Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Professor of War in the Modern World
Professor in History and Foreign Policy
Lecturer in National Security Studies
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Visiting Senior Research Fellow
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Ax:Son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy Doctoral Fellow
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Lecturer in War Studies Education
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Ax:Son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy Doctoral Fellow
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Affiliate of the Centre for Grand Strategy
Visiting Senior Research Fellow
Senior Lecturer in International Peace & Security
Senior Lecturer in International History
Laughton Professor of Naval History
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Reader in the History of War
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Lecturer in War Studies Education
Professor of War & Strategy in East Asia
Professor of Strategic Theory
Lecturer in International History
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Senior Lecturer in History and Grand Strategy
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Senior Lecturer in War Studies
Visiting Research Fellow - Centre for Grand Strategy
Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow
Engelsberg Applied History Programme
The Engelsberg Programme for Applied History, Grand Strategy and Geopolitics was launched in October 2018. It represents a unique partnership between the Centre for Grand Strategy at the War Studies Department at King’s College London and the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University. The programme is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. Professor John Bew, Professor Brendan Simms and Dr Mattias Hessérus sit on the board of the programme.
The academic year 2018-9 was used to launch a bespoke version of the Applied History project in the UK: the Engelsberg Programme for Applied History, Grand Strategy and Geopolitics (in the abbreviated form of the Engelsberg Applied History Programme, or EAHP). It seen the Centre for Grand Strategy and the Cambridge Forum for Geopolitics collaborate on a shared programme of seminars, public lectures and conferences, the creation of a new research agenda and the building of connections with the policy-making world. Long-term, those involved in the EAHP hope to make a major contribution to the creation of a virtual Faculty of Applied History, collaborating with like-minded institutions in the United States and elsewhere.
Engelsberg Applied History Website
Climate Change and International Order
The assumptions and certainties that once underlay the post-1945 international order are crumbling. Yet discussions about the consequences for present and future order often fixate upon the realm of great power politics and the political, economic and security consequences of the decline of the west, the resurgence of Russia and the rise of China. The ‘world order’ debate has yet to confront in any meaningful way the most significant threat facing humanity in the twenty-first century: the climate crisis, which is already creating increasingly destructive weather patterns, drastically changing geographies, and threatening the secure and sustainable supply of key resources. Throughout history, international orders have been resilient and adaptable global systems created by converging economic, technological, and ideological forces, but in recorded history, humanity has never faced anything like the effects we anticipate from 2-5 degrees of likely warming.
Through the ‘Climate Change and International Order’ project, the Centre for Grand Strategy is leading an interconnected, interdisciplinary research agenda that interrogates the immense changes underway in the ordering rules, systems and principles which organise our warming planet. This research seeks to address a major gap in the current research landscape, bringing debates and conceptions about world order—past, present and future—into dialogue with cutting-edge interdisciplinary research on climate change, mitigation and adaptation in a rapidly changing world.
World Order Study Group
The World Order Study Group looks at questions of international order, past and present. It takes inspiration from previous study groups on world order such as that formed at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1940 or the 1965 conference on the Conditions of World Order that took place in Bellagio, Italy, at the height of the Cold War. These looked at fundamental first order questions such as the structural, ethical and ideological foundations of the current world order, while exploring how they might change in the future. They also brought in leading intellectuals of the day to turn their minds to questions that were of profound importance to foreign policy. The Engelsberg World Order Study Group aims to broaden the discussion to bring a far wider variety of perspectives than previous world order study groups, in order to reflect the changing balance of power in world affairs. It is composed of a reading group, regular seminar and a public lecture series and is working towards a major conference in 2021. Scholars are asked to test new ideas and have them challenged by their peers.
'The Origins and Future of World Order' (supported by the Leverhulme Trust)
This major research project explores the origins of the notion of 'World Order' and charts its development over the last two hundred years.
