from conventional military thinking and understood as a broader political way of thought, soft power and hard power begin to act in symbiosis in a continual calibration between persuasion and coercion, projecting politics and geopolitics. Meanwhile, practitioners in media and marketing agencies cloud the waters.13 Companies engaged in Public Relations (historically, image building and damage limitation) frame their offerings as Strategic Communications, not least because strategy suggests a higher level of knowledge, nuance, and sophistication to clients.14 But do they shape major discourses in societies or simply cater to the personal or corporate interests of their clients? Propaganda, a controversial and contested form of twentieth-century influence, has been said to encompass everything human beings do when they communicate.15 It is variously seen as a co-production between producer and audience,16 a systematic whole-of-government approach,17 a ‘myth [that] needs to be rooted in some reality … to succeed’,18 a reflection of changes in today’s digital world,19 ambivalent and historically distorted in its essence,20 while emanating not from the state but from the commercial sector.21 With its negative associations, propaganda is anathema to all Western communicators who reserve the term for hostile states such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. It is not Strategic Communications. 12.1.2 Persuasion Versus Coercion Persuasion versus coercion sits as a tension at the core of Strategic Communications. Yet this should be considered not as a binary, more a symbiosis. Each is exercised in the other’s presence. Actors calibrate the two extremes as they communicate, while using words, images, actions, and non-actions to achieve a strategic effect. Each of these ‘texts’ can be read semiotically to communicate meaning or perceived intent.22 Accordingly, this emerging academic field which emphasises the construction of and competition between discourses in politics draws heavily on social constructivism and symbolic interactionism as theorised by the Chicago School in the 1920–30s, and associated conversations in Internal Relations theory.23 This tendency to view the field as discourse-focused inevitably pushes back against a realist interpretation. Consequently, while Public Diplomacy is considered the persuasive sub-set of Strategic Communications, the use of sanctions – increasingly deployed by Washington against inter alia Russia, Iran, and China – shifts from persuasion to coercion in its intent, even if disguised by its rhetoric.24

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12.1.3 Mindset, Process or Technique? How Strategic Communications should be conceptualised has recently entered the debate. If Strategic Communications is viewed as a mindset encompassing the world of digitally interconnected communications as the container in which all political life plays out in the early twenty-first century – and from which there is no longer an ‘off switch’ – then it has repercussions for governments. In that case, every actor at all levels of government must conceive their actions from the perspectives of multiple audiences while looking to the long-term consequences – a significant shift from conventional polling, sentiment or focus group analysis – if their policies are to be not only validated but responsive to grass roots grievance.25 The role of the Strategic Communicator moves beyond that of ‘looking over the horizon’ to one of viewing all political life as played out inside a permanently mediated consciousness. If, however, Strategic Communications is seen as a way of harmonising the creation and dissemination of information by a bureaucracy, state, or non-state, then it invites a conversation around unity of output from an organisational, bureaucratic, or institutional perspective. Similarly, should the tool-box of techniques become the guiding metaphor, then that invites theorists to locate the field closer to political marketing, and even consumer advertising – and not necessarily to root it in any system of values. That inevitably encourages critics to label it ‘tactics, techniques, [and] even technologies’.26 12.1.4 Synchronising Resources in the Face of Hybrid Warfare A fourth area of debate has been driven by NATO experts and member states, in conjunction with scholars of security studies. How should NATO synchronise its assets, personnel, and decision-making in a 30-member alliance where independent nation-states closely guard their foreign policy and communications in their own national interest? The question becomes more pressing when posed in the context of mindset. NATO recognised the need to adapt to a changing world by embracing Strategic Communications at its Strasbourg/ Kehl Summit in 2009,27 and expressed its commitment ‘to effectively address the specific challenges posed by hybrid warfare threats, where a wide range of overt and covert military, paramilitary, and civilian measures are employed in a highly integrated design’ in Cardiff in 2014.28 Hence two questions emerge in one wrapper: one of internal harmonisation of communications in the world’s biggest politico-military alliance; the other is the external threat of hybridity. For many, Strategic Communications is intricately woven into contested debates around hybrid warfare.29 War has always been hybrid, mobilising all resources in the state’s endeavour to defeat a hostile force, say some. And projecting information or meanings, anyway, is common to all assets of state.30

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However, some observers claim to have identified a new phenomenon, but one largely shaped by Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine. Accordingly ‘the term “hybrid” has been used to describe a wide array of measures, means and techniques including, but not limited to: disinformation; cyber attacks; facilitated migration; espionage; manipulation of international law; threats of force (by both irregular armed groups and conventional forces); political subversion; sabotage; terrorism; economic pressure and energy dependency’.31 Preferring hybrid interference to either hybrid war or conflict, one think tank argues, the challenge Strategic Communicators now face is to offer democratic deterrence to those who undermine the internal cohesion of Western societies.32 Increasingly, as the scholarly debate around hybridity has lost steam, so disinformation has filled the space, at least in the perception of Western governments and media, as erroneous information is seen to exploit systematically existing fissures around divisive social issues.

12.2

THE ROAD TO NOW

Strategic Communications was a familiar term in corporate business in the late twentieth century. But it focused on organisational communications aimed at delivering greater value to shareholders and the bottom line.33 It would also formally enter the United Nations’ lexicon in 1997 in response to the public perception surrounding its setbacks during that decade.34 However, with al-Qaeda’s strike on New York’s Twin Towers in 2001, Richard Holbrooke’s oft quoted refrain in the Washington Post ‘How can a man in a cave outcommunicate the world’s leading communications society?’ would set a different tone.35 Moreover, it would resonate in the corridors of power. A new impetus in political communications was needed. And it would shift Strategic Communications as a practice, albeit not yet as a set of theories, squarely into the world of geopolitics. Strangely absent from the 9/11 Commission Report in July 2004, it was left to America’s Defense Science Board Task Force to place Strategic Communications at the heart of a long-term, global struggle between ideas and ideologies.36 Subsequent interventions from Washington would fail to clarify the term, yet only underline its significance. Hence the conviction that ‘public diplomacy and strategic communication should always strive to support our nation’s fundamental values and national security objectives’ became at least partly rooted in the concept of ‘freedom and democracy … to counter those who espouse ideologies of hate and oppression’.37 This new field of practice and study would be landmarked with key events across the world. Each would require a different response to the latest geopolitical crisis from policy makers and media campaign managers: US–UK incursion into Afghanistan in 2001 followed by ISAF/NATO in 2003, the US–UK

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coalition intervention in Iraq in 2003, Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, its subsequent annexation of Crimea in 2014, and promotion of a civil war in eastern Ukraine from that same year, and the Western exit from Afghanistan in 2021. The thread that ran through all these events was the understanding that in the twenty-first century military force alone could not secure a victory (however that might be defined). In a world where billions of consumers were now digitally connected and could speak to each other via low-cost mobile phones and a free internet, state monopoly over communications was a luxury of the past. Journalistic parlance set about turning war into ‘Information War’.38 But what had also cut deep into the psyche of Western political elites was the realisation that Islamic fundamentalist insurgents and state actors like Russia had shown there was not just one audience to whom the West was projecting its values and interests, but many different communities and social movements in diverse political-economic and socio-cultural settings. Each of these was complex; most audiences might aspire to the benefits of Western consumer societies, yet reject changes in social and family values which they saw on their television screens emanating from North America and Europe, and were at odds with their own value and belief systems. ‘Wars of Ideas’ and ‘Information Wars’ would become fixtures in the journalese of Western states. The first decades of the millennium saw attempts to combat the diffused networks of al-Qaeda, then also a state-centric ISIS/ Daesh, with costly information campaigns.39 Focused for years on countering the ideological ‘narratives’ of salafi jihadi militants, rooted in a conservative interpretation of Islam, Western ‘counter-narratives’ lacked authenticity and authority. Western messaging, as it became known, gave way to ‘alternative narratives’ which now chose to elevate Western values. Hence a shift from defensive to offensive communications had taken place. The search for the silver bullet had nevertheless drawn a blank. Professor Rosa Brooks, a US State Department adviser, told a Congressional committee, there simply was none. Instead the key was to identify and understand audiences first, then ‘[d]isaggregate, disaggregate, disaggregate’.40 The early 2000s had revealed something else. That mission creep in Afghanistan had led to message creep and a breakdown in consensual support for the long-term struggle against al-Qaeda fighters and Taliban networks.41 Moreover, particularly after the global financial crisis of 2008, Great Powers were now resurgent in a more complex, dynamic world, and keen to shape an alternative world order.42 What was apparent in Crimea and Ukraine was that Moscow’s political communicators had prepared the ground in the information space for their kinetic moves on the ground. By the time Western governments were minded to express their outrage, the dye was cast. Russia, they realised, was now light years ahead of the West in its understanding of how to create and

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shape understandings in populations through skilfully engineered discourses. This might involve disseminating erroneous disinformation or exploiting extant grievances and fissures in Western societies as part of a concerted approach. China would follow suit balancing its soft power offering43 via the Belt and Road Initiative – an economic Public Diplomacy project to dwarf the investment of the Truman and Kennan-era Marshall Plan – against its hard power use of threat and force44 in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang, while sabre-rattling over Taiwan. One article in Foreign Affairs caused a stir: ‘authoritarians are not engaged in a form of public diplomacy as democracies would understand it’. They were pursuing Sharp Power: ‘they pierce, penetrate, or perforate the political and information environments in the targeted countries … seeking to manipulate their target audiences by distorting the information that reaches them.’45 Back in 2010, Christopher Paul of RAND had confided to Congress’s review of 9/11, ‘here we are 10 years later still using this phrase [Strategic Communications], but still struggling collectively to get our arms around the concept, let alone to do it well. So there is no government-wide definition of “strategic communication”. And in academia there is not an agreed definition, nor is there complete consensus about the boundaries of the concepts for agreements on priorities for moving forward.’46 That would change in the second decade of the new century. Turf wars between Departments of State and Defense in Washington led to officials falling out of love with the term. But it didn’t prevent Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden from engaging in Strategic Communications in their unique ways. Obama saw the need to close the ‘say-do gap’, suggesting that ‘what we do is often more important than what we say because actions have communicative value and send messages.’47 His celebrated Cairo speech in 2009 addressed Arab and Muslim populations in the Middle East over the heads of the region’s rulers and went some way to feeding into the so-called Arab Springs in 2010–11 – but only some way to supporting the outcome without closing the say-do gap. Failure to act following his ‘red line threat’ to Syria’s President Assad only served to further undermine his plea, while Trump’s transactional foreign policy style and ad hoc rhetoric would later lead to tactical not strategic engagement.48 NATO by 2009 had already embraced the term in its high-level lexicon, and by 2014 established a Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia charged with policy research explored through nation-state and geopolitical lenses.49 In 2016 the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications in the Department of War Studies introduced the first political and geopolitical Masters programme layered onto the Centre’s broader remit: namely, to provide the global hub to draw together three key Strategic Communications constituencies – policy makers, practitioners, and academics. Together these should remove the barriers that interrupt an holistic way of understanding

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Strategic Communications both as a field of research and as a world of practice. To which end the programme has drawn high numbers of students from around the world to sit side by side with professional students from inter alia NATO and the UK Cabinet Office. All are schooled in the same conceptual framework that viewed Strategic Communications as holistic, semiotic, audience-focused, and strategic not tactical in its aims. And rooted in values and interests.

12.3

WHERE NEXT?

Any emergent field of scholarship has its own demands. As it shapes an identity, so open space becomes constrained while schools of thought emerge to contest that space. These challenges are multiplied when that field is inextricably woven into the world of practice. Moreover, busy practitioners see little immediate need for injecting broader conceptual frameworks of thought and analysis into the workplace – where education (not training) is evaluated according to the principle of return on investment. Consequently, future research must pursue scholarship while mindful of the fact that politics and geopolitics are everyday activities played out in a dynamic and unpredictable theatre where intuition often trumps planning. Hence a nascent field has certain priorities: (i) to establish its identity and demarcate its intellectual terrain –‘what is it?’; (ii) explore its origins and antecedents –‘where did it come from?’; (iii) discover how best to disseminate its research – ‘how to teach it’; and (iv) enrich its epistemology – ‘how to give it breadth and depth’. While ‘what is it?’ remains the preoccupation of many authors from within the field as well as adjacent areas that variously consider their disciplines to be synonymous with Strategic Communications (and those who don’t), ‘where did it come from?’ invites innovation. Amid the turmoil of daily crisis management, few political communicators take the time to read Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Consequently, if not they, then scholars of this emerging field face an unresolved question: Was there Strategic Communications before Strategic Communications? And if so, how did the twenty-first century transform it? If it did not exist, why not? It leads to a definitional question in the first instance, yet opens up an historical survey that by necessity places adjacent fields such as marketing, propaganda, and political communications into more nuanced trajectories of influence and persuasion studies. Truth and lies, and persuasion and coercion viewed from Braudel’s longue durée, take on greater salience here as organising frameworks.50 Whether a critical genealogy is constraining or liberating is a dilemma philosophers contemplate.51 States have always communicated power to other states, whether Mesopotamian, Sasanian, or Roman. But do these and others from subsequent centuries fulfil Strategic Communications’ predefined criteria – a focus on long-term discourses, target-

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ing audiences, achieving strategic effects, changing attitudes and behaviour, using words, images, and (in)actions, and serving the national interest? Questioning ‘How to teach it?’ identifies three problems. A young field that is continually evolving presents a moving, sometimes elusive target for any observer or student. Teaching research-led content to industry practitioners requires an understanding of Strategic Communications ‘in action’, derived best from field research not simply from theory. And practitioners embrace training (crudely, how to do it) as an enhancement or must-have to the workplace but resist education (how to think about doing it) as a luxury or nice-to-have. The King’s Centre for Strategic Communications is undertaking research on the pedagogy of Strategic Communications. ‘How to give it breadth and depth’ epistemologically questions whether this field is a preserve of the state; or whether sub-state or trans-state actors qualify too. In the Department of War Studies’ political and geopolitical interpretation of Strategic Communications there is no place for commercial communications. However, in a world where the profits of Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tech corporations exceed the GNP of many nation-states, and where they negotiate with governments internationally on a political level – Google engages with China over freedom of speech, Pfizer and AstraZeneca are at the centre of the COVID-19 storm over patents and distribution – then there is a case for inclusion. But as political actors. Similarly, where long-term discourses over Climate Change shape public opinion throughout the world, are NGOs and international organisations not equal participants? Insurgent movements – even when blacklisted as terrorists – can stand outside the state (al-Qaeda, ISIS) but also within its fabric (Hezbollah, Hamas). And some communicate as governments, fulfilling the above criteria. In the same vein, whether Strategic Communications is a state activity or not invites research into whether it should be limited to liberal democracies drawing on a set of values and interests, with the added poignancy of recent outcomes in Afghanistan. To exclude authoritarian governments is to ‘other’ and tar them with the pejorative brush of ‘doing propaganda’. Which anyway in those countries may have a technocratic not negative association. This is a central question for academic research, and goes to the heart of the discipline. Western governments and their media agencies aspire to underpin their communications with evidence and truth-telling. Nevertheless, it requires a free press to hold them to scrutiny and account. Disinformation, deliberately disseminating erroneous information to undermine the political status quo, has found the spotlight in the so-called Decade of Disinformation. From undermining national election campaigns (US, 2016) to covering the traces of attempted assassinations (Skripal poisoning, 2018) to exploiting Anti-Vax campaigners (COVID, 2020), systematic use of multiple accounts of the same event, often mixing the absurd with the mildly credible,

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has become an important sub-set of Strategic Communications. Whether these actions are tactical or strategic, democracies nevertheless feel vulnerable at a time when the democratic governance model is seen to be in retreat across the world. But it has been enhanced by the proliferation of digital communications networks and appearance of ‘bubbles’ of opinion facilitated by Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analytics. Academic research is needed to analyse how long-term discourses emerge from deliberate attempts to exploit fissures in societies enabled by technological innovation and the influence networks through which they travel. Nation-states are rooted in a perception of space that is intersected by sovereign borders. Strategic Communications, however, is built around a relationship with time, more than space. States and state challengers seek to control the past in order to legitimise their role in the present, and to stake a claim to own the future.52 Hence discourse creation looks to a long-term future but is anchored in a past of the communicator’s shaping. Memory construction sits at the heart of the nation-state project. The imagined community comes about through the efforts of those who shape the past in collective memory, only to delimit national or group identity through the telling of stories – ‘official’ history – and the making of tradition and rituals.53 For Strategic Communications memory construction is the spine of this scholarly field which has received insufficient recognition to date. Our efforts in the Department of War Studies are attempting to fill this gap.

