Paul McGarr

Paul is an expert on US and UK security and intelligence interventions within the Global South. His work focuses on intelligence liaison, non-Western intelligence cultures, disinformation, and covert action.

His research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; the British Academy; the Mellon Foundation; the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford; the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston; the American Historical Association; and the Centre for Policy Studies, New Delhi.

Paul joined King's from the University of Nottingham, where he worked on a major AHRC-funded project, Landscapes of Secrecy: The Central Intelligence Agency and the Contested Record of US Foreign Policy, 1947-2001, which explored the role played by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in shaping official narratives of American foreign policy.

He is an alumnus of the AHRC's 'Engaging with Government' programme, run in partnership with the Institute for Government, and completed a British Science Association Media Fellowship to engage the wider public in policy-related research.

Paul is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.

Research Interests

• Intelligence Studies
• South Asian intelligence & security
• Intelligence agencies outside the Anglosphere
• Anglo-American intelligence liaison
• Disinformation
• Covert Action
• Cold War History

Paul leads research in the field of British and American intelligence interventions in South Asia and the wider Global South.

His current research focuses on the evolution of non-Western intelligence cultures and networks of transnational intelligence liaison and joint operations inside the Global South.

Teaching 

Paul teaches on concepts, issues and debates surrounding the utility of intelligence in war, and the role of diplomacy in international crises, at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

• Intelligence in War Studies (BA2)
• Diplomacy and Crises (BA3)
• Intelligence in Peace and War (MA)

Publications

• 2024. Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States and India's Secret Cold War Cambridge University Press. (In Press.)
• 2023. Brother’s Keeper: India’s “Secret Wars” and the Lure of Localism. In: RORY CORMAC, GENEVIEVE LESTER, MAGDA LONG, MARK STOUT and DAMIEN VAN PUYVELDE, eds., National Approaches to Covert Action Georgetown University Press. 1-18 (In Press.)
• 2022. The neo-imperialism of decolonisation: John le Carré and Cold War India Intelligence & National Security. 1-14
• 2021. Fake News, Forgery, and Falsification: Western Responses to Soviet Disinformation in Cold War India The International History Review. 43(1), 34-53
• 2021. The long shadow of colonial cartography: Britain and the Sino-Indian war of 1962. In: RUDRA CHAUDHURI, ed., War and Peace in Contemporary India Routledge. 626-653
• 2020. From Russia With Love: Dissidents, Defectors and the Politics of Asylum in Cold War India Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 48(4), 736-779
• 2020. "Berlin of the East": India and the Politics of Cold War Asylum. In: Neutral Countries as Clandestine Battlegrounds, 1939-1968: Between Two Fires Lexington Books. 225-252
• 2019. The Long Shadow of Colonial Cartography: Britain, the United States and the Sino-Indian War of 1962 Journal of Strategic Studies. 42(5), 626-253
• 2019. The Information Research Department, British Covert Propaganda, and the Sino-Indian War of 1962: Combating Communism and Courting Failure? The International History Review. 41(1), 130-156
• 2019. India at 70: Multidisciplinary Approaches Routledge.
• 2019. Framing India at 70. In: MAXEY, R. and MCGARR, P.M., eds., India at 70: Multidisciplinary Perspectives Routledge. 1-11
• India's Cold War Spy Chiefs. In: CHRISTOPHER MORAN, PAUL MADDRELL and MARK STOUT, eds., Spy Chiefs: Intelligence Leaders in Europe, the Middle East and Asia 2. Georgetown University Press. 183-203
• 2016. The United States, Britain and the Sino-Indian Border War. In: LORENZ M. LÜTHI and AMIT DAS GUPTA, eds., The Sino-Indian War of 1962: New Perspectives Routledge. 105-123
• 2016. Unquiet Americans: The Church Committee, the CIA and the Intelligence Dimension of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the 1970s. In: HALLVARD NOTAKER, GILES SCOTT-SMITH and DAVID J. SNYDER, eds., Reasserting America in the 1970s: U.S. Public Diplomacy and the Rebuilding of America's Image Abroad Manchester University Press. 195-211
• 2016. 'A rather tedious and unfortunate affair': The 'Rahi' Saga and the Troubled Origins of Indo-Soviet Cinematic Exchange Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 36(1), 5-20
• 2015. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Subversive: India, Pakistan and the Cultural Politics of Cold War Intelligence. In: ELIZABETH LEAKE and LESLIE JAMES, eds., Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence Bloomsbury Press. 285-302
• 2015. ‘The Viceroys are disappearing from the roundabouts in Delhi’: British Symbols of Power in Post-Colonial India Modern Asian Studies. 49(3), 787 - 831
• 2015. 'Do We Still Need the CIA?': Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Central Intelligence Agency and US Foreign Policy History: The Journal of the Historical Association. 100(340), 275-292
• 2014. ‘Quiet Americans in India’: The CIA and the Politics of Intelligence in Cold War South Asia Diplomatic History. 38(5), 1046-1082
• 2013. ‘Real Substance, Not Just Symbolism?’: The CIA and the Representation of Covert Operations In the Foreign Relations of the United States Series’. In: CHRISTOPER R. MORAN; CHRISTOPHER J. MURPHY, ed., Intelligence Studies in Britain and the US: Historiography since 1945 Edinburgh University Press. 65-89
• 2013. The Office of Strategic Services. In: TIMOTHY J. LYNCH, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History First. Oxford University Press USA.
• 2013. The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965 Cambridge University Press.
• 2012. An Economist with Guns: John Kenneth Galbraith and the Sino-Indian War of 1962. In: J. SIMON ROLFE; ANDREW STEWART, ed., Diplomats at War: The American Experience First. 9789089791108. Republic of Letters Publishing. 185-203
• 2011. After Nehru, what? Britain, the United States and the other transfer of power in India, 1960-1964 The International History Review. 33(1), 115-142
• 2011. “India’s Rasputin”?: V. K. Krishna Menon and Anglo-American misperceptions of Indian foreign policymaking, 1947-1964 Diplomacy & Statecraft. 22(2), 239-260
• 2010. 'A serious menace to security': British intelligence, V. K. Krishna Menon, and the Indian High Commission in London, 1947-1952 The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 38(3), 441-469
• 2009. ‘Uneasy Partners: Kennedy, Macmillan, and the Utility of Anglo-American Intervention in South Asia during the Early 1960s’. In: HARR ROBERTA HARR;WYNN NEIL, ed., Transatlantic Relations: Conflict and Consensus: Culture, History and Politics Cambridge Academic. 123:144