As A.J.P. Taylor wrote in The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, national foreign policies are often 'based upon a series of assumptions, with which statesmen have lived since their earliest years and which they regard as so axiomatic as hardly to be worth stating.’ The role of the scholar is to 'clarify these assumptions and to trace their influence upon the course of every-day policy.' The notion of World Order has been central to Western (and, in particular, Anglo-American conceptions) of international affairs for much of the last two centuries. Underlying this is the assumption that this is something that serves the general good. Yet interpretations of World Order are also bound up with the ideological, cultural and strategic presuppositions of nineteenth-century Britain, and twentieth- century America – as the two dominant powers of the modern era.
The comparatively smooth transferal of power between Britain and the United States in the early 20th century has seen the preservation of ideas and assumptions which might otherwise have been subject to more scrutiny and challenge. Alternative visions of the global international system have emerged in this time, though it is worth noting that these (in the form of Nazism and Communism, for example) have often been set explicitly against the Anglo-American model.
Through this historical lens, the project asks what, if anything, is left of Anglo-American conceptions of World Order that is pertinent to the changing international environment of the twenty-first century. Mark Mazower’s Governing the World: The History of an Idea (2012) raised important questions about the limits of western internationalism. This project also examines countervailing ‘map images’ of world politics which exist in other nations, including the rising powers of India, China and Brazil, and the changing role of America in the world.
It also asks whether it is possible to have a global grand strategy at all in an era in which secularisation and changes in political identity have diluted a shared sense of national purpose.
Forum on Future British Strategy
In 2020, the Centre for Grand Strategy hosted two meetings of its Forum on Future British Strategy. The aim of this initiative is to bring together a small grouping of senior British policymakers and academics to discuss pressing questions related to the development and delivery of the UK’s Integrated Review. In September, the group explored the notion of a strategic reset, beginning with two historical case studies presented by Professor Anne Deighton (Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford) and Gill Bennett (former Chief Historian at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office). In December, the Forum hosted its second meeting, which focused on the implementation of strategy across government and society. Dr Kori Schake (American Enterprise Institute) and Georgina Wright (Institute for Government) kickstarted the event with two presentations, followed by a wider discussion which was chaired by Sir Lawrence Freedman of King’s College London. More meetings are scheduled for 2021.
Britain in the World
In 2016, John Bew was approached by the think tank Policy Exchange to lead a commission on “Britain in the world”. This was launched in March 2016 by the Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, who praised John’s academic leadership in organising the project. The idea behind it is to bring more scholarly expertise into the heart of Westminster, to improve the standard of discussion about British defence and foreign policy against the backdrop of a changing international environment, and the stress the need for more “grand strategic” thinking at the highest levels of government.
On 26 January 2017, the project released its second major report entitled "The Cost of Doing Nothing." Based on work begun by Jo Cox MP (1974-2016), the report was co-authored by Tom Tugendhat MP, Alison McGovern MP and John Bew and was endorsed by the Prime Minister. It examines the history of British intervention dating back to the Greek War of Independence (1820 - 1830) and argues that since then, intervention has been a key aspect of British foreign and national security policy. It says that while the recent lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan must be learned, the UK must "steer a middle path between the excesses of military interventionism of the 9/11 era, and an unthinking anti-interventionist reflex."
The full report can be accessed here.
In July 2016, the project released its first report entitled "Making Sense of British Foreign Policy After Brexit." Co-authors John Bew and Gabriel Elefteriu of Policy Exchange argued that a post-Brexit United Kingdom must ignore the narrative of decline in Britain’s influence on the world stage that has been building up in recent years. The government must work to reverse the idea that Brexit equals isolationism and swiftly and decisively reset the UK’s relations with key allies, especially the United States, Germany and a number of other EU member states, particularly those in the East.
The full report can be accessed here.
The British Empire and the Geopolitics of Human Rights in the Nineteenth Century
This project explores a crucial new perspective on the history of British humanitarianism and intervention, exploring how nineteenth-century consuls and commissioners promoted free-labour ideologies within the territories of rival powers and the informal empire, how they influenced rights discourses, contributed to a British humanitarian-imperial self-image, and impacted great-power relations. This work seeks to contextualise the 1904 British report into abuses in the Congo Free State within a wider pattern of engagement from the 1830s, and explores how middle-ranking actors began exerting ideological influence and shaping the geopolitics of anti-slavery decades before the Berlin and Brussels conferences of the 1880s.