12.4 CONCLUSION As an emergent field, Strategic Communications has made great strides in a short time. Born from the crisis of geopolitical shocks in the early twenty-first century, its theorists and practitioners have attempted to understand long-term ways of shaping significant discourses in societies in order to overcome kneejerk reactions endemic in crisis communications. While recognising that crisis communications can furnish tactical steps to achieve strategic understandings, a convergence of scholars, policy makers, and practitioners accepts that tactics under the pressure of events should never be allowed to undermine strategic objectives; indeed consistency and continuity must bind the two to preserve the credibility of the overarching message. Strategic Communications straddles a tension between research-led teaching and practice-oriented application. Each set of experiences uniquely informs the other. But in the final instance politics and geopolitics belong to the real world. Yet this is a world to which as human beings we attach meaning and where we pursue competing conversations in an attempt to influence the argument. In these early days, however, the trust gap which Barack Obama saw as fundamental to this discipline – the ‘say-do gap’, say what you mean and do what you say – mirrors another kind

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of gap: one of trust that sits between thought and action, between those who would theorise the field into existence and those who contribute through their deeds. The King’s Centre for Strategic Communications in the Department of War Studies promises to bridge both: one, the gap between communicator and audience, the other between theoretician and practitioner.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

Compare with International Relations, with its first taught programme in 1919. Ned Richard Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Neville Bolt and Leonie Haiden, Improving NATO Strategic Communications in Terminology (Riga: NATO Strategic Communications COE, 2019), p.31. James Farwell, Persuasion and Power: The Art of Strategic Communication (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012), pp.xviii‒xix. Robert D. Worley, Orchestrating the Instruments of Power: A Critical Examination of the U.S. National Security System (Sterling: Potomac Books, 2015), pp.225‒244. UK Ministry of Defence, Joint Doctrine Note 1/12; Strategic Communication: The Defence Contribution (Shrivenham: Ministry of Defence, 2012). Bolt and Haiden, NATO Strategic Communications. Bruce I. Newman, The Mass Marketing of Politics: Democracy in an Age of Manufactured Images (Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 1999). Rita Clifton (ed.), Brands and Branding (New York: Bloomberg Press, 2009). Jesper Stromback and Spiro Kiousis, Political Public Relations: Concepts, Principles, Application (2nd edn, New York: Routledge, 2020), p.vi. Nancy Snow and Nicholas J. Cull (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (2nd edn, New York: Routledge, 2020), p.xi. Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2005). Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016); Richard Halloran, ‘Strategic Communication’, Parameters, 37, 3 (2007), pp.4‒14. Influence, Diana Neille and Richard Poplack (dir.), (2021), available at: https://​ www​.influence​.film/​. Simon Collister and Sarah Roberts-Bowman, Visual Public Relations: Strategic Communication Beyond Text (New York: Routledge, 2018); Núria Almiron and Jordi Xifra, Climate Change Denial and Public Relations: Strategic Communication and Interest Groups in Climate Inaction (New York: Routledge, 2020); Jane Johnston and Leanne Glenny, Strategic Communication: Public Relations at Work (New York: Routledge, 2020). Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books, 1973). Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy, Politics and Propaganda: Weapons of Mass Seduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy, Marketing the Third Reich: Persuasion, Packaging and Propaganda (London: Routledge, 2018).

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18. Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Present Day (3rd edn, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p.5. 19. Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (7th edn, Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2018). 20. Edward Bernays and Mark C. Miller, Propaganda (Brooklyn: Ig Publishing, 2005). 21. Cory Wimberly, How Propaganda Became Public Relations: Foucault and the Corporate Government of the Public (New York: Routledge, 2020). 22. Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977); Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana, 1977). 23. Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1966); Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations. 24. Ksenia Kirkham, ‘Sanctions – Strategic Miscommunications? The Case of Iran’, Defence Strategic Communications, 7 (2019), pp.49‒84. 25. Monroe E. Price, Free Expression, Globalism and the New Strategic Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 26. Neville Bolt, ‘Foreword’, Defence Strategic Communications, 4 (2018), p.5. 27. ‘Press Release: Strasbourg / Kehl Summit Declaration’, NATO, 4 April 2009, available at: https://​www​.nato​.int/​cps/​en/​natohq/​news​_52837​.htm​?mode​=​pressrelease. 28. ‘Press Release: Wales Summit Declaration’, NATO, 5 September 2014, available at: https://​www​.nato​.int/​cps/​en/​natohq/​official​_texts​_112964​.htm​?selectedLocale​ =​en. 29. Steve Tatham and Rita LePage, NATO Strategic Communication: More to be Done?, Policy Paper 1 (Riga: National Defence Academy of Latvia, Center for Security and Strategic Research, 2014). 30. Ofer Fridman, Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’: Resurgence and Politicisation (London: Hurst, 2018); Lawrence Freedman, Ukraine and the Art of Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 31. Ben Heap, Hybrid Threats: A Strategic Communications Perspective (Riga: NATO Strategic Communications COE, 2020), p.8. 32. Mikael Wigell, Democratic Deterrence: How to Dissuade Hybrid Interference, Working Paper (Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2019). For the published version, see Mikael Wigell, ‘Democratic Deterrence: How to Dissuade Hybrid Interference’, The Washington Quarterly, 44 (2021), pp.49‒67. 33. James Mahoney, Strategic Communication: Principles and Practice (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2012). 34. Task Force on the Reorientation of United Nations Public Information Activities, ‘Global Vision: Local Voice: A Strategic Communications Programme for the United Nations’, United Nations (1997), p.9. 35. Richard Holbrooke, ‘Get the Message Out’, Washington Post, 28 October 2001. 36. ‘Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication’, (Washington DC: US Department of Defense, 2004). 37. Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy Coordinating Committee, ‘U.S. National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication’ (2007), p.9. ‘The kind of communications that allows an organization to be effective in its substantive work as well as its constituency-building can be characterized as strategic communications.’ (sic).

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38. Richard Stengel, Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It (London: Grove Press, 2020). 39. Steven Corman and Jill Schiefelbein, Communication and Media Strategy in the Jihadi War of Ideas (Tempe: Arizona State University, 2006). 40. Rosa Brooks’ evidence to the Committee on Armed Services, ‘Ten Years On: The Evolution of Strategic Communication and Information Operations Since 9/11’, US House of Representatives, 12 July 2011. 41. Brett Boudreau, ‘We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us’: An Analysis of NATO Strategic Communications: The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, 2003–2014 (Riga: NATO Strategic Communications COE, 2016). 42. Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2020); Daniel Yergin, The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations (London: Allen Lane, 2020). 43. Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2009). 44. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). 45. Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, ‘The Meaning of Sharp Power: How Authoritarian States Project Influence’, Foreign Affairs, 16 November 2017. 46. Christopher Paul, ‘Testimony: Getting Better at Strategic Communication’ (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2011), p.2. 47. Barack Obama, ‘National Framework for Strategic Communication’ (Washington: The White House, 2010), p.2, available at: https://​man​.fas​.org/​ eprint/​pubdip​.pdf. 48. Barack Obama, ‘The President’s Speech in Cairo: A New Beginning’ (Washington DC: The White House), 4 June 2009. 49. ‘About NATO StratCom COE’, NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, available at: https://​stratcomcoe​.org/​about​_us/​about​-nato​-stratcom​ -coe/​5. 50. Fernand Braudel, On History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 51. Amia Srinivasan, ‘VII-Genealogy, Epistemology and Worldmaking’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 119, 2 (2019), pp.127‒156. 52. Neville Bolt, The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020). 53. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

13. Terrorism, security and society Shiraz Maher and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens The study of terrorism and its associated nomenclature has grown like a hydra since the 9/11 attacks on the United States.1 Over the intervening years academics, policy makers, journalists, and polemicists have all contributed work of variable quality to the bodies of literature regarding this topic. Andrew Silke observes that ‘over 90 percent of the entire literature on terrorism will have been written since 9/11. Indeed, we may already have passed that milestone. This is not to say that the literature before was sparse, but rather to emphasise the sheer volume of material now being produced in the area.’2 In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 some of the most prominent works to first emerge came from investigative journalists who often provided very good narrative accounts of the jihadist movements they had tailed long before it became fashionable to do so. Academics then followed, producing work which explored issues such as terrorist networks and structures; identification with terrorist, extremist, or religious groupings through the prism of social movement theory; or more religious and culturally based assessments of the ideas inspiring some radical movements. It is a tired truism, by now, to state that there is no universally agreed definition of terrorism. Indeed, this is not just true of terrorist activity but for associated terms such as ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ as well. Such terms are intrinsically hard to define because they are conceptually nebulous and slippery. Their subjectivity is borne of the fact that these terms are inherently political in construction and, therefore, the positions adopted by individuals, groups, and states are often linked to their broader political outlook and belief structure. Is terrorism, for example, always ideologically motivated? Do government actions provoke terrorist responses? Should we negotiate with terrorists? Is terrorism a military or criminal justice problem? What is the right balance between ensuring national security and protecting both human rights and privacy? The last of these dilemmas became very real in 2016 when the Investigatory Powers Act, colloquially known as the ‘snoopers’ charter’, came into force. The government’s former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism 183

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legislation, Lord Anderson QC, examined the debate between those who felt it went too far in giving government agencies the power to spy on our digital lives. ‘[Many] believe that investigatory powers are used more widely even than they had suspected, and provided a nucleus for wide-ranging litigation,’ he noted. ‘However [there has been] a cost to national security: the effect of the Snowden Documents on the behaviour of some service providers and terrorists alike has, for the authorities, accentuated the problem of reduced coverage and rendered more acute the need for a remedy.’3 Those pursing terrorism studies therefore find that their topic is often linked to fast-moving and highly contentious everyday events. Terrorism is also an emotive topic, prompting strong social reactions in the aftermath of an atrocity. This makes dispassionate objectivity – the traditional remit of a scholar – even more complicated (but not impossible). It is this combustible mix of conceptual ambiguity, emotion, and political contestation which makes terrorism studies an exciting pursuit for scholars. The field has matured over the years as increasing numbers of scholars have entered the field, bringing with them multi-disciplinary approaches, using social and political history, theology, philosophy, area studies, social science, social psychology, and behavioural science to better understand some of the most pressing issues of our age. This chapter begins by briefly reviewing some of the foundational texts in the field, identifying their key contributions and influence. It then outlines some of the core debates in the field regarding challenges such as source collection, ethical practices, and research methodologies. Finally, it offers a view on the future and relevance of the field to our daily lives.

13.1

FOUNDATIONAL LITERATURE

Despite Silke’s observation about the exponential increase in terrorism literature since 9/11, some of the most influential texts in the field came prior to the attacks. Such works identify modern terrorism as a phenomenon which emerged in the late 1800s because of a range of factors including technological innovations such as easily accessible and concealable explosives and weapons, and political developments that encouraged the emergence of clandestine and revolutionary non-state violent actors. Martha Crenshaw’s 1972 essay ‘The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism’ was one of the very first efforts to offer an explanation and definition of terrorism and, in doing so, sought to separate it from other forms of political violence.4 Noting a lack of conceptual clarity in the field at the time, she argues that terrorism should be understood as a revolutionary act against an established state regime conducted by an insurgent non-state actor. The violence perpetrated by terrorists is unique in that it is ‘socially and politically unacceptable’, partly because it, often randomly, targets civilians and occurs

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unexpectedly and outside the bounds of traditional warfare.5 ‘The arbitrariness of terrorist violence’, Crenshaw argues, ‘makes it unacceptable and abnormal’.6 Alongside its revolutionary non-state nature and its disregard for the conventions of warfare and political violence, terrorism is also identified by her as pursuing symbolic targets with the goal of creating a ‘psychological effect’ on specific groups of adversaries to influence their behaviour.7 Writing during the same period was Walter Laqueur, who in his many books and articles on terrorism made a number of significant contributions. He viewed terrorism as ‘the substate application of violence or threatened violence intended to sow panic in a society’.8 He was particularly critical of the efforts of contemporary political scientists who focused only on contemporary times to explain terrorism as the result of external pressures and grievances, while ignoring the long history of non-state political violence. Laqueur was also one of the first scholars to distinguish between guerrilla warfare and terrorism, arguing that the two had very different histories and origins. He also sought to use the concept of terrorism to identify different forms of political violence and lend specificity to this particular version of it – after all, there is a vast difference between, for example, the ‘terror’ used against civilians in Stalinist Russia and the actions of violent far-left non-state actors such as Germany’s Red Army Faction. While he offered a definition of terrorism, Laqueur also argued that the world would never arrive at an agreed-upon definition of it. His claim was a prescient one, and the term remains heavily debated today. However, some systematic efforts have been made to arrive at something nearing a well-rounded definition. Alex Schmid, in his 1988 book Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature, surveyed both the terrorism literature and scholars of political violence from around the world with the aim of arriving at a definition which captured both the uniqueness and multifaceted nature of terrorism and its targets: an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group, or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat – and violence – based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main target (audiences(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.9

A notable difference from Laqueur and Crenshaw’s approach is Schmid’s decision to include the state in the discussion of perpetrators of terrorism.

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Rather than focusing on terrorism as an organisational concept, he instead refers to it on as a ‘method of action’, and thus primarily a tactic which can be pursued by any actor. Influenced by Crenshaw and Laqueur’s approach, Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism, first published in 1998, instead presents terrorism as a unique form of non-state violence which requires its own categorisation and is distinct from other forms of political violence.10 Among the features of terrorism Hoffman focuses on is its role as a vehicle for the communication of propaganda. He apportions significant influence to the ‘propaganda of the deed’ theory developed and adopted by some of the earliest modern terrorists.11 The basic premise of this was that terrorist attacks, no matter the scale, should be seen primarily as acts of propaganda. Conceptualised by Russian and Italian anarchists during the mid-nineteenth century, propaganda of the deed refers to a belief in the didactic power of violence which is seen as necessary not only to draw attention to a cause but to inform and educate people about their movement in the hope that it will encourage increased recruitment.12 The Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane, one of those early adopters of the approach, described propaganda of the deed most succinctly when he wrote that ‘ideas result from deeds, not the latter from the former, and the people will not be free when they are educated, but educated when they are free’.13 It has, according to Hoffman, formed part of almost all terrorist strategies ever since, and can be seen in the activities of a range of terrorist actors today. Similar efforts to identify the unique nature of terrorism were made by David Rapaport soon after 9/11 in his 2004 analysis of the ‘four waves of modern terrorism’.14 Like Hoffman, he draws on modern history to identify and define the phenomenon of terrorism as a uniquely identifiable act of political violence by non-state actors. His key contribution is the application of wave theory to help demonstrate the connections between the terrorists of today to their counterparts which emerged during various moments since the late nineteenth century. A wave is defined by Rapaport as a ‘cycle of activity in a given time period’ which experiences phases of expansion followed by contraction.15 In order to meet the criteria, a terrorist wave must have an international nature, be driven by a specific ‘energy’, or set of shared political and ideological goals, and have clear mutual connections of groups and actors. He identified four such waves: anarchist, national self-determination, new left, and religious. Each wave is shown to be connected and influencing that which follows it. Using this approach, Rapaport was able to identify particular characteristics which are shared by terrorist groups over history, including elements of their ideology and the strategies and tactics they pursue, thus helping solidify the idea of terrorist groups as exceptional actors in the realm of modern political violence.

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Another major historical work to have followed in this tradition comes from Michael Burleigh who has offered two notable books on the subject; the first, on the relationship between culture and terrorism, and the second, a survey of religious rage during the second half of the twentieth century.16 Burleigh’s scholarship maps the development of terrorist pathologies and therefore views al-Qaeda from within that interpretative milieu. Burleigh’s book on ‘sacred causes’ gives a historical account of the interactions between religion and politics revealing how confessional identities can licence almost any – and every – form of excess. There is resonance here also with aspects of John Gray’s work too. He makes a similar point in Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, while surveying the will to power of totalitarianisms from the Nazis and Communists to European Fascism and al-Qaeda.17 Other approaches to understanding terrorism have sought to do the opposite of scholars like Crenshaw, Laqueur, Hoffman and Rapaport by arguing that terrorism should not be given such an exceptional status. Scholars of social movements, for example, argue that terror groups are best understood as part of a wider social movement, and that terrorism should be regarded as simply a form of contentious politics.18 As such, terrorist activism is said to share many of the dynamics of a range of social movements, and not just those pursuing political violence.19 Quintan Wiktorowicz argues that studying jihadi activism by drawing on frameworks used to understand a range of social movements helps to ‘provide a more comprehensive understanding of Islamic activism by exploring understudied mechanisms of contention’.20 This approach goes beyond the specificity of any single movement and allows for ‘greater theoretical leverage and comparative evidence for elucidating the dynamics of Islamist contention’.21 Similarly, Jeroen Gunning claims that approaching the study of militant organisations and movements using social movement theory approaches helps to provide the kind of historical context which terrorism research has often been accused of lacking by scholars such as Silke, Della Porta and Ranstorp.22 This also serves to ‘de-exceptionalise’ the phenomena of terrorism and radicalisation by analysing them ‘as part of a wider, evolving spectrum of movement tactics.’23 Another common critique of the terrorism studies field relates to its tendency to omit the state in the discussion of perpetrators of terrorism. For these authors, ‘terrorism’ is merely a tactic which can be (and frequently is) employed by a range of actors, and, in their view, has been wielded most devastatingly by states. Richard Jackson, for example, has criticised the field for ‘its illogical actor-based definition of terrorism, its politically biased research focus and its failure to acknowledge the empirical evidence of the extent and nature of state terrorism, particularly that practiced by Western liberal states and their allies’.24 While there certainly is scope for a thorough understanding and accounting of violence committed by states against civilians, to include the

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state in discussion of terrorism is to sacrifice conceptual clarity for the sake of politics and morality. Arguments such as Jackson’s are premised on the idea that, morally, the title of ‘terrorist’ is the most egregious way of describing the actions of a certain group, and politically and morally is the strongest term which can be used to condemn the actions of an adversary. The state, according to this view, is being ‘let off’ by terrorism scholars who refuse to acknowledge its use of terror and the horrors of state repression and violence. This desire, however, is not evident in the works of scholars cited above and no serious scholar would claim that a terrorist group is more potentially dangerous to civilians than a repressive, authoritarian state. What is clear when reading the work of leading terrorism scholars is the emphasis they place on identifying a clear distinction between forms of state and non-state political violence or, in other words, (relative) conceptual clarity.

13.2

CHALLENGES AND DEVELOPMENTS

Academic work on clandestine movements is, of course, hampered by the fact that such organisations do not want their inner workings revealed to the public. This has long posed a serious challenge to scholars hoping to offer insight into different groups and movements. After all, how could we really know anything for certain about highly clandestine organisations engaged in criminal activity? Similarly, what ethical considerations do researchers owe terrorist subjects, even those engaged in committing crimes against humanity? This becomes even more complicated when observing online environments where the nature of participants is sometimes unclear. Some members of an online channel, for example, may be there by mistake or benign curiosity. Some groups are invitation only, raising ethical issues over whether deception or other forms of impropriety were used to gain entry. These questions, and others, turn on how we access and treat the collection of data on terrorist movements.

13.3

COLLECTING AUTHORITATIVE SOURCES ON CLANDESTINE MOVEMENTS

‘Government agencies frequently possess such information but security concerns prevent them from sharing it, leaving researchers to rely too often on much less detailed and reliable open sources such as newspaper articles’, notes Bart Schuurman.25 ‘The problem of overreliance on secondary sources of information has been one of the longest-standing issues to affect the study of terrorism.’ This was certainly the case in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but terrorism studies made notable strides in the years that followed. Millenarian

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and reactionary movements do not exist in a vacuum and terrorist activity is never simply for the sake of the violence alone. Terrorist actors are compelled to communicate to outside audiences for a number of reasons – all of which provide opportunities for research. The first relates to recruitment. All terrorist groups embrace a form of proselytisation because they need to attract new members to help drive their cause forward. Indeed, this is crucial to the lifeblood of these organisations because some members will inevitably be arrested or killed in the course of their involvement. Ensuring a steady flow of recruits helps the organisation hedge itself against state activity. Another issue is that it is important for terrorist actors to communicate the rationale for their actions to the broader public. Groups need to justify their purpose for a bombing, kidnapping, hijacking, or other mass casualty event not only to highlight their cause but to also seek concessions from government and generate sympathy for their cause. This addresses one aspect of terrorist communication; statements that groups want to make public. There is value in this, of course. Osama bin Laden published a ‘letter’ shortly after 9/11 addressed to America called ‘why we are fighting you’ in which he set out the reasons for the group’s opposition to the United States.26 These range from Palestine to Somalia, to the creation of US Army bases in the Middle East, to the decadence and corruption of regimes in the region whom he sees as being sponsored by the West. Groups like al-Qaeda produced a slew of documents, particularly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to broadcast their ideological approach to the world.27 For the extreme far-right, too, there is a broad hinterland of books and manifestos explaining their approach. The Turner Diaries, for example, is a seminal text within white nationalist communities imagining a civil war in the United States which leads to the extermination of non-whites. Anders Breivik, who conducted the worst terrorist attack in Norwegian history, killing 77 people, released a 1,500-page manifesto in which he called for the deportation of all Muslims from Europe, after coming to believe that Islam represents an existential threat to Western civilisation. Whilst these types of documents are useful to learn more about terrorist ideology, worldviews, belief structures and rationales, they present only a partial picture. They are deliberate and curated artefacts from terrorist actors, presenting a finessed version of what they would like us to believe. This is not to undermine the value of source data, but it is important to recognise its limitations too. Police and military action against terrorists have also allowed us to learn staggering amounts about the internal workings of these groups, after documents were captured which were never intended for public dissemination. The Combatting Terrorism Centre at Westpoint, for example, has made documents available through the internet for public download captured through military actions against al-Qaeda. The START consortium at the University of

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Maryland also offered access to closed material through an electronic repository run by the United States government known as the Open Source Centre (OSC), although the OSC was later discontinued after the Snowden leaks. In late 2017 the CIA released documents, audio clips, images, and videos along with other material seized from Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound for researchers to use.28 This material was released ‘in an effort to further enhance public understanding’ according to the CIA and complements material previously released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) from Bin Laden’s devices.29 In total, almost 470,000 documents were released.30 Such documents do not always originate from government sources. Frontline journalists covering conflict zones have also stumbled upon important primary source documents including al-Qaeda strategy documents recovered in Mali, or Islamic State governance documents recovered from Iraq.31 In 2020, the Program on Extremism at George Washington University released ‘The ISIS Files’, a digital collection of over 15,000 internal ISIS files obtained by journalists working in former ISIS strongholds in Iraq. These included recovered registration documents completed by foreign recruits joining Islamic State, providing insight into things like smuggler and recruitment networks.32 Social media has also changed the nature of scholarly interaction with the subject. Whereas scholars previously had to visit archives and repositories for official accounts of events, much of this can now be captured through the sophisticated cultivation of online sources. The Syrian conflict, for example, was the most socially mediated conflict in history. At first, revolutionary citizen journalists uploaded videos of the draconian government clampdown to YouTube providing invaluable documentary evidence of war crimes committed by the Syrian Arab Army. As the war descended into its most frenetic phases from 2013–17, countless actors including ordinary fighters from the battlefield uploaded staggering amounts of data to social media platforms.33 These offered insights into their activities, lives, actions, and experiences. One study has shown that: Easily accessible digital records of behaviour [such as] Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including [among others] … religious and political views.34

The first terrorist attack to be played out in real time on social media was led by Somali al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab whose members live tweeted a cross-border attack at Westgate Mall in Kenya in 2013 which left 67 people dead.35 ‘Throughout the entirety of the attack, al-Shabaab’s press office generated Twitter content justifying the attack, creating fictional threats, providing news on hostages and mocking the police and military response’, argues David

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Mair.36 Terrorism studies has therefore seen significant changes in the availability of primary information which has, in turn, transformed both the nature and quality of research. Whereas Magnus Ranstorp previously argued that journalists without social science or PhD training were setting the agenda due to their ‘privileged access to the terror frontlines,’ that is no longer the case.37 There is now an understanding among researchers that the nature of primary sources has changed, with one respondent to a 2021 Research Note survey arguing that ‘the revolutionary use of the internet and information technology, in the past two decades, has provided much more inter-connectivity, collaboration, quantitative data, and scholarly communities in Terrorism Studies …. Powerful Internet search engines have introduced useful elements of serendipity’.38 Whereas previous work has noted the inherent issues in ‘talking to terrorists,’ the profligate use of social media by terrorist groups has turned the tables: the terrorists are now doing the talking. As well as providing researchers with new avenues for data collection, from sites such as Twitter, Telegram, and Facebook, the field is more open to innovative approaches from academic researchers. The role of the contemporary scholar has therefore changed somewhat. They must now be prepared to capture often highly transient and temporal information, preserving digital artefacts which will otherwise disappear from the internet at short notice. As social media companies direct ever-increasing resources to combatting the problem of extremist content online, the challenge becomes even more difficult. ‘By removing images and videos without preserving them in a systematic way for researchers, journalists and historians to consult, [social media companies] are wiping away chunks of potentially vital evidence, creating blank spaces in what amounts to a digital record of a crime scene’, notes Isobel Cockerell.39

13.4

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

As the world of terrorism scholarship has grown, so have the challenges of ethically pursuing the topic. More scholarship has meant an increased desire to seek out and interview terrorists and former members of terrorist groups. The social media and wider online involvement of terrorist groups has also given unprecedented access to primary sources, including the communications of members of terrorist groups. In response to these emerging ethical challenges, scholars have sought to develop frameworks for researching terrorism which take on a range of questions. There are a number of factors which must be considered here, which are usefully summarised by John Morrison et al. as: ‘participant’s rights, safety and vulnerability; informed consent; confidentiality and anonymity; researcher’s rights, safety and vulnerability; data storage and security-sensitive materials;

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and the ethical review process’.40 While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to cover each of these in detail, it is worth looking specifically at the issue of participants. Arguably the biggest challenge is posed by the interviewing of terrorists, either in person or, as is increasingly common, online. Although interviews with terrorists are often regarded as the holy grail of primary sources in the field, the data gathered from them vary in quality and reliability. As Khalil warns, ‘researchers often uncritically accept interviewee responses at face value’, and this can lead to a number of problems.41 First, the assumption that the individual is the best analyst of their own actions and decisions is a flawed one. People often seek post facto justification for their actions which do not provide the fullest picture. Second, depending on the circumstances, terrorists being interviewed by researchers have an incentive to give misleading accounts of their involvement in terrorist groups.42 This may be in order to avoid criminal convictions or, in the case of already incarcerated terrorists, help them provide a narrative which places them in the most positive light possible, perhaps to assist in any future court appeals. Aside from these problems, a researcher may unwittingly influence the responses of a participant simply by the questions they ask. The more a participant knows about the research agenda of their interviewer, the more they may tailor their responses to meet the needs and interests of the researcher. Finally, the researcher must take into account the safety and security of their interview subjects – will the involvement of a terrorist in an interview make them a target of their own group? Or perhaps the responses elicited by the interviewer may assist a state in the location and killing of the interview subject. While one may not object to the killing or capturing of terrorists, it is widely argued that the academic researcher cannot play a role in this and must act in as neutral a way as possible.43 Online there is also the question of if, and how, researchers should interact with terrorists in forums and on social media. For those conducting such work within a university, ethical approval must be granted, and ethics boards have developed a range of options for applicants to consider. In most cases, the safest and least ethically complicated strategy is to ‘lurk,’ or simply observe online activity without interacting with or influencing research subjects.44 This ensures the safety of the researcher. It also avoids compromising the integrity of the data gleaned from the research subject who is unaware they are subject to research and therefore does not tailor their output on this basis. Even this relatively safe approach has its ethical problems. The researcher must still consider how they will present data gathered from participants who never gave consent – a challenge usually overcome by anonymising them. In some cases, members of online extremist communities are asked to prove their commitment or eligibility even if they do not participate in discussions. Researchers

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may have to prove that they are Muslims in jihadi circles, or white in white supremacist circles. If and how this should be done remains an open question. The creation of large personal digital libraries of online terrorist communications for research purposes also poses data storage and security challenges and may come with legal considerations. When doing such work, the researcher is often asked by ethics boards how they plan to store and secure the data they gather. This is to ensure the protection of personal data and to provide protection from possible criminal charges related to the possession and dissemination of terrorist materials. Current UK law makes such possession illegal and potentially prosecutable. However, one defence is if the materials were gathered for academic purposes. In guidance provided by Universities UK in 2019, researchers are advised to securely store all such data on university servers and not their personal devices. This allows the supervision of the materials by the university, often a supervisor or ethics officer.45 While there have always been ethical challenges to studying terrorism, it appears that recent developments have led to a significant increase. Past over-reliance on secondary sources, while impacting the quality of the research, was certainly more straightforward from an ethical standpoint. Today, the researcher must contend with a range of complex and constantly evolving ethical dilemmas, and may even need to develop their own new frameworks and methods in response.

13.5

EVOLUTION OF THE RESEARCH LANDSCAPE

Terrorism studies is a dynamic and multi-disciplinary field often driven by fast-moving and highly contentious events. This makes its study both challenging and rewarding. Indeed, scholars working in this space often push the boundaries of their respective disciplines and regularly see the outcomes of their work having impact across both government and industry. In recent years the role of online extremism became more pronounced, particularly with the rise of Islamic State and its ability to harness the power of social media for recruitment purposes. Yet, this is not the only challenge associated with technological advances. Over the course of the history of modern terrorism, the emergence of new disruptive technologies has often directly contributed to an increase in terrorist activity and tactical innovation. According to Cronin, we are today in ‘the age of lethal empowerment’ in which new disruptive technologies are widely accessible and therefore ‘democratize access to lethal capabilities’.46 Technology today offers a range of material opportunities to non-state actors, who use it for purposes such as propaganda dissemination, and network creation, as well as more tactical purposes, including attack planning, digital infrastructure disruption, drones and other remote-controlled devices.

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Terrorist actors in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan have, for example, learned how to weaponise commercial drones for payload delivery (often grenades or small explosives) and for real-time battlefield command and control.47 This represents an unprecedented change in the post-9/11 paradigm of confronting non-state actors against whom state actors traditionally commanded an absolute monopoly of aerial dominance. The threat landscape is also more diverse and splintered now than ever before. The jihadist threat from Salafi-jihadist movements, for example, is more diffuse than it was on 9/11 with various groups emerging to challenge al-Qaeda’s dominance as the traditional fount of that threat. Groups like Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, Islamic State, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Taliban, and others are now acting across a range of jurisdictions and, often, according to their own agenda. Quantifying that threat is therefore even more challenging today than at any point in the preceding decades. Whilst the jihadist component of the contemporary terrorist threat shows little signs of abating, the range of threats is also broader. A rise in both populist and identarian movements across Europe and North America has re-energised the violent far-right. There is clear evidence that the perpetrators of several violent far-right attacks have been learning from jihadists for their own purposes. Many have emerged from informal international online networks made up of like-minded extremists who believe that what they describe as the white race is facing a direct existential threat from an alliance of leftists, migrants and Jews.48 Often referred to as the ‘Great Replacement’ this is the conspiracy theory which most energises violent white supremacists today and will inspire future right-wing violence. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has also accentuated many problems which terrorists tend to take advantage of. The disease and how to respond to it has become politicised along partisan lines with the emergence of often angry and armed ‘reopen’ movements across state capitals in the United States who were angered by lockdown measures and social distancing requirements. Tensions surrounding the political and social response to COVID-19 also coincided with another crucial moment in our collective history. The aftermath of George Floyd’s brutal murder by police in Minneapolis bolstered the global civil rights movement, imbuing it with a momentum not seen since the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Black Lives Matter activists on both sides of the Atlantic demanded legitimate rights whilst their demonstrations, on occasion, both perpetrated and attracted violence. One illustrative example of just how volatile the situation became comes from the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Karl Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from neighbouring Illinois, travelled to the town to supposedly enforce law and order. In the resulting violence Rittenhouse killed two protesters and injured a third. It was a shock-

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ing but not entirely inconceivable event after weeks of anger and polarisation surrounded similar events. These problems reveal how easily social division and disorder in our societies can spill over into violent extremism at home. It underscores the nature of terrorism as not just a threat to be contained ‘over there’ in foreign countries with kinetic military operations against easily identifiable terrorist groups. It is also a problem of the here and now, living among us and emerging from the everyday fabric of our political and public life.

NOTES 1. 2.