Ceasefires
Project lead: Rudra Chaudhuri
British Academy UK International Challenges: ‘Ceasefire violations and the Line of Control’
This project set-out to create the first publicly available dataset on and around ceasefire incidents and ‘violations’ across the Line of Control and across Indian and Pakistani administered Kashmir.
Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy Fund: ‘Approaching Ceasefires’
This project surveys material (both in scholarship and in government in India, Pakistan, the US and the UK) to create a methodologically tested approach to studying and mapping ceasefire incidents and even ‘violations’ across the Line of Control across Indian and Pakistani administered Kashmir.
Diplomatic Stakeholder Project
Project lead: Rudra Chaudhuri
This project is funded by the FCO, the War Studies department hosted seven stakeholder meetings with representatives from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the UK and the US between 2008 and 2014. The main aim was to debate and discuss matters of regional concern and specifically, the merits and pitfalls of talks with the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan.
Selected recent publications:
Ryan, M. (et al). '"I demand justice. I hold them all responsible": Advancing the Enforcement of Anti-slavery Legislation in Mauritiana', Journal of Modern Slavery, 5:1, pp. 1-22 (published November 2020).
Briffa, H. 'Small States and the Challenges of the International Order', In Center, S. and Bates, E. (eds). After Disruption: Historical Perspectives on the Future of International Order, pp. 50-59 (Washington, Center for Strategic & International Studies, September 2020).
Laderman, C. 'Humanitarian Intervention or Humanitarian Imperialism? America and the Armenian Genocide', War on the Rocks (published online, August 2020).
Oren, E. & Brummer, M. 'Re-examining Threat Perception in Early Cold-War Japan', Journal of Cold War Studies (MIT Press, August 2020).
Narayanan-Kutty, S. 'Connectivity and Chabahar: The Eurasian Future of India’s Iran Policy' Insights (Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore, July 2020).
Briffa, H. '1919: Repression, Riots and Revolution', Imperial & Global Forum (published online, June 2020).
Oren, E. & Brummer, M. 'Threat perception, government centralization, and political instrumentality in Abe Shinzo’s Japan' Australian Jounral of International Affairs, 74:6 pp. 721-745 (published online, June 2020).
Ehrhardt, A. and Ryan, M. 'Grand Strategy Is No Silver Bullet, But It Is Indispensable’, War on the Rocks (published online, May 2020).
Ehrhardt, A. 'Disease and Diplomacy in the 19th Century', War on the Rocks (published online, April 2020).
Gasbarri, F. 'US Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War in Africa: A Bridge between Global Conflict and the New World Order, 1988-1994' (Routledge, 2020) (ISBN: 9780367862909).
Laderman, C. 'Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order' (Oxford University Press, 2020) (ISBN: 9780190618605).
Ryan, M. 'British antislavery diplomacy and liberated-African rights as an international issue' in Anderson, R. & Lovejoy, H. B. (eds.). 'Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896' (University of Rochester Press, January 2020) (ISBN: 9781580469692).
Dessein, A. 'Identifying Windows of Opportunity within China's Rise: Problematizing China's Hundred-Year Strategy toward Great Power Status', Military Review (published online, October 2019).
Narayanan-Kutty, S. 'Dealing with Differences: The Iran Factor in India-US Relations' Asia Policy, 14:1 (published online, January 2019).
Gasbarri, F. 'Revisiting the Linkage: PDD 25, Genocide in Rwanda and the US Peacekeeping Experience of the 1990s', The International History Review, 40:4, pp. 792-813 (published 2018).
Summer school: 'Maymester' Programme
In coordination with the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, the Centre for Grand Strategy hosts an annual international summer school for undergraduate students from the University of Texas. The subject of the course is “Grand Strategy and the Anglo-American Strategic Tradition”.