The authors would like to thank Oliver Ryan Tucker for his research assistance. Andrew Silke, ‘Research on Terrorism: A Review of the Impact of 9/11 and the Global War on Terrorism’, in Hsinchun Chen, Edna Reid, Joshua Sinai, Andrew Silke and Boaz Ganor (eds.), Terrorism Informatics: Knowledge Management and Data Mining for Homeland Security (New York: Springer, 2008), p.28. 3. David Anderson, ‘A Question of Trust: Report of the Investigatory Powers Review’ (London: UK Government, 2015), p.18. 4. Martha Crenshaw Hutchinson, ‘The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 16, 3 (1972), pp.383–396. Ibid., p.385. 5. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Walter Laqueur, ‘Postmodern Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs, 75, 5 (1996), p.24. 9. Alex P. Schmid, Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases, and Literature (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1994), p.28. 10. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). 11. Ibid., p.5. 12. For more detail, see Arthur H. Garrison, ‘Defining Terrorism: Philosophy of the Bomb, Propaganda by Deed and Change Through Fear and Violence’, Criminal Justice Studies, 17, 3 (2004), pp.259–279. 13. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p.5. 14. David C. Rapoport, ‘The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism’, in Audrey Kurth Cronin and James M. Ludes (eds.), Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), pp.46–73. 15. Ibid., p.47. 16. Michael Burleigh, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror (London: Harper Collins, 2006); Michael Burleigh, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (London: Harper Perennial, 2008). 17. John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (London: Penguin, 2011). 18. It has been referred to as such by numerous scholars including: Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the 21st Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Jarret M. Brachman, Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009); David Snow and Scott Byrd, ‘Ideology,

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Framing Processes, and Islamic Terrorist Movements’, Mobilization, 12, 2 (2017), pp.119–136. 19. Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam Rising (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), p.210. 20. Quintan Wiktorowicz, ‘Islamic Activism and Social Movement Theory: A New Direction for Research’, Mediterranean Politics 7, 3 (2007), p.190. 21. Ibid., p.190. 22. Jeroen Gunning, ‘Social Movement Theory and the Study of Terrorism’, in Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning (eds.), Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), p.157. 23. Ibid. 24. Richard Jackson, ‘The Ghosts of State Terror: Knowledge, Politics and Terrorism Studies’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1, 3 (2008), p.377. 25. Bart Schuurman, ‘Using Primary Sources for Terrorism Research: Introducing Four Case Studies’, Perspectives on Terrorism, 8, 4 (2014), pp.62–64. 26. Osama bin Laden, ‘Bin Laden’s “Letter to America”’, The Guardian, 24 November 2002, available at: https://​www​.theguardian​.com/​world/​2002/​nov/​24/​ theobserver. 27. Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 28. ‘November 2017 Release of Abbottabad Compound Material’, US Central Intelligence Agency, available at: https://​www​.cia​.gov/​library/​abbottabad​ -compound/​index​.html. 29. Ibid. For the ODNI repository, see: ‘Bin Laden’s Bookshelf’, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, available at: https://​www​.dni​.gov/​index​.php/​ features/​bin​-laden​-s​-bookshelf. 30. ‘Bin Laden’s Bookshelf’, ODNI. 31. Mathieu Guidère, ‘The Timbuktu Letters: New Insights about AQIM’, Res Militaris, 4, 1 (2014), p.25. 32. ‘The ISIS Files’, George Washington University, available at: https://​isisfiles​ .gwu​.edu/​. 33. Joseph Carter, Shiraz Maher and Peter Neumann, ‘#Greenbirds: Measuring Importance and Influence in Syrian Foreign Fighter Networks’ (London: ICSR, 2014), available at: https://​icsr​.info/​wp​-content/​uploads/​2014/​04/​ICSR​-Report​ -Greenbirds​-Measuring​-Importance​-and​-Influence​-in​-Syrian​-Foreign​-Fighter​ -Networks​.pdf. 34. Michal Kosinskia, David Stillwell and Thore Graepel, ‘Private Traits and Attributes are Predictable from Digital Records of Human Behaviour’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 110, 15 (2013), p. 5802. 35. For more on al-Shabaab’s media strategy see: Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Shiraz Maher and James Sheehan, ‘Lights, Camera, Jihad: Al-Shabaab’s Western Media Strategy’ (London: ICSR, 2012), available at: https://​icsr​.info/​wp​-content/​ uploads/​2012/​11/​ICSR​-Report​-Lights​-Camera​-Jihad​-al​-Shabaab​%E2​%80​%99s​ -Western​-Media​-Strategy​.pdf. 36. David Mair, ‘#Westgate: A Case Study: How al-Shabaab Used Twitter During an Ongoing Attack’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 40, 1 (2016), p.24.

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37. Magnus Ranstorp, ‘Mapping Terrorism Studies after 9/11: An Academic Field of Old Problems and New Prospects’, in Jackson, Smyth and Gunning (eds.), Critical Terrorism Studies, pp.27–47. 38. Alex P. Schmid, James J. F. Forest and Timothy Lowe, ‘Terrorism Studies: A Glimpse at the Current State of Research (2020/2021)’, Perspectives on Terrorism, 15, 3 (2021), p.142. 39. Isobel Cockerell, ‘Capitol Insurrection Captured, and Then Erased on Social Media’, Coda Story, 17 February 2021. 40. John Morrison, Andrew Silke and Eke Bont, ‘The Development of the Framework for Research Ethics in Terrorism Studies (FRETS)’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 33, 2 (2021), p.274. 41. James Khalil, ‘A Guide to Interviewing Terrorists and Violent Extremists’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 42, 4 (2019), p.429. 42. John Horgan, ‘Interviewing the Terrorist: Reflections on Fieldwork and Implications for Psychological Research’, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 4, 3 (2011), pp.195–211. 43. Morrison et al., ‘The Development of FRETS’; Ken Booth, ‘The Human Faces of Terror: Reflections in a Cracked Looking Glass’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1, 1 (2008), pp.65–79. 44. Maura Conway, ‘Online Extremism and Terrorism Research Ethics: Researcher Safety, Informed Consent, and the Need for Tailored Guidelines’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 33, 2 (2021), pp.367–380. 45. ‘Oversight of Security-Sensitive Research Material in UK Universities: Guidance’, Universities UK (2019), available at: https://​www​.universitiesuk​.ac​ .uk/​what​-we​-do/​policy​-and​-research/​publications/​oversight​-security​-sensitive​ -research. 46. Audrey Kurth Cronin, Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp.1, 7. 47. Charlie Winter, Shiraz Maher and Aymenn Jawad Ali al-Tamimi, ‘Understanding Salafi‑Jihadist Attitudes Towards Innovation’ (London: ICSR, 2021), available at: https://​icsr​.info/​wp​-content/​uploads/​2021/​01/​ICSR​-Report​-Understanding​-Salafi​ %E2​%80​%91Jihadist​-Attitudes​-Towards​-Innovation​.pdf. 48. James Barnett, Shiraz Maher and Charlie Winter, ‘Literature Review: Innovation, Creativity and the Interplay Between Far‑right and Islamist Extremism’ (London: ICSR, 2021), available at: https://​icsr​.info/​wp​-content/​uploads/​2021/​03/​ICSR​ -Report​-Literature​-Review​-Innovation​-Creativity​-and​-the​-Interplay​-Between​ -Far​%E2​%80​%91right​-and​-Islamist​-Extremism​.pdf.

14. War Studies Online David Banks, David Easter and Anne-Lucie Norton When the Department of War Studies was founded in the early 1960s the idea of students studying remotely for an MA degree using solely electronic means would have seemed like science fiction. The necessary technology simply did not exist. The Open University was not set up until 1969 and even though it made innovative use of television and radio programmes to present educational material to students, it could not provide them with an electronic platform to hold seminars and discussions. Everything changed, of course, with the development of the internet, which opened up the possibility of online university education. The Department of War Studies was one of the first to take up these opportunities and offer students in 2005 a wholly online MA programme, War in the Modern World (WiMW). The programme proved a great success, pioneering online education at King’s and inspiring the creation of many more online MA programmes across the department and the university. In this chapter we rehearse why and how the WiMW MA programme was created, look back on some of the challenges we encountered as early adopters of online education and set out how the programme has evolved.

14.1

ORIGINS OF THE PROGRAMME

In 2002 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, wishing to promote new ways to deliver postgraduate education, saw the potential that online learning offered to people in the security, military, and international relations fields. He asked Anne-Lucie Norton, an academic editor for strategic and defence studies books, and publisher of his first book, to prepare a bid for funds being offered by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to universities who had an interest in developing online degrees. The UK government at the time wanted to promote UK higher education to a wide international market. The bid was successful and with the support and guidance of successive Heads of Department Professors Brian Holden Reid and Mervyn Frost, and overall strategic direction from Freedman, a small War Studies Online team was assembled including (now) Professors David Betz and Rachel Kerr, Menisha 198

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Gor (administration manager), Simon Hall (developer and editor) and Norton (executive director). Betz and Kerr were the initial teaching staff and wrote the core and first optional modules for the War in the Modern World MA. From the outset, we designed War in the Modern World to be web-delivered in its entirety and part-time only. We envisaged that most of the student body would be members of the armed forces, government personnel, civilian contractors, and others with a personal interest in war studies. The Department had a track record of teaching the armed forces, Foreign Office and other security personnel for many years on campus and we knew there was a large untapped reservoir of people, who due to their work and personal commitments, were unable to take out a year out to come to London for a master’s degree. For example, many military personnel and contractors were already deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as other conflict zones, or they expected to be posted shortly. In an environment of increasingly sophisticated web development, allied to a growing general market for postgraduate education, we were confident that an online, part-time degree would fill a gap in the market. At that time there were no completely online postgraduate qualifications in war and conflict studies available anywhere. The only other offerings were two partly online programmes in the United States which predominantly delivered simple content as uploaded text lectures. On these programmes students had minimal teaching in what was to all intents and purposes self-study. In addition, there was a mandatory residential component requiring students to travel to the university campus. We believed WiMW could offer something markedly different, and better. Our aim was to develop and deliver successfully a completely new online master’s degree to an international student body consisting in the main of mature students working full-time in mostly security-related areas. We envisioned that the students were likely to move around the world with frequent changes of location so the learning system had to be available all hours offering flexibility of study time. We also placed importance on fostering a more congenial work/ life balance for the students that did not interrupt their professional or family lives and allowed them to study wherever they were, whenever they could. Being able to learn at a time and place that suited their life circumstances was paramount. We wanted to provide this level of flexibility while at the same time maintaining the rigour and reputation of our MA programmes, with the same high entrance requirements and providing comparable levels of student engagement and academic support as offered to our on-campus students. The programme approval process was exacting, taking over two years to complete. Every aspect of the creation of the new degree was fully interrogated and subject to internal and external scrutiny. Initially King’s College also had no infrastructure to support the development of the degree in either IT or at any

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level of administration. Getting to grips with the technology and creating a sui generis online masters on a tight schedule tested our resilience. Every aspect of developing the degree had to be newly configured. Although challenging, one of the benefits of starting with a blank slate was that the expertise which the team developed brought them to the forefront of innovation. Our advice was frequently sought both inside and outside the College on anything to do with online education. Before launch, it was vital to test the stability of the platform as we planned to have it open 24/7 to all students worldwide. We also wanted to make sure that delivery of learning materials and, most importantly, teaching practice was robust and sustainable, so a pilot was run using one of the recently completed modules with volunteer Department of War Studies masters students as guinea pigs. The pilot tested our asynchronous model of teaching. The success of this exercise supported the team’s confidence that it would be able to deliver the MA and achieve its learning aims delivering positive outcomes for the students. Trusting the systems and receiving programme approval, the next step was to recruit students. By the time of launch in 2005, War Studies Online had successfully tendered for a Ministry of Defence contract to teach serving British Army officers. The anytime, anywhere model was particularly suited to active military personnel and indeed many other full-time professionals in a wide variety of fields. The programme’s reputation grew and after an invitation from the USAF Strategic Command to give a presentation in the USA to a delegation responsible for education, monies were made available to selected USAF students who successfully applied to the programme. Over time, the student body shifted, from being predominantly serving UK military, to a much more diverse range of civilian and military students with a range of backgrounds – some serving or retired military personnel from other countries, as well as people working for international organisations and non-governmental organisations, think tanks, private sector consultancy firms, bankers, lawyers, teachers, and academics from other disciplines.

14.2

STRUCTURE OF THE PROGRAMME

The WiMW programme was structured around core modules, optional modules and a dissertation. The original configuration was designed to allow students to develop a strong historical understanding of war in the modern world (which we rather arbitrarily determined as the post-Second World War period from 1945) and then to move on to develop a more conceptual and theoretical grounding in strategic studies and/or international relations. From there, they moved back to a more historical and empirical approach, developing in-depth knowledge in a particular area or areas of the globe, including initially the

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Middle East and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, and Russia and the former Soviet Union. This range of core and optional modules gave us a global perspective and provided opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. What set WiMW apart at the time was that it wholly web-delivered, and thereby offered greater access to include those who might otherwise be prevented from undertaking an MA programme for reasons of geography, employment or other commitments. The programme was delivered asynchronously and course materials and seminar discussions were available 24/7. Students learn through a combination of guided self-study and small group teaching in the seminars. In their own time the students read through text specifically created by the tutors, as well as selected e-books and journal articles, primary source material, audio-visual and other multi-media (static images, maps, tables, graphs). They then take part in tutor-moderated online seminar discussion forums (in an asynchronous threaded discussion format). For each module students lead discussions in the seminars and take turns in giving presentations, which can be in audio, video, PowerPoint or text. We experimented with different formats for the discussions, including role-plays and a crisis-management simulation (around the Cuban Missile Crisis), but by far the most successful format has been that which approximates to a more traditional seminar, except that the discussion takes place asynchronously on a forum over a period of nine days, rather than in a two-hour slot in a classroom. All teaching and assessment are done online. This format and the WiMW programme generally proved highly successful and was popular with students. Results from King’s end of term student surveys and the national Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) were very positive. In the PTES, the WiMW programme was consistently highly rated by respondents, outperforming the departmental, faculty and college average in the categories of teaching and learning, engagement, assessment and feedback, organisation and management, resources and services, skills development, and overall student satisfaction. Students benefitted directly from their time with us. One French graduate, with no background in security affairs, was taken on as an intern in the French Defence establishment. After a short period, she was offered a permanent role in Air Force intelligence. Another student, a UK army officer applied for a job with the UN involving African security, which he had had in his sights from the beginning of his study. Studying the African Security module improved his regional knowledge, and he ultimately got the job. These are only two stories illustrating that the aim of providing an online War Studies degree from the Department – enhancing students’ professional opportunities in their chosen fields – has been achieved. Building on this success, we expanded the WiMW programme, offering more optional modules, such as Seapower, Conflict, Rights and Justice; International Law and the Use of Force; Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency;

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and Intelligence. The Department also expanded its online programmes with the MA Air Power in the Modern World (APiMW), launched in 2009, and International Relations and Contemporary War (IRCW) in 2014 (discussed elsewhere in this volume). The programmes are closely linked: IRCW students had the same choice of optional modules as WiMW students and also had to write a research-based dissertation as the final element of their assessment.

14.3

THE STUDENT BODY

These programmes succeeded in the original aim of attracting students from all over the world who would not have been able to take a campus-based MA. In 2017, for example, WiMW had students of 22 different nationalities living in 30 countries. Our students also tend to be highly mobile; on average over 15 per cent of them live in a country other than that of which they are a citizen. As well as living internationally, students frequently travel a great deal for their work. It is not uncommon for students to start the programme in one country and finish when living in another. For example, one graduate began in Gambia, moved to Majorca mid-course, and then graduated when he was in Germany. He went on to successfully complete a PhD and is now a Fellow in the African Leadership Centre at King’s. This mobility means that for many of our students it would be impossible to study full-time on a campus MA programme. A survey of our 2011 cohorts showed that 81.4 per cent would not/could not have come to London if WiMW was only available residentially. Our intake are mostly mature students (average age 38) and employed full-time in a variety of jobs, many at a high level. For the first five years of the programme, 54 per cent of the student body were serving British army officers funded by the Ministry of Defence as part of its modular master’s programme. In 2010 the Ministry of Defence, under extreme financial pressure from the government, withdrew funding for this programme. The student body thereafter became more diverse, although service personnel from Britain and other countries always make up part of the intake. For example, in 2011 WiMW students were serving members of nine foreign armed forces. The non-military students on the programme are mostly professionals working in the fields of defence, security, risk analysis, a wide range of NGOs, the British civil service and other national equivalents, and journalists, writers, and editors working in international affairs. Many of these students have relevant experience and expertise to share in seminars and some were actually physically located in war zones while they were studying. About 10 per cent of students work in professions such as law, finance and technical areas. For some, undertaking the programme is designed to facilitate a career change; for others it satisfies a long-held personal interest in the subject matter. A common thread is that many of these students studied history, politics, or

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international studies at undergraduate level and have maintained an interest in these areas, even though they have chosen careers in unrelated fields.

14.4

THE CHALLENGES OF ONLINE TEACHING AND EDUCATION

Online education offers great opportunities for widening access and reaching students who could not study in person on campus. However, there are challenges in online teaching, which we had to consider and work through when creating WiMW and its sister programmes and teaching online. One issue we encountered at the start in 2005 was securing enough online teaching materials, for at that time some publishers had still not produced online versions of important works. This was especially true for some key books on airpower in the core modules for the APiMW programme. Normally, the problem was solvable through King’s Library obtaining permission to produce digital copies of the essential chapters in books, although for some modules we had to advise students to buy two or three books. Now the situation has radically changed as the range and availability of online resources we can provide students has increased exponentially since 2005. We can now link students to a huge range of e-books, e-journals, websites with primary source documents such as the National Security Archive, reports and statistics of all kinds, online videos, in-depth interviews, and news sources. To a large extent then, the problem of providing teaching resources is solved, although students still need to take online availability into account when choosing a dissertation topic. Another challenge was in creating a suitable shared discussion space for students. One option was to use video conferencing to have synchronous online seminars, similar to classes on campus. These could be short, two-hour meetings and would partly replicate the immediacy of in-person learning. However, we had to give careful consideration as to how we would ensure a level playing field for people studying the course in very different and diverse circumstances. At that time, in 2005, many students would not have had good enough internet connection and sufficient bandwidth to take part in live video conferencing. For example, some of our British army students were studying while deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. More fundamentally, many of our students would not have been able to attend online classes at set times because they lived in different countries and time zones and/or because they had demanding full-time jobs. This perhaps is an under-appreciated aspect of online education: the student body is often qualitatively different to campus students. As explained above, we therefore choose to have asynchronous seminars via forums in the modules. There are further advantages to this format – not only does it mean that students can fit the course around busy lives and participate in different time zones, but it also allows for a more reflexive

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discussion, and our experience has been that it helps encourage participation from the whole group as less confident students are afforded time to marshal their thoughts before posting. Since 2005, internet connectivity has massively improved and people have become much more familiar with video conference applications, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. We have therefore incorporated more synchronous discussion within the modules. But since the problems of time zones and student availability persists, we still favour asynchronous seminars in most cases. A final challenge of online learning is fostering in the students a sense of belonging to the academic community. Students studying online normally cannot meet their peers in person and/or come to the campus, so there is a danger they may feel isolated and disconnected from the course and the university. It is worth trying to replicate some of the more informal aspects of campus-based learning, such as discussing a topic with fellow students in a café after a lecture. Tutors need to encourage student–student interaction, both in the module seminars and in other forums. For this purpose, we created ‘virtual cafés’ and ‘lounges’ in modules to give students a space to have general discussions on topics they find interesting. It is also important to have clearly identified points of contact in the administration for the students to get in touch with if they are having any problems on the programme.

14.5

WAR, HISTORY AND DIPLOMACY

In 2022, we started the process of developing a new online MA programme ‘War, History, and Diplomacy’ (WHD). This programme keeps much of the structure and many of the features of WiMW but it will be anchored by two core modules – War, History, and Diplomacy 1 and 2. These core modules differed from the predecessors in both the subjects they focused on (i.e., war and diplomacy) and the period of history they covered (from 1500, with special emphasis on nineteenth- and twentieth-century international history). Three considerations informed the design of this programme and its core modules. First, while diplomacy and war are often treated as two distinct subjects, this separation is artificial and misleading. This module tackles this artificial separation directly and investigates how, while diplomacy and war are often antithetical to one another, they are both political tools used to meet actors’ interests, and the use of which is deeply intertwined. Wars typically break out due to preceding diplomatic failures and at their conclusions are always followed by some form of explicit or tacit diplomatic negotiations. Indeed, diplomatic and military activities are sometimes difficult to distinguish from one another. For instance, military mobilisations are both preparations for wars but also a signal of resolve over a diplomatic dispute. Similarly, targets in wars are often selected not just to affect combat operations but also

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to ‘communicate’ what might cause the war to end or escalate. The interconnection between war and diplomacy – i.e., that they are really two sides of the same coin – is brought into relief in WHD 1 and 2. Second, broadening the historical focus of these modules to include less-familiar eras, such as the nineteenth century, helps students to identify continuities and discontinuities in the practice of war and diplomacy. Often, individuals fall into the intellectual traps of either ‘tempocentrism’ – thinking that all historical eras are fundamentally similar and conceptually interchangeable – or chronofetishism – thinking that the modern era is a radical break from a past from which we can learn little. The former tendency leads people to ignore or miss the particular differences of the past, thus making it harder to recognise the truly unique features of the present. The latter tendency causes people to miss useful historical analogies from previous eras and fail to recognise that how many modern political dynamics are the result of (and often, continuations of) trends from earlier eras. In response to these intellectual traps, WHD 1 and 2 show how some elements of diplomacy or warfare have repeated over the centuries while others have fallen into disuse, transformed, or suddenly appeared in ways that have meaningfully reordered international politics. By requiring students to consider the practice of war and diplomacy in previous eras, we intend to improve these students’ ability to use the past to help distinguish between those contemporary events that are familiar and those that are genuinely novel. Third, extending the period of study into eras as far back as the 1500s corrects the tendency in many international political history courses to focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Narrowly focusing on more recent periods not only impoverishes students’ historical literacy, but it may also leave them intellectually unequipped to understand many of the challenges we face today. The twenty-first century has already revealed itself to be an era of great power competition, rapid technological transformation, regional instability, and social turmoil; dynamics that are, in many ways, more typical of the nineteenth century than the twentieth. By extending the historical focus of these core modules back into these eras, we can improve students’ analytic skills. In War, History, Diplomacy, the focus is on the historical development of the modern state system from its roots in early modern dynastic Europe until its unravelling in the First World War. Throughout the programme, students are introduced to key concepts to help order and explain the eras they study. These concepts include resident diplomacy, dynasticism, the military revolution, political ideology, mass politics, alliance diplomacy, the industrial revolutions, empire diplomacy, balance of power, arms races, industrial warfare, and diplomatic crises. Students are then encouraged to use this conceptual background to analyse developments from the First World War to the present

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day. They consider the transhistorical nature of some elements of war and diplomacy, while also taking care to recognise dimensions of both that were unique to their time and that have since evolved or disappeared. They interpret these historical events through a number of key concepts such as total war, propaganda, international order, coercive diplomacy, revisionism, movement warfare, bipolarity, international institutions, summit diplomacy, decolonisation, nuclear weapons, spheres of influence, legitimacy, soft power, proxy wars, unipolarity, terrorism, hybrid war, and weaponised interdependence. Thus, while studying different eras, the programme encourages students to learn about the key international political events of a distinct historical period, while also being presented with some key conceptual dynamics especially characteristic of that period. This approach provides students with a greater appreciation of the historical contingency or persistence of different dimensions of war and diplomacy, making them better able to identify both the familiar and the unique challenges that shape the international politics of this century. We have also made some changes in the way that War Studies is delivered to students. A reduction of credits for each module in the programme from 20 to 15 has allowed students to take more optional modules than before over the course of their studies. This gives them opportunities to design an MA that meets more of their interests even more comprehensively and make the programme more bespoke than ever before. These changes in programme design are complemented by changes in the delivery of modules. The COVID-19 pandemic had the effect of blurring the lines between on-line and on-campus teaching at King’s, with many residential War Studies students taking WiMW and IRCW modules. As part of blended learning, we still allow campus students to take our modules as optional modules, but we also now offer the opportunity for students to study on campus for one term if they so wish. The MA remains wholly web-delivered and there is no requirement to study in person at King’s, but we wanted to give our students the chance to take one optional module in London should they wish to. The COVID-19 pandemic also led to changes in individuals’ ability to interact online and spurred technological developments at King’s, which together have created opportunities to further improve the online experience for students. While most War Studies online modules still follow the same fundamental structure, individual module convenors are using increasingly creative ways to engage with their students. This includes the use of online videos to deliver introductions to each unit, to deliver lectures, and to sum up forum discussions. It also includes using phone apps such as Moodle, which makes it possible for students to access module materials and post to discussion forums while on-the-go. Our online modules have thus become more integrated with campus teaching but also even more flexible and adaptable to students’ needs.

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Online learning has come a long way since the launch of WiMW in 2005. Technological advances have made it easier for students to participate in online classes and online education has been normalised by the COVID-19 pandemic, with millions of people around the world studying online in 2020 and 2021, although their courses sometimes suffered from not being purpose-built online programmes like WiMW. At King’s, WiMW has showed how an online programme can be academically rigorous and engaging but also flexible and sensitive to students’ needs. Inspired by its example, other departments at King’s College have created postgraduate online programmes and the college has ambitions for King’s to become the UK’s leader in online education. As part of this vision, the War Studies Department has now expanded the range of its online teaching. In 2022 War Studies and the Department of Defence Studies launched a new joint online MA programme: Global Security. The two departments have also set up the King’s Institute for Applied Security Studies which will offer another new MA programme and online short programmes aimed at security practitioners. Following the trail blazed by WiMW, online learning has become an important and expanding part of War Studies’ postgraduate education portfolio.

15. War Studies Jan Willem Honig War Studies, as it is known today as a field of study and a department, is a product of the World Wars and the Cold War. The novel demand for national mobilisation during the First World War created a perceived socio-political need for educating the civilian part of the nation for the next war. In the mid-1920s, the University of London created an intercollegiate School of War Studies which put on series of public lectures, and established a chair of ‘Military Studies’ at King’s.1 The retired general appointed however soon left and the School languished, but a board of studies and a sense of a ‘prescriptive right’ at King’s to a post in the field survived until after the Second World War.2 The board’s existence enabled the resurrection of a lowly lecturer position in military studies in the King’s History Department in 1953, which the incumbent, Michael Howard, after some years of wrangling, was able to transform into a one-man Department of War Studies in 1961. A Chair, now renamed War Studies, was re-established in 1963 and an MA programme commenced in 1965.3 Howard writes in his memoirs that the recent, renewed experience of total war meant that the board, made up of ‘interested giants’ of British public and academic life, had ‘agreed that a retired soldier, however eminent and intelligent, would not be the right man’.4 Whereas the 1927 public lectures were dominated by military men talking about various forms of modern warfare – with only ‘[a] defence of military history’ and ‘[w]hat should we teach about war?’ reserved for civilian authors – the novel experience of the Cold War and the risks of nuclear holocaust meant that teaching society on matters relating to the technicalities of warfare by military professionals became a somewhat less urgent preoccupation. The time for a broader academic and socially relevant approach to the issue of war seemed to have arrived. But what was ‘War Studies’? And how were civilians to research and teach it? Living under the shadow of ‘the bomb’ posed a challenge of a kind for which no academic discipline was well-prepared. Social sciences, particularly in the US, attempted to fill the void, but largely did so by developing sub-branches that shared the common label ‘studies’, moderated by a variety of adjectives such as ‘strategic’, ‘peace’, ‘defence’, ‘security’, ‘conflict’ and, most rarely, ‘war’. These fields were distinguished from the established dis208

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ciplines from which they sprang by a more immediate interest in policy and a greater willingness to engage in multidisciplinary approaches than their originator disciplines often exhibited.5 The label ‘War Studies’ may have been the least popular choice, but it had an advantage over the others. ‘War’ arguably encapsulated with greater immediacy a vital issue in human relations in a way that the broader and (even) vaguer terms ‘conflict’ and ‘security’ did not. It also, like the adjectives ‘strategic’ and ‘defence’, did not steer the field towards preferred approaches. And did peace not become an issue precisely because of the existence of war? But because of the abject horror contained in the word ‘war’ (which led all Western government departments of war to restyle themselves departments of defence in the 1950s), the name choice encountered its sceptics. They were little assuaged by the resolute abandonment at King’s of the previous interwar interchangeability of ‘military’ and ‘war’ studies and by the reiteration by successive chairs in War Studies that war best identified the central issue without hesitation or deviation. The reluctance at other universities to adopt the label ‘war’ proved a boon to War Studies at King’s.6 Not only did field and institution become coterminous, but lack of competition and stable student supply meant that the Department obtained a small, yet critical mass that justifies the focus in this chapter on it as the hub that, if not defined, then certainly exemplified the field. In his memoirs Howard emphasises the accidental nature of his career progression and his slowly developing understanding of the academic field that was thrown in his lap. What he arrived at was a focus on ‘war and society’. His master test for the job, his 1961 book on the Franco-Prussian War, developed the idea that not only should an enquiry into the conduct of the war be married with the high politics of the event, but neither could the resulting amalgam be divorced from societal conditions. The work was not particularly explicit on theoretical or methodological issues, but that was not unusual for British historians of his generation.7 Howard remained a master of grand sweep, narrative history larded with a keen sense of societal context. His concise and erudite 1970s classic War in European History, for example, illuminated in a mere 143 pages ‘the institution of warfare as it has developed within European society over the millennium for which we have reliable records’.8 The discussion was organised around a chronological sequence of the dominant military actors that society had produced to conduct warfare. One could detect the influence here of Hans Delbrück, the German founder of academic military history, who had explained the evolution of military practices within the context of changing political structures. Howard explicitly acknowledged Delbrück in his Foreword but added that a political framework must be broadened to include economic, social, and cultural history. Howard’s work however did not generally strive for innovation in terms of method or, for that matter, interpretation. With great clarity, consummate stylistic aplomb and rhetorical skill, he fused

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a broad range of historical research into a confident and concise narrative that somehow seemed seductively uncontentious and so highly authoritative. His synthetic approach was also well-suited to his habit of utilising invitations to deliver public lecture series as the basis for subsequent, necessarily accessible, and short, books. As Adam Roberts wrote in his obituary of Howard, he was ‘stronger on generalisation than detail’.9 A ‘war and society’ approach tied in with what became the main header under which war as an academic subject was studied by historians in the post-Second World War period.10 Howard’s take was however distinct from the mainstream in three senses. The death and destruction caused by the world wars had undermined any academic respectability the study of the conduct of war may have had and pushed it into a different market segment, popular in the UK and US, but less so on the war-ravaged European continent. War and society constituted an attempt to develop a respectable approach to military history which studied the (negative) impact of war on society rather than the converse, the impact of society on actual warfare, or worse, the nitty-gritty of the bloody application of violence. Howard remained convinced that military history need not be a ‘handmaid of militarism’ and that the conduct of war should remain, suitably contextualised, a central part of war studies. While he evinced a conventional view that history in general is marked by the uniqueness of events and discontinuities and that the effects of political and economic change are hard to pinpoint with certainty and precision, he also claimed that war was different. War is ‘a distinct and repetitive form of human behaviour’ that is furthermore ‘intermittent, clearly defined, with distinct criteria of success or failure’.11 Wars therefore ‘resemble each other more than they resemble any other human activity’. Taking his cue from Clausewitz, ‘all wars are fought … in a special element of danger and fear and confusion’ in which men try ‘to impose their will on one another by violence’ and where ‘events occur which are inconceivable in any other field of experience’.12 Since success could be ‘assessed by a straightforward standard’, Howard concluded, ‘it does not seem overoptimistic to assume that we can make judgments about them and draw conclusions which will have an abiding value.’ Craftily and disarmingly phrased, Howard in effect reiterated a nineteenth-century claim that war was unique, and uniquely important, in producing decisive, measurable results in history – albeit with the important rider that ‘the roots of victory and defeat often have to be sought far from the battlefield, in political, social and economic factors which explain why armies are constituted as they are, and why their leaders conduct them in the way they do.’13 A second point of difference was that Howard engaged in public debates on current issues of security and defence, especially those regarding nuclear weapons. In a letter to The Times, he expressed his belief that the ‘field of defence’ lacked ‘a large and well-informed body of public opinion, …

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grounded in the subject by academic study, that acts both as a check and a goad on governmental action and provides when necessary a source of expertise.’14 Howard gave form to this by helping found institutions like the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), as well as, of course, the Department of War Studies. But he also participated in high-minded study groups producing reports, delivered radio talks and public lectures (which, as said, formed the basis for most of his books), as well as wrote many book reviews in newspapers (including in The Sunday Times, which first drew my attention to the department). Third, as a public intellectual, working in a new and, for the civil and academic world, suspect field, Howard distinguished himself further by a great concern with the ethical dimensions of war. His self-described ‘Quaker genes’ were responsible for far more than inhibiting him from ‘relaxing on a Bali beach’ during a holiday visit to Indonesia.15 Mitigating the effects, and indeed the chances, of war were a major concern that pervaded his activities. Departmental lore carried down over decades the story of the deep emotional upset Britain’s role in the Suez operation of 1956 had caused him and which his memoirs confirmed. With rare emphasis, he writes that the ill-fated venture ‘marked our end as a good power’. It made him join a demonstration in Trafalgar Square ‘for the only time in my life’.16 Advocacy of sane state policy was one pillar in this endeavour to constrain war – which is clearly reflected in the translation choices Howard made with Peter Paret in his rendering into English of Clausewitz’s On War. The translation presented Clausewitz as the pre-eminent supporter of the idea that war was an instrument of policy, rather than a product of a less mutable and slower changing political environment.17 There was an odd contradiction here with his noted emphasis on approaching war in terms of its conduct and results within a socio-economic and political framework. Arguably, this choice also presented something of a missed opportunity in enlisting Clausewitz in support of a more fundamental claim and deeper intellectual legitimation of War Studies (a matter I shall return to). It can be seen as a pragmatic and prudent concession in that calls for policy changes had a greater and more immediate chance of success in the nuclear age than appeals for reform of political systems and societies. But it was odd for someone who was keenly aware that the nation state in its democratic incarnation ‘still remains the only mechanism by which the ordinary man and woman achieves some sense, however limited, of participation in, and responsibility for, the ordering of their own societies and the conduct of the affairs of the world as a whole’. Not exhibiting a deeper concern with the constitution, and (in)stability and changeability, of contemporary politics appears something of an oversight.18 Howard’s attitude can also be explained by a particular view of the value and responsibility of elites. He could be described as elitist – though abashedly