Students spend over four weeks in London studying Anglo-American strategic tradition and visiting important landmarks both in British cultural history and in the Anglo-American special relationship. Over the course of 14 three-hour classes, students attend lectures by academic experts and former senior policymakers including Sir Lawrence Freedman, Sir David Omand, Andrew Roberts and Lord David Trimble, among others.
Historical Case Studies for the Cabinet Office
In Autumn 2020, the Engelsberg Applied History Programme (EAHP), in conjunction with the Integrated Review team, commissioned two series of historical case studies from a mix of scholars and practitioners. The first eleven studies addressed the theme of ‘strategic resets’ and ranged from a paper by Professor Rana Mitter (Director of the China Centre at the University of Oxford) on Chinese strategic realignments in 1945 and 1972, to Dr Hillary Briffa (a recent doctoral graduate of the Centre for Grand Strategy) on the Maltese government’s more recent attempt to refashion the country as a bitcoin currency hub. The second round of case studies examined the implementation of strategy across government, and ranged from an examination by Dr Kori Schake of the US President Dwight D Eisenhower’s delivery of a national strategy in the 1950s to an assessment by Dr Jamie Gaskarth of Robin Cook’s introduction of an ‘ethical dimension’ to British foreign policy in May 1997. Going forward, the EAHP hopes to commission additional historical case studies which might be of value to British policymakers seeking to develop a new national strategy.
Historical Case Studies for the Integrated Review Part I
Historical Case Studies for the Integrated Review Part II
Institute for Historical Research Partnership Seminars
The Engelsberg Applied History Prorgamme — together with its partners at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Historians; and the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge—was recently awarded a small grant by the Institute for Historical Research to carry out a seminar series over the spring and summer terms 2021. This series of seminars is titled ‘Applied History and Contemporary Geopolitics’, and it will aim to bring together a diverse range of historians interested in applying their research to major questions of international politics. A call for applications to present at this seminar series will be released in early January 2021.
Strategy Masterclass
Throughout the spring term, the Centre for Grand Strategy will convene five lectures as a part of the Department of War Studies ‘Masterclass in Strategy.’ Speakers include Sir David Omand, former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator; Lord Peter Ricketts, former UK National Security Advisor; and Jane Davidson, Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and former Welsh Minister for Education and Minister for Environment, Sustainability.
Interrogating Visions of a Post-Western World: Interdisciplinary and Interregional Perspectives
Following an award from the Leverhulme Trust in 2017, the Centre for Grand Strategy launched a major new interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme which enabled us to welcome fifteen new scholars into the centre under the research title ‘Interrogating Visions of a Post-Western World: Interdisciplinary and Interregional Perspectives’.
The declining influence of ‘the West’ in comparison to the rising power of Asia is expected to have a profound impact on almost every aspect of global politics in the twenty-first century. Yet existing attempts to understand the likely consequences of this epochal shift have suffered from politicisation, parochialism, societal angst and simplistic dichotomies about the differences between East and West. The Centre for Grand Strategy has created the first ever interdisciplinary and interregional doctoral programme to interrogate contending visions of a ‘post-Western world’ in the past, present and future. Fellows are encouraged to combine historical perspectives with strategic foresight, utilise methods from the political and social sciences, security studies, international political economy and international relations theory, and pursue area-studies expertise while retaining a global perspective. Please see a list of associated projects below:
The role of perceptions in the uncoordinated response of EU member states to Chinese foreign direct investments as potential security threat
Project lead: Francesca Ghiretti.
This PhD thesis examines the role played by perceptions in informing the response member states of the European Union have given to foreign direct investments (FDI) coming from China. First, the research examines whether EU member states perceive Chinese FDI as aimed at obtaining strategic know-how which could be subsequently transferred from the EU to China. Secondly, the project seeks to understand whether this perception is linked to a deeper preoccupation that a widespread technological transfer might facilitate a power shift from the West to the East. Finally, it attempts to map how this perception has informed the responses of member states from 2009 to 2019.