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so as his disarming recognition of his occasional pompousness attests.19 He described his role in informing public opinion as building ‘an educated laity’ – an echo of the influence of his Oxford tutor, Hugh Trevor-Roper, whose inaugural lecture propounded a view that historians should produce ‘history for the laity’.20 So for all his interest in big, impersonal forces driving the history of war and warfare, Howard retained a fascination with ‘high priesthoods’ which not only explained history but also helped make it. That is further evidenced by a book that for him held a special place in his output: War and the Liberal Conscience.21 Following his familiar procedure of publishing a public lecture series, it traced the evolution of liberal ideas on the ethics and mitigation of war. However much they expressed what Howard believed to be a timeless and innate human desire to rid itself of the scourge of war, these were very much framed as elite ideas (and presented as a largely ineffective endeavour). For all his conceptual inconsistency and elitism, his deep concern with the control and sane direction of war on the one hand and its mitigation and ethical dimensions on the other, were nonetheless grounded in a strong sense of social responsibility and intellectual openness. There was thus a logic in the departmental appointments made under Howard’s leadership. The military historian Brian Bond produced works like an intellectual biography of the British strategic-operational thinker Basil Liddell Hart and a volume on The Pursuit of Victory From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein.22 But he also authored a tome on the modern period in a highly respected five volume Fontana History of European War and Society series edited by Geoffrey Best.23 Wolf Mendl, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who became a Quaker, specialised in sociology with an emphasis on civil–military relations. They were joined under Howard’s successor by the diplomatic historian Michael Dockrill and the philosopher Barrie Paskins, who jointly wrote a book on the ethics of war interspersed with historical illustrations.24 There was further continuity under his successors to the Chair of War Studies, Laurence Martin (1968–1978) and Sir Lawrence Freedman (1982–2013). They were also major public intellectuals – a role for which, like Howard, they received knighthoods.25 These were the staff that provided the backbone for the War Studies department until the late 1980s when the Department began to expand. By then War Studies had grown as a niche subject, unencumbered by much competition, distinguished by its conspicuous name, its staff, and its broad approach. By the last decade of the Cold War, the MA in War Studies programme consisted of a number of constituent elements all rooted in particular disciplinary approaches from the social sciences and the humanities, which derived coherence from the Cold War. Key topics included nuclear strategy, crisis management, arms control, bureaucratic politics, civil–military relations, ethics, and military history. Elements not provided by the Department could

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be taken as options at other Colleges of the University of London (I remember struggling, in vain, with the (for me) completely novel quantitative approach of C. R. Mitchell to ‘the structure of international conflict’ at City University and soon ruing foregoing Philips Windsor’s strategy option at the LSE). These neatly delineated, yet delicately intertwined, areas made up a curriculum that was more than the sum of its parts. Wonderfully diverse in terms of teaching and the reading of classic and topical texts, as well as in the political leanings of the teachers, the programme offered a rounded crash course on the major approaches to the understanding of modern war – which still stands me in good stead well over 30 years down the line.26 In retrospect, one can lament the gender bias and the almost exclusive focus on the developed world. The ‘Third World’ featured only in the military coups class of the civil–military relations element and ‘colonial warfare’ and counterinsurgency popped up occasionally in others. However, for a university on a continent in-between two nuclear armed superpowers, there was a strong argument that superpower conflict should stand at the centre of attention. Within these confines, War Studies offered, as Michael Howard had favoured, a deliberately ‘eclectic’ approach.27 There was little or no attempt to define War Studies or, for that matter, its central object, ‘war’.28 The sub-fields were each presented as immediately socially relevant problem areas and studied in the first instance from the vantage point of the seminal ideas and scholarly literature pertaining to each. That meant that theory, method, and approach differed from area to area. So the field followed a path unlike any academic discipline. These commonly established themselves through, first, a definition of its specific field of enquiry and then development of a set of pertinent methods and theories. Once formalised by eminent scholarly representatives and institutionalised in university departments, journals and book series, debate within disciplines would generally concentrate on improving and refining specific theories and methods. The introduction of radically new approaches and insights could of course occur but would likely encounter resistance from existing institutionalised intellectual schools which ‘knew’ what the discipline entailed and how it should be professionally practised. War Studies, with little or no competition, was also too small and varied for this to happen. Diversity in disciplinary lenses was explicitly welcomed. Prospective students could come from any discipline and were not required to abjure their previous academic schooling or subscribe to a particular school of thought. For students and staff, this meant freedom of choice in topic, theory, and method and, if they so desired, opportunities for disciplinary cross-fertilisation. If one can consider this a departmental ethos, it was reinforced over the years by a substantial number of staff appointments of people who had come up through the Department’s MA and PhD programmes and who had been exposed to a multi- or even interdisciplinary environment. At a minimum, War Studies

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tolerated interdisciplinarity, at its best, it inspired it. The rarity of this ethos in the international academic world is worth emphasising. In my own experience of studying, teaching, researching and publishing in at least four countries in some ten history, international relations, liberal arts, and ‘war science’ departments, disciplinary professional boundaries are strongly maintained despite usually strong public professions to the contrary. The Department was ‘real-world’ issues-driven and eschewed inward-looking, discipline-driven tendencies, or as Howard termed it, ‘navel-gazing’.29 Not being too closely tied to any particular theory or method helped position it well for the end of the Cold War. With military history as a critical pillar, the optimism so characteristic of much of the post-Second World War social sciences found a tempered reception. The awareness of the long-standing practical challenges facing those who wanted to create a better world prevented it from being caught up too deeply in the wave of liberal optimism which in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 predicted the creation of a peaceful ‘new world order.’ Intellectual flexibility and a sensitivity to a historical context in which state-based warfare was an exception rather than the rule, helped it avoid the identity crisis that, for example, befell Realism-oriented IR scholars and departments in the early 1990s. Nor did it fall headlong for the solutions touted by social scientists (and economists) who underplayed the deep-rooted violent political dynamics in societies. An unrelated development helping the Department in these heady days was the first major wave of student and staff growth since its founding phase. A generation or so after the student revolts of 1968 had led to a massive expansion of higher education in the rest of Europe, the Thatcherite drive to ‘widen participation’ in UK universities made possible a BA programme in War Studies in 1991. The expansion in terms of staff and student numbers and a work field now extending well beyond superpower rivalry and conflict did not lead to much more reflection on the nature of War Studies. Rather, the changes seemed to affirm the wisdom of the established loose and broad understanding of the field. Guided by youthful enthusiasm and then fashionable management practices, some colleagues (who should remain nameless) and I attempted in 1995 to draw up a Departmental ‘mission statement’. A precursor to the modern-day grandiloquent institutional ‘strategies’, the attempt failed to avoid the trap of spouting over-generalised and unobjectionable vacuity while providing an elusive specificity that covered diversity. Such failures did not mean that there was no baseline and underlying coherence in the teaching and research produced by the Department. For Freedman, War Studies derived continuity

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and coherence from a view that whatever the type of war (intrastate ethnic and civil wars sprang immediately to mind in the 1990s), all wars: are waged for political purposes and require some understanding of the effective manipulation of the means of violence. This aspect still ensures some continuity in the study of war, even in the light of the enormous changes in the international environment, social and economic conditions, and the advance of military technology.30

Freedman is identified most directly with the strategic studies component of War Studies (he was awarded his knighthood for services to strategic studies).31 Although he did not wear this overly flamboyantly on his sleeve and maintained a strong concern with writing accessible works, his interest in strategic studies came, in contrast with Howard, with a strong engagement with strategic theory and concepts. He also did not neglect other useful disciplines, especially history. He habitually placed his research concerns within a historical, evolutionary context, as most prominently represented by his Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (1981) and Strategy: A History (2013) – the latter a volume that more fittingly perhaps should have been named ‘The Evolution of Strategy’ had that title not recently been utilised by a former departmental colleague whose work perhaps would better have merited the title of a history.32 Freedman’s sensitivity to a changing socio-political environment interacting with theory development and its evolutionary adaptation and refinement are a key characteristic of his major works on strategy. But the same sensitivity also marks his histories of the 1982 Falklands Conflict, the 1991 Gulf War, US President Kennedy’s wars and US foreign policy in the Middle East.33 His (very) extensive body of work betrays a distinct difference from Michael Howard’s approach, and also from the one generally practised by departmental military historians. Hew Strachan has written that ‘there is no suggestion in Michael [Howard]’s writings that strategic studies can necessarily illuminate history.’ According to Strachan, to Howard military history was a ‘one way’ street that ‘feeds our understanding of strategic studies’.34 For Freedman this street does not run in the opposite direction with history merely providing a Fundgrube of cases to prove strategic theory right or wrong. Theory and practice move along what is at the best of times at least a two-way street in which the traffic interacts and adapts in cooperation and competition with one another. This set Freedman (and much of his Department) apart from a basic presumption of the social sciences, including International Relations. His aim has not been theory- or school-building per se. His work is not guided by a central desire to devise fundamental theory, tested against ‘real-world’ phenomena, in order to reveal the unchanging nature of politics and war.35 Claiming that war at all times and places is a political instrument is not much of a theory. It merely constitutes an assumption that bounds the study of war and strategy by

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positing that if violence is a social endeavour, it can reasonably be assumed to rely on some form of collective agreement to undertake common action in the pursuit of some publicly accepted good.36 Adding that it makes sense to learn how war can be manipulated is also, given the ready social acceptance that it is an unusually risky and costly business for societies, not a deep insight with much explanatory or predictive value. Nor does a claim that ‘strategy is the art of creating power’ in and of itself provide much illumination of the questions of what war is and how it works.37 However, while all these may be somewhat self-evident and easy to accept, they nonetheless present a sound and productive starting point for investigating, in conjunction with the theoretical and conceptual issues, the practical challenges which societies face in controlling and directing war. They avoid a possible underestimation of human control which Realism (and versions of Constructivism) presuppose, or suffer from falling victim to an overestimation as Liberal approaches tend to do. What is more, it does not immediately prejudge the function of power, as happens in Realism and Liberalism, or accept it as innate to all social relations, as Constructivism does. War and strategy do not simply exist to assure state survival and defend national self-interest or offer instruments only to be used legitimately for furthering a liberal society which is presumed to be peaceful and so desired by all. Realism and Liberalism constitute two theories that may find much empirical support but they lack dynamism and sensitivity to social change. Constructivism, on the other hand, while diffusing war and strategy across society too much, does bring great value in underlining that war, in terms of how it is understood and practised, depends on social agreement and support. To academics like Freedman, whose 1960s undergraduate background is in sociology (or my own in Medieval history), it remains remarkable that the idea that societies can be thought of as possessing a ‘consciousness’ (or for a medievalist, a mentalité) which produces collective world-views and shapes social behaviour, took so long to find a foothold elsewhere – not only in IR, but also in the parts of the discipline of history that concern themselves with the modern period.38 To military history it still remains overwhelmingly alien. Seeing strategy as an art (and emphatically not a science) of creating power which serves societies to achieve things they collectively value – whatever these may be – creates analytical flexibility. It also engenders a somewhat limited, if not sceptical view of theory with its role more geared towards explaining the immediate rather than the enduring. What fits one society and one issue at one time and place may not provide a lasting approach or solution. While not denying the possibility of progress towards the creation of better understanding and a better world, history does not present an evolutionary process in which ‘good’ ideas and practices weed out ‘bad’ ones according to either Realist or Liberal precepts. Rather, historical practices and ideas

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evolve in a process of interactive adaptation to material circumstances and human-made beliefs, that may display steady repetition or be unique.39 Understanding the why and how of strategies within the immediate context of their time can be easily confused with condoning the courses of action undertaken by the presently powerful. The great Marxist historian of the English working class, E. P. Thompson, defined Freedman (I am quoting from memory) as ‘a well-informed, well-intentioned apologist for the establishment’ – a judgement that others in the Department also have encountered without Thompson’s mollifying qualifiers.40 Charges of moral relativism, pessimism and obsequious deference to those in power, however, are misplaced. Two considerations are key. The first is that strategy and war involve choice and the second is that those choices, even (or especially) when understood as political, have a qualitative, ethical element. Understanding and accepting that strategic choice is ‘bounded’ by empirical realities is critical to a field that studies war, but the idea that those realities contain an integral element of social, and moral, construction reinforces the possibility of choice and the importance of engaging responsibly with that choice. For one thing, choices have consequences that can be materially undesired by society. But for another, choices can be morally wrong. Strategies pursued by and in war can create power to do good as well as wrong in ways that are hard but not totally impossible to understand, explain, weigh, and judge.41 Mats Berdal has pointed out in an evaluation of Freedman’s work on humanitarian interventions that strategic choices involving the use of war and force have a tragic quality. They habitually make a mockery of the belief that ‘there is a good solution for every situation’ and expose to view instead that ‘circumstances will arise in which the available solutions are not only bad, but very bad.’42 Arguably, this only reinforces the urgency of studying violent social interaction. One may prefer to focus one’s studies on harnessing the peacefully productive fruits of such disciplines as political science, sociology, international law, and economics, instead of analysing the dynamics and effects of management of violence and in doing so avoid revisiting the horror story that is history. In War Studies, especially as seen through its strategic studies and history lenses, the insights are more uncertain than one would like and any fruits they may bring rarely lack a bitter taste, but, given that war, for all its vexatious riskiness and terrible costs, remains an instrument oft-employed, it requires study. Here lies a key difference between War Studies at King’s and Peace Studies in Bradford – the two departments that during the later Cold War and early post-Cold War world exemplified the major approaches to the study of war, one taking, as it were, a direct and the other an indirect approach.43 War Studies refused to be blind to what goes on with and within war and does not overly privilege the study of those choices that avoid war or abjure the use of force. That does not at all

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mean its practitioners condone, let alone advocate war, but merely that they try to stare a most unpleasant human practice squarely in the face. The study of war, as exemplified by Freedman and his predecessors, does not require the establishment of an academic discipline. The field can thrive, and has proven itself able to do so, without such formalisation. The variety in forms of war and the circumstances governing them, the special gravity of war’s consequences, and the severe stresses it puts on human choice and responsibility, counsels against pinning down the field too firmly and too narrowly. The variety in analytical approaches and findings from traditional academic disciplines only reinforces the wisdom of that choice. This does not mean, as I hope to have already illustrated, that the field lacks an intellectual foundation or that there have been no attempts to build a common, constitutive War Studies teaching core, supported and fed by staff research. Freedman has been influential in this regard, not so much by inspiring copy-cats or lining up mere executors of his academic agenda, but by encouraging a meeting of sympathetic minds in the Department.

NOTES George Aston (ed.), The Study of War for Statesmen and Citizens: Lectures Delivered in the University of London during the Years 1925–6 (London: Longmans, Green, 1927), p.viii. An interesting comparison is the development of ‘defence studies’ in Germany: Frank Reichherzer, ‘Alles ist Front!’ Wehrwissenschaften in Deutschland und die Bellifizierung der Gesellschaft vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis in den Kalten Krieg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012). For the US, see David Ekbladh, ‘Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression Era Origins of Security Studies’, International Security, 36, 3 (2011–12), pp.107–141. 2. Michael Howard, Captain Professor: The Memoirs of Sir Michael Howard (London: Continuum, 2006), pp.140–141. 3. Ibid., pp.144, 148; Brian Bond, Military Historian: My Part in the Birth and Development of War Studies, 1966–2016 (Solihull: Helion, 2018), p.32. 4. Howard, Captain Professor, p.140. 5. See the review essay by Lawrence Freedman of Michael C. Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019) in Journal of Strategic Studies, 42, 7 (2019), pp.1027–1037 (especially p.1029); and Lawrence Freedman, ‘Social Science and the Cold War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 38, 4 (2015), pp.554–574. Even today one finds only a handful of degree programmes in War Studies and 6. then mostly in the UK, most prominently at Wolverhampton, Hull, Roehampton, and Glasgow. Another twenty-five or so UK universities offer degree programmes, mainly at MA level, in various related title constellations with ‘conflict’ appearing most often though rarely on its own. Most programmes moreover are of twenty-first-century vintage. 7. Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (London: Hart-Davis, 1961). For his views on War Studies, see 1.

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Howard, Captain Professor, pp.141–152 and ‘Interview: Professor Sir Michael Howard’, Institute of Historical Research, 5 June 2008, available at: https://​ archives​.history​.ac​.uk/​makinghistory/​resources/​interviews/​Howard​_Michael​ .html. 8. Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p.ix (cut in later editions). 9. Adam Roberts, ‘Sir Michael Howard Obituary’, Guardian, 1 December 2019. 10. Howard, Captain Professor, p.145. 11. Michael Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, 107, 625 (1961), p.12. 12. Ibid., p.13. 13. Ibid., p.14. 14. Letter to The Times, quoted in Howard, Captain Professor, p.160. 15. Howard, Captain Professor, p.188. 16. Ibid., p.155. 17. Jan Willem Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War: Problems of Text and Translation’, in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds.), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp.70–71. 18. Michael Howard, ‘War and the Nation State’, in Michael Howard, The Causes of War and Other Essays (London: Unwin, 1984), p.32. This chapter was based on his inaugural lecture for the Chichele Chair of the History of War at the University of Oxford in 1977. 19. Howard, Captain Professor, pp.59, 160. 20. ‘Interview: Professor Sir Michael Howard’, IHR. 21. Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (London: Temple Smith, 1978). See also Howard (ed.), Restraints on War: Studies in the Limitation of Armed Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) and Michael Howard, George J. Andreopolous and Mark R. Shulman (eds.), The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). 22. Brian Bond, Liddell Hart: A Study of His Military Thought (London: Cassell, 1977); Brian Bond, The Pursuit of Victory: From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 23. Brian Bond, War and Society in Europe, 1870–1970 (London: Fontana, 1984). 24. Michael Dockrill and Barrie Paskins, The Ethics of War (London: Duckworth, 1979). 25. Freedman’s publications are too numerous to list, but for Laurence Martin see his The Two-Edged Sword: Armed Force in the Modern World, The Reith Lectures 1981 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982). 26. A summation of the approach and favoured texts can be found in Lawrence Freedman (ed.), War: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 27. Howard, Captain Professor, p.147; Wolf Mendl, ‘The Case for War Studies: A Personal View’, Interstate, 1 (1984), pp.34‒38. 28. For Freedman’s rare and late attempts to define war and war studies, see his contributions ‘Defining War’, in Julian Lindley-French and Yves Boyer (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp.17–29, and Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper (eds.), The Social Science Encyclopedia (2nd edn, London: Routledge, 1996), s.v. ‘War Studies’. 29. ‘Interview: Professor Sir Michael Howard’, IHR. 30. Social Science Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘War Studies’.

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31. See e.g. his inaugural lecture, ‘Indignation, Influence and Strategic Studies’, in Lawrence Freedman, The Price of Peace: Living with the Nuclear Dilemma (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), pp.26–48. For an appreciation that rightly claims that his interest and insights go well beyond strategic studies, see James Gow and Benedict Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, in Benedict Wilkinson and James Gow (eds.), The Art of Creating Power: Freedman on Strategy (London: Hurst, 2017), pp.2–3, 6 (especially p.6). 32. Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 33. And there is much, much more. For a selected list of publications see: https://​ www​.kcl​.ac​.uk/​people/​professor​-sir​-lawrence​-freedman. 34. Hew Strachan, ‘Michael Howard and the Dimensions of Military History’, War in History, 27, 4 (2020), p.543. 35. For an exemplary example from a, I think, two-time visiting fellow to the Department, see Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979). 36. Clausewitz (and his contemporaries) found the statement that war is a political instrument not a startling or even contentious observation. Formulating a grand theory of how politics (or, perhaps, policy) permeated and controlled war was what defeated him. Freedman, arguably wisely, avoided constructing grand theory: cf. Freedman, ‘Defining War’. 37. Freedman, Strategy, p.xii. 38. See Lawrence Freedman, ‘Confessions of a Premature Constructivist’, in Wilkinson and Gow, Art of Creating Power, pp.309–327. 39. Mats Berdal, ‘Realism as an Unsentimental Intellectual Temper: Lawrence Freedman and the New Interventionism’, in Wilkinson and Gow, Art of Creating Power, pp.147–150. 40. For Freedman’s view on Thompson: Freedman, ‘Confessions’, pp.316–317, 324–325. 41. For a case in point, see Freedman’s purported influence on UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s thinking on humanitarian interventions (and especially the so-called ‘Chicago Speech’ of 1998) and his decision to invade Iraq in 2000: James Gow, ‘Reflections on the Freedman School’, in Wilkinson and Gow, Art of Creating Power, pp.357–359. The departmental colleagues who in early 2003 thought the decision to go to war against Iraq was a good idea, policy-wise or morally, were an exceedingly rare breed (as opposed to those who believed Saddam possessed WMD), however much most sympathised with humanitarian interventions in principle. 42. Leszek Kolakowski, quoted in Berdal, ‘Realism’, pp.149–150. 43. Cf. Social Science Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Peace Studies’.

Index Australia-UK-USA (AUKUS) agreement 136

Abraham, Itty 157 The Absolute Weapon (Brodie) 154 academic enquiry 36–7, 40 activist movements 160 acts of violence 28 ad hoc rhetoric 176 Adler, Emanuel 158 ‘adoptability problem’ 25 Afghan security 73, 201 Air Force intelligence 201 Alighieri, Dante 117 al-Qaeda 19, 174–5, 187, 189–90, 194 al-Shabaab 190, 194 ‘alternative narratives’ 175 American Civil War 7 analytical complexity 116–18 analytical diversity and purgatory 120–121 Anghie, Antony 88 Anglosphere 66, 73 ‘anthropocentric bias’ 87 anti-democratic measures 25 anti-migrant nationalism 118 anti-terrorism 119 Anti-Vax campaigners 178 APiMW see MA Air Power in the Modern World (APiMW) Arab Springs 176 ‘archaeology of knowledge’ 81 Arendt, Hannah (On Violence) 80 Aristotle (Rhetoric) 177 armed conflict 22, 36, 38–40, 42, 44, 46, 99, 102 arms control 153, 157–8 Article 1 of the Charter 100 Article 51 of the UN Charter 101 Articles 2 and 51 of the UN Charter 100 artificial intelligence 158, 179 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank 147 al-Assad, Bashar 176

Baker, James 101 Bakiner, Onur 28 Balmer, Brian 162 Barad, Karen 86 Barkawi, Tarak 62 Barrow, Tim 145 Bassel, Leah 85 Beck, Ulrich (World Risk Society) 82 Belfast Agreement 19, 23 Belt and Road Initiative 176 Bennett, Jane 86 Bentham, Jeremy 13 Benton, Lauren 60 Best, Geoffrey 212 Betz, David 11, 198–9 Bew, John 55, 137 Bhambra, Gurminder 84 Biden, Joe 20, 176 Big Data analytics 179 bin-Laden, Osama 68, 189–90 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) 158 bipolar international system 16 Biswas, Shampa 157 black box 158 Black Lives Matter 194 Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (Gray) 187 Blair, Tony 73, 117, 136, 138, 142, 145, 220 blended learning 206 Bonaparte, Napoleon 112 Bond, Brian 4–5, 14, 212 Border Force Act (2015) 146 ‘bottom-up’ methodologies 29 Bourdieu, Pierre 116 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 89 Braudel, Fernand 177 221

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The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II 57 Breivik, Anders 189 Brighton, Shane 62 British political culture 137 broadest contribution future research 29 Brodie, Bernard (The Absolute Weapon) 154 Brooks, Rosa 175 Brown, Gordon 142–3 BTWC see Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) Bull, Hedley 157 Burleigh, Michael 187 Bush, George Walker 73, 101 Cabinet committee system 145 Cameron, David 143–4, 146 Cameron, Neil 6–7 campus-based learning 204 Catholic nationalist communities 19 Chapter VII revolution 101–6 Charbonneau, Bruno 21 Charter of the Organisation of African Unity 1963 99 chemical and biological weapons 155, 157–8 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) 158 China 74, 119, 136, 146, 176, 178 chronofetishism 205 civil conflict 18, 22, 46 civil contingencies 142 Secretariat (CCS) 142 ‘civilising mission’ 78 civil–military relations 213 civil wars 15–16, 18, 20, 22–3, 39–43, 45–47, 49, 111–12, 175, 189 clandestine movements, collecting authoritative sources on 188 Clarke, Michael 8 ‘Clash of Civilisations’ 113 Clausewitzian dictum 80 climate change and security 47–9 climate–conflict linkage 48 climate crisis 82, 125 climate-related security risks 48 climate variability 48–9 Cockerell, Isobel 191

coercive-based interventions 44 Cold War 96, 100, 110–11, 115, 140–41, 155 British chemical weapons programs 163 collective defence arrangements 107 collective security 101–2, 107 commercial communications 178 Committee of Imperial Defence 139 community-level peacebuilding initiatives 21 community resilience 48 comparative politics 21 ‘The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism’ 184 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) 99 confessional identities 187 Conflict, Security and Development (CSD) 36 climate change and security 47–9 global health, pandemics and civil wars 46–7 lessons and limits of state and peacebuilding interventions 43–4 state ‘failure’ and modern conflict 40–43 transformative effects of war 45 war studies, and 37–40 conflict analysis 44, 49 conflict-induced state fragility 46 conflict regulation 20, 22, 26 conflict resolution 15, 26, 29 ‘bottom-up’ approaches to 26–9 developments, definitions and ontological problems 20–23 elite-led 23–6 literature 24 peace 16–20 politics of 30 theory 15 congressional committee 175 consent-based interventions 44 consociational democracies 19, 23–6 consociational theory 24–6 constitutive role of theory and language 126–7 constitutive violence 92 Constructivism 115, 216

Index

contemporary international relations 111, 135 contemporary national security 141, 145–46, 148 contemporary scholarship 81 contentious politics 187 The Continental Commitment (Howard) 55 contrapuntal reading 88 Corbett, Julian 54–55 counter-insurgency (COIN) 136 counter-terrorism (CT) 136 policies 89 strategy 81 credible commitment theory 21 Crenshaw, Martha 184–7 Crimea 174–75 crisis communications 179 crisis-management simulation 201 Critical Geography 30 Critical Security Studies 158 critical theories 133–35 Crypto AG revelations 73 CSCE see Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) CSD see Conflict, Security and Development (CSD) Cultural Theory 30 CWC see Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) cyber communications 111 daily crisis management 177 Dandeker, Christopher 8–9, 11 Danewid, Ida 83 Davies, Thom 85 Dayton Accords 23 Decade of Disinformation 178 decolonisation 88 de facto ‘war studies’ programme 4 Defence Studies Department (DSD) 10 Defense Science Board Task Force 174 Delbrück, Hans 209 deliberative and agonistic theories 24 deliberative transformative moments (DTMs) 26 Della Porta 187 Democracy in Plural Societies (Lijphart) 23

223

democratic consociational government 27 democratic governance 18 model 179 ‘democratic peace’ paradigm 89 ‘democratisation’ 90 Department for International Development (DFID) 138, 142 Department for Military Science (DMS) 2 Department of War Studies (DWS) 1–12, 67, 136, 141, 148, 198, 211 desecuritisation 83 deterrence 154–55 ‘development-as-usual’ policies 44 digital communications networks 179 digital technologies 164 diplomacy 111, 118 Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economics (DIME) 171 Diplomacy, Military, Economics (DME) 171 diplomatic and military activities 204 ‘discursive formations’ 81 distinctive political economies 43 diversity 40, 45, 120–121, 213 divided societies 15–16, 19–22, 24–25 divisive constitutional measures 25 DMS see Department for Military Science (DMS) Dockrill, Michael 5, 10, 12, 14, 212 Dockrill, Saki 8, 11–12 ‘Doctrine of the International Community’ 136 domestic jurisdiction 97, 100–101, 104 domestic politics 111, 156 domestic terrorism 138 Dryzek, John 24, 27 DSD see Defence Studies Department (DSD) DTMs see deliberative transformative moments (DTMs) ‘early warning systems’ 29 ‘eclectic’ approach 213 economic intelligence 74 economic liberalism 20 economic marginalisation 44, 49 economic privatisation 18 ‘Electronic Reading Room’ 68

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Emejulu, Akwugo 85 emergency-management processes 142 emerging technologies 140, 158, 164 Empires of the Weak 61 ‘End of History’ 113 ‘English School’ approaches 125 ‘epistemic communities’ 158 epistemic violence 81, 83, 88 epistemological scrutiny 81 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda 133 ethics of war 25, 212 ethnic conflicts 19 ethnic violence 17 ethno-national conflicts 23 ethno-national groups 15 ethno-nationalist ideologies 111 ethno-nationalist theories 112 Eurocentrism 61 European decolonisation 16 European imperialism 18 European military domination 62 ‘everyday peace’ 21 The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (Howard) 6, 215 ‘The Evolution of Strategy’ 215 extremism 183 online 193 violent 195 The Face of Battle (Keegan) 59 ‘faith-based approach’ 91 Falklands Conflict (1982) 215 Falls, Cyril 3 Fanon, Frantz 81, 85 The Wretched of the Earth 80 Farrell, Theo 11 Farwell, James 170 Felbab-Brown, Vanda 42 Ferris, John 55 fiscal-military state 59 Florentine populist movements 115 Floyd, George 194 Fontana History of European War and Society (Best) 212 Foucault, Michel 81 Franco-Prussian War 209 Free Ache Movement 49 Freedom of Information Act 68 freedom of speech 178

free market economy 134 Frost, David 11, 145 fuel crisis 143 Fukuyama, Francis 16, 39 Galtung, Johan 22, 81, 85 GCHQ 55, 73 geopolitics 174, 177, 179 Gherman, Natalia 9 Gibson, James 27 ‘Global Britain’ 147 global civil rights movement 194–95 global financial crisis (2008) 175 global free market 126, 130 global health 46–7 globalisation 59, 106, 138 global political economy 82 global politics 153 global rights practice 129–30, 133–5 Gooch, John 4, 12 good governance 20 Gopal, Priyamvada 88 Gor, Menisha 198–9 Gorbachev, Mikhail 8 Gow, James 8–10 Grant, Mark Lyall 137 grassroots intercommunal dialogue 27 Gray, Colin 146 Gray, John (Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia) 187 greenhouse gases 47 group reconciliation 28 group violence 25 Grove, Jairus 87 Guelke, Adrian 21 Gulf War (1991) 215 Gunning, Jeroen 187 Gurr, Ted 21 Gusterson, Hugh 161 Guterres, António 158 Hackett, John ‘Shan’ 6 Hacking, Ian (The Social Construction of What?) 162 Hall, Simon 199 Halperin, Morton 5 Hamber, Brandon 29 Hancock, Keith 3

Index

‘handmaid of militarism’ 210 ‘hard power’ 171 Hayner, Priscilla 28 Head, Naomi 30 Hecht, Gabrielle 157 Helman, Gerald 41 Helsinki Final Act 99 Herd, Graeme 9 Herman, Michael (Intelligence Power in Peace and War) 71 Heuser, Beatrice 8–9, 11 Heywood, Jeremy 144 High and Low Church approaches 160 higher education 214 Funding Council for England (HEFCE) 198 Hirsch, Marianne 29 history of war 3, 7, 16, 53–62, 212 Hoffman, Bruce 186–7 Inside Terrorism 186 Holbrooke, Richard 174 Holden Reid, Brian 7, 10–11, 198 Holoboff, Elaine 9 Horowitz, Donald 20, 25, 27 Howard, Michael 1–8, 12–13, 53–4, 59, 62, 65, 208, 210–215 The Continental Commitment 55 The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy 6 War and the Liberal Conscience 1, 212 War in European History 209 Human Development Report (1994) 38 Human Rights Council 105 Hussein, Saddam 20 hybrid warfare 173–4 Hymans, Jacques 156 identarian movements 194 identity-inflected conflicts 16, 18, 25 imagined community 179 ‘Imperial History’ 60 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) 87 inclusive political settlements 44 Independent Reviewer of Terrorism legislation 183–4 indigenous civil society infrastructure 26 informal international online networks 194 informal migrant settlements 84 ‘Information Wars’ 175

225

in-person learning 203 insecurity 41, 45, 140 Inside Terrorism (Hoffman) 186 ‘institutional ambiguity’ 84 ‘institutionalisation’ 19 institutional reform 143 insurgent movements 178 insurgent non-state actor 184 intellectual flexibility 214 intelligence agencies 71, 74 intelligence communities 70 intelligence, economic 74 international security, and 65–74 policy, and 73 security services, and 66 services 73 Intelligence and National Security 71 Intelligence in War Studies 71 Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Herman) 71 intercommunal antagonism 27 intercommunal reconciliation 20 intercommunal violence 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles 164 inter-departmental reform process 142 interdisciplinarity 120–121 inter-elite negotiations 21 inter-ethnic violence 20 Internal Relations theory 172 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) 104 international communism 16 international community 24, 41, 105 international conflict studies 78, 81, 87, 91–2 epistemological problem in 79–82 materialist perspectives of conflict and security 85–7 migration and borders 82–85 postcolonial perspectives 87–9 post-conflict peacebuilding and transitional justice 89–91 international criminal intervention 106 International Criminal Tribunal 17 international development agenda 88 ‘international health governance infrastructure’ 46 ‘International History’ 56

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International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) 211 international juridical-political order 78 international law 17, 28, 88, 97, 100– 101, 108, 129, 132, 174 international liaison 71 international order 58, 100, 106, 127 international organisations 99, 119, 124, 170, 200 international peace and security 96–7, 102, 104, 106 Chapter VII revolution 101–6 sovereignty 97–100 sovereignty, states and security in UN charter and beyond 100–101 international policy 41 international political history courses 205 international politics 81, 110, 120, 153, 171 conflict, and 118 nuclear technology on 153 nuclear weapons on 154 security, and 154 violence, and 110 International Relations (IR) 11, 30, 56, 124–35, 158 and Contemporary War (IRCW) 201, 206 and War (IR & War) 110–11, 118–20 analytical purgatory, analytical diversity and interdisciplinarity 120–121 embracing analytical complexity 116–18 medieval republican revolution and Taliban insurgency 112–16 international security 65–74, 84 international society 38 international state system 107 international terrorism 42, 72 inter-state war 96 interventionist impulse 38–9 Investigatory Powers Act 67, 183 Iraqi insurgency 113 Isakjee, Arshad 85 ‘The ISIS Files’ 190 Islamic activism 187 Islamist insurgency 20

Jackson, Richard 187–8 Jelf, Richard 2 Jervis, Robert 154 jihadi activism 187 jihadist component 194 jihadist movements 183 Johnson, Boris 137–8, 144–7 Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) 141 jus ad bellum 106 jus in bello 106 Karsh, Efraim 8 Keegan, John (The Face of Battle) 59 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald 155, 215 Kent, Sherman 65 Khalil, James 192 kinetic military operations 195 King’s Institute for Applied Security Studies 207 Kissinger, Henry 102 Knox Laughton, John 2 Krause, Keith 158 Kuhn, Thomas (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) 159 Kurth Cronin, Audrey 193 Lambert, Andrew 8, 54–55 Laqueur, Walter 185–87 law enforcement 119 Lawrence Livermore National Lab 161 Lederach, John Paul 21, 26–7 Lerche III, Charles 21 liberal declassification regime 68 liberal democracies 20, 147, 178 liberal democratic hegemony and transitions 16–17 liberal economic order 19 liberal internationalism 39 liberal interventionism 17–20 Liberalism 112, 216 liberal optimism 214 liberal peacebuilding 18–19, 24–25, 89–90 liberal social reforms 112 liberal theories 126, 133–4 Liddell Hart, Basil 6–7, 82

Index

The Pursuit of Victory From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein 212 Lieber, Kier 165 Lijphart, Arend 20, 25 Democracy in Plural Societies 23 long-term political stability 25 Lovegrove, Stephen 144–45 Lustick, Ian 21 MA Air Power in the Modern World (APiMW) 201, 203 MacGinty, Roger 21 Machiavelli, Niccolò 114 ‘Machiavellian’ instrumentalism 114 MacKenzie, Donald 161 Maddison, Sarah 27 MA International Peace and Security 10 Maiolo, Joseph 10, 59 Mair, David 190–191 The Makers of Modern Strategy (Earl) 3 Manchanda, Nivi 88 mandatory power-sharing arrangements 25 market-oriented economic policies 44 Marshall Plan 176 Martin, Laurence 5–6, 12, 212 Marxist international theory 126 Marxist theories 125, 133–4 material-discursive practices 86 materiality 86 mature students 199, 202 Maurice, Frederick 2 May, Theresa 139, 144–6 McDonald, Jack 11 McGarry, John 21, 25 McLeish, Caitríona 162 McNamara, Robert 36–7 Meade Earl, Edward (The Makers of Modern Strategy) 3 medieval republican revolution 112–16 The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Braudel) 57 Mendl, Wolf 4, 6–8, 12, 212 Merkel, Angela 73 methodological nationalism 82, 84 methodological pluralism 36, 40 methodological whiteness 84 ‘migration crisis’ 83

227

migration management 83 military history 4, 7, 54, 56, 58–9, 210, 214–16 military mobilisations 204 military-political intervention 103 Military Revolution thesis 58, 60, 62 missile guidance systems 159 ‘mission civilisatrice’ 18, 89 Mitrokhin, Vasili 69 Mitrokhin Archive 69 Mladenov, Nikolay 9 modern conflict 40–43 Montgomery Bus Boycott 194 moral relativism 217 ‘A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility’ 104 Morgan, Patrick 157 Morrison, John 191 Mueller, John 155 Mukhatzhanova, Gaukhar 156 Mutimer, David 157 mutual nuclear deterrence 155 Nagarajan, Chitra 49 Nassar, Jessy 84 national election campaigns 178 National Liberation Front 80 national military cultures 60 National Security, International Relations and Development (NSID) 143 National Security Act (1947) 65 National Security Adviser (NSA) 68, 73, 139–40, 144–45 national security approach 136–9, 148 and conservatives 143–45 contemporary national security in the UK 141 evolving role of state within 139–41 internationalisation of 145–46 New Labour governments 142–3 National Security Archive 203 National Security Capability Review 144 National Security Council reforms 138 national security policy-making and strategic planning 146 national security risk-management 140 National Security Strategy 138, 143–4 National Security Studies programme 137 ‘nation-building’ project 78

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nation-state project 179 NATO 104, 173 Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence 170 naval history 59 Navalny, Alexei 70 Navy Records Society 2 ‘negative peace’ 22 Negri, Antonio 82 Neocleous, Mark 88 Neville-Jones, Pauline 143 ‘New Interventionism’ 39 New Labour governments 142–3 ‘Newly Independent States’ 9 New Right accelerationists 120 ‘New World Order’ 101, 214 Nolese medieval trade 113 non-aggression 99 Non-Aligned Movement 17 non-conflictual forms of memory 30 non-interference 99 non-material factors 44 non-military students on programme 202 non-state actors 138, 194 non-state armed groups 47 non-state governance 45 non-state political violence 185 non-state violence 186 Nordlinger, Eric 20 NSID see National Security, International Relations and Development (NSID) nuclear age 211 nuclear arsenals 155 nuclear deterrence 124, 161 nuclear holocaust 208 nuclear missile guidance 161 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 158 ‘nuclear peace’ 155 nuclear policy 155, 157 nuclear programmes 156–7 nuclear proliferation 156 nuclear revolution 153–5 nuclear strategy 154 nuclear terror 154 nuclear vulnerability 155 nuclear war, threat of 100 nuclear warfighting 155 nuclear weapons 153–7, 161

acquisition 156 development 163 international politics, on 154 Nuremberg Trials 90 Obama, Barack 176, 179 O’Brien, Kevin 10 O’Leary, Brendan 21, 25 Omand, David 137 Securing the State 71 one-size-fits-all approach 146 online education 11, 198, 200, 203, 207 online extremist communities 192 online learning 204, 207 online teaching and education 203–4 online terrorist communications 193 online university education 198 On Violence (Arendt) 80 On War (von Clausewitz) 65 ‘Open Government initiative’ 66 Open Source Centre (OSC) 190 orientalist and racist assumptions 88 Parent, Geneviève 21 Paret, Peter 211 Paris, Roland 18 Parker, Geoffrey 62 Paskins, Barrie 5, 212 Patel, Preeti 12 Paul, Christopher 176 Peace of Westphalia 58 peace studies 15, 26, 29 peacetime intelligence structure 67 Pelopidas, Benoît 157 People’s Republic of Congo 124 persuasion versus coercion 172 Philpott, William 60 Pisacane, Carlo 186 POC see Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (POC) political communications 170–71, 174 political crisis and insecurity 45 political culture and values 155 political economy 44, 156 analysis 40–41, 43–4 global 82 political exclusion and economic marginalisation 44 political instability 21

Index

political-military elites 42 political realism 25 Political Science and International Relations 30 political status quo 178 Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature (Schmid) 185 political violence 19, 22, 30, 184–7 politico-military alliance 173 ‘politics of exception’ 92 ‘politics of exhaustion’ 85 Post-Cold War order 155 post-colonial state system 20 post-colonial theory 87 post-communist countries 9 post-conflict arrangements 44 dynamics 42 legacy issues 22 peacebuilding and transitional justice 89–91 societies 22, 91 stability 44 transition 22 Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) 201 ‘post-liberal’ forms of peacebuilding 19 post-referendum course 147 post-structuralist scholarship 86 post-structural thought 115 ‘post-traumatic growth’ 30 post-war developments in Liberia 43 ‘post-Westphalian’ 98 Potter, William 156 power-sharing arrangements 25 pre-history and emergence 2–4 Press, Daryl 165 programme approval process 199 proliferation 155–7 ‘propaganda of the deed’ theory 186 Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (POC) 105 Protestant unionist 19 psychological dimensions 156 ‘psychological effect’ 185 Public Diplomacy 171–2, 176 public technical controversies 160 The Pursuit of Victory From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (Hart) 212

229

‘Quaker genes’ 211 radicalisation 183, 187 Rainsborough, Michael 10–11 Ranstorp, Magnus 187, 191 Rapaport, David 186–7 Rathmell, Andrew 10 rational decision making 161 Ratner, Steven 41 Realism 112, 216 realist theories 134 reconciliation 20, 28 refugee crisis 15 regional instability 22 religious governance 112 resilient societies 141 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) 104–105, 138 Rhetoric (Aristotle) 177 Rhodesia 96 Richie, Nick 155 Ricketts, Peter 137, 145 rights-based equalities 114 Rittenhouse Green, Brendan 155 Rittenhouse, Karl 194 rival ethno-national groups 16 Robbins, Lionel 3 Roberts, Adam 210 Roberts, Michael 57–9, 62 robust healthcare systems 46 Rogers, Brooke 12 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 139 Rorty, Richard 80 Rosecrance, Richard 5 Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS) 10 Rublee, Maria Rost 156 ‘rules of the game’ 134–35 Russia 69, 175 Russian hybrid warfare 113 Russian intelligence services 69 Sabaratnam, Meera 88–9 Sabin, Philip 7, 10 Sagan, Scott 156 Said, Edward 88 Salafi-jihadist movements 194 sane state policy 211 Sawers, John 148

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Schelling, Thomas 157 Schmid, Alex 185 Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature 185 Schuurman, Bart 188 ‘Science, Technology and Society’ 160 science and international security 153, 165 approaches from STS 159–63 security studies and nuclear age 154–9 Science and Technology Studies (STS) 153 brief history of 159–60 perspective, security from 160–163 secrecy 65–67, 70, 153, 156, 162 Securing the State (Omand) 71 securitisation 81, 117 Security Sector Reform 43 Security Service Act (1989) 66 security studies and nuclear age arms control 157–8 nuclear revolution 154–5 proliferation 155–7 science and technology 158–9 Šedivý, Jiří 9 Sedwill, Mark 144–45 sexual violence 46, 114 Sheppard, Julia 6 Silke, Andrew 183–4, 187 Šimunovi, Pjer 9 Sisk, Timothy 18 ‘snoopers’ charter’ 183 Snowden, Edward 70 social acceptance 216 social and political embeddedness 153 social construction 161 The Social Construction of What? (Hacking) 162 social constructivism 158 Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 17 ‘social life of things’ 86 social media 190–93 social movements 175, 187 social movement theory 183, 187 Social Psychology 30 social sciences 208

social violence 21 societal healing 28 society of sovereign states (SOSS) 128–33 socio-economic dislocations 45 ‘soft power’ 171 Solingen, Etel 156 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 69 sovereignty 97–101 Soviet intelligence 69 Sparrow, John 3 Spivak, Gayatri 81, 84 spoiler theory 21 state and peacebuilding interventions 43–4 state failure 40–43 ‘state formation’ 40 state fragility 42 statehood 116–18 state resilience 42 state sovereignty, principles of 99 state terrorism 187 state-to-state conflicts 113 status quo ante 107 Stedman, Stephen 21 Steiner, Jürg 26 Stel, Nora 84 Stewart, Andrew 14 Stoler, Ann Laura 85 Strachan, Hew 215 Strasbourg/Kehl Summit 173 ‘strategic artisans’ 148 strategic communications ‘alternative narratives’ 175 Anti-Vax campaigners 178 Belt and Road Initiative 176 Big Data analytics 179 daily crisis management 177 surveying field 170–74 Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence 176 Strategic Defence and Security Reviews (SDSR) 144 Strategic Defence Review 137 Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy 65 Strategic Security Reviews 137 strategic studies 5, 11, 215, 217 Strategy: A History (Freedman) 215 structural violence 81, 85, 88

Index

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn) 159 STS see Science and Technology Studies (STS) student–student interaction 204 Suez operation (1956) 211 Summerton, Neil 4 Sunak, Rishi 145, 147 ‘surplus of ambiguity’ 163 ‘sustained economic growth’ 37 systematic whole-of-government approach 172 Taliban 15, 20, 114, 118–19 insurgency 78, 112–16 religious revivalism 113 Tazzioli, Martina 84 ‘tempocentrism’ 205 Terminology Working Group 170 territorial-political community 98 territorial sovereignty 106 terrorism 19, 183–5, 187, 191, 193, 195 domestic 138 international 42, 72 scholarship 191 state 187 terrorist activism 187 terrorist actors 186, 189, 194 terrorist communication 189, 193 terrorist movements 188 theory of international affairs 125 theory–praxis 111 Till, Geoff 10 Tito, Josip Broz 17 ‘Track 1’ diplomacy 24 traditional archive-based academic writing 68 traditional IR theories 112 ‘traditional Marxist’ approaches 19 traditional military history 53–4, 61 traditional UN peacekeeping 38 transactional foreign policy style 176 transformative effects of war 45 transitional justice 27 transnational criminal organisations 42–3 transnational organised crime 42 transnational threats 41 transnational violence 82 Trevor-Roper, Hugh 212 Trident nuclear missile systems 7

231

Truman, Harry 176 Trump, Donald 176 Truss, Liz 145 truth and reconciliation commissions (TRC) 27, 91 ‘Truth Commissions’ 90 The Turner Diaries 189 tutor-moderated online seminar discussion forums 201 Ukraine 20, 69, 106, 140, 174–75 unboxing science and technology 158–9 ‘unconventional’ conflicts 113 ‘ungoverned spaces’ 84 United Kingdom (UK) contemporary national security in 141 higher education 198 national security strategy 147 United Nation (UN) 19, 29, 89, 99–101, 104, 107, 174, 201 charter 100–101 Security Council 96–7, 101–4 Resolution 1674 105 traditional Cold War peacekeeping operations 18 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 38 ‘unmitigated catastrophe’ 56 ‘unofficial truth projects’ 29 USAF Strategic Command 200 ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’ 4 US foreign policy 136, 215 US national security 163 US National Security Act (1947) 139 US national security apparatus 136 US–Soviet Union arms control process 157 US–UK coalition intervention 174–5 uti posseditis juris 100 via del purgatorio 121 Vietnam War 67 violence 22, 78, 80–81, 85–86, 111, 114–115, 185, 187, 194, 216 acts of 28 constitutive 92 ‘direct’ and ‘structural’ 81

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epistemic 81, 83, 88 ethnic 17 intercommunal 16 inter-ethnic 20 international politics and 110 interpretation of 80 non-state 186 non-state political 185 political 19, 22, 30, 184–7 sexual 46, 114 social 21 structural 81, 85, 88 conditions of 85 transnational 82 violent conflict 24–25, 41 ‘violent inaction’ 84 Vogel, Kathleen 163 von Clausewitz, Carl 55, 210–11, 220 On War 65 Waldegrave, William 67 Walker, June 4 Walker, Rob 82 Wallensteen, Peter 22 Walter, Barbara 21 Waltz, Kenneth 156 War, History, and Diplomacy (WHD) 204–7 war and society 209 approach 4, 59, 210 mission 2 students 5 War and the Liberal Conscience (Howard) 1, 212 warfare and political violence 185 War in European History (Howard) 209

War in the Modern World (WiMW) 198–204, 206–7 War on Terror 19, 88, 112, 116, 138 ‘Wars of Ideas’ 175 War Studies Department 207 War Studies Online 11, 200 challenges of online teaching and education 203–4 origins of programme 198–200 programme 11 structure of programme 200–202 War, History, and Diplomacy (WHD) 204–7 War Studies programmes 54, 212 war-to-peace transitions 42 ‘weapons of war’ 46 weapons programmes 156 Weberian problematique 79 Webster, Charles 3–4 Welander, Marta 85 Western consumer societies 175 Western ‘counter-narratives’ 175 Western intelligence services 66 Western political elites 175 Westphalian agreement 98 Whitehall 142, 144 ‘whole of government’ approach 140 Wiktorowicz, Quintan 187 World Bank 36, 88 World Risk Society (Beck) 82 World Summit Outcome 105 The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon) 80 Wright, Frank 21 Y2K bug scare 142 Zartman, I. William 21