Francesca Ghiretti Person Profile
China’s rise and the development of an alternative modernity
Project lead: Axel Dessein.
The character of rising powers is often displayed as moving ever-upward, with little understanding of the manner in which such a rise happens, the policies pursued under this rise and the eventual end-goal of that phenomenon. This conceptual study is an inquiry into the nature of China’s rise and the goal of becoming a great power under socialist modernisation that lies at its heart. This paper argues that instead of its traditional past, it is the enduring importance of the country’s fairly recent socialist ideology which provides the primary lens through which one ought to view China’s contemporary rise.
The U.S. and China in George H. W. Bush's New World Order
Project lead: Martina Bernardini
This research aims at assessing how the Bush administration perceived the role of China in world
affairs at the end of the Cold War. At that time, the bilateral confrontation with the Soviet Union
was coming to an end, and the United States had to redefine its foreign policy by considering the
rise of other actors in international affairs. U.S. President George H. W. Bush viewed China as an
important partner for post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy, and he had a strong interest in promoting
U.S.-China relations. Through the analysis of the intersection between U.S. security, economic, and
foreign policy concerns face to the decline of the Soviet Union, this PhD thesis will investigate: firstly,
the precise way in which China was seen as a partner in the American grand strategy to build a new
world order; and, secondly, the extent to which this perception reshaped the international system
until present days.
The Indo-Pacific in Anglo-Japanese Relations since World War Two: Imperial Twilight, or Partnership Renewal?
Project lead: William Reynolds
Post-2016; media, politicians and think tanks have increasingly referenced Japan, and the wider Indo-Pacific, as a future goal of British Grand Strategy in a post-Brexit world. Consequently, from 2017 to 2019, a flurry of diplomatic and defence engagements between the two states occurred, culminating in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to London in January 2019. This visit was capped by a statement from 10 Downing Street titled "UK and Japan forge a new alliance to shape 21st century." With this in mind one queries, is this a continuation of trends witnessed prior or a sudden resurgence in a post-Brexit and Trumpian world? Thus, this thesis will assess the Anglo-Japanese relationship through a grand strategic lens. It shall analyse where, and how, the relationship functioned between the two states following the Second World War and, more importantly, how Japan effected, if at all, Britain's grand strategising through the Cold War to the present day. Be it through influence or official relationships.
Winter Time of Western Foreign Policy: Accounting for Divergence in British and American China Policy
Project Lead: Oliver Yule-Smith
Much has been made of the rise of China, and states’ responses to the changing international dynamic. Shifting financial flows, territorial disputes, military modernisation, the return to Great Power competition that characterised the 19th Century, and whether China’s rise threatens the so-called Liberal World Order have been popular topics. Less studied, however, is a longer-term exploration of Western states’ China policies. This thesis seeks to interrogate how China’s ascent has been received by the United States and Britain, over the long dureé. From the Boxer rebellion to the Financial Crisis of 2008, this thesis will isolate key inflection points and attempt to sketch the policies, forces, and individuals who have most deeply affected the approaches of these two states towards China. By contextualising how actors have managed China’s modern evolution, it aims to highlight three themes. Firstly, it will flesh out the interconnection between events, rather than viewing them solely in isolation. Secondly, it will draw some tentative conclusions about the constraints and opportunities influencing the policies of Western states towards China. Thirdly, and most importantly, it will elaborate how China policies have elicited such significant divergence between two states with traditionally complimentary foreign policies.
Order, Strategy and the British Left, 1918-1945
Project lead: Nicholas Kaderbhai. This PhD thesis seeks to examine the intellectual history of how the British left conceived of international order from the end of World War I up to the end of World War II, in the context of the emergence of the postwar, so-called ‘liberal international order’. The study focuses on five individuals – William Beveridge, Ernest Bevin, G.D.H. Cole, Hugh Dalton, and Harold Laski – all of whom represent different ideological positions within the milieu that surrounded Clement Attlee during his tenure as Labour leader and Prime Minister. It will seek to show how the intellectual development of these figures affected what would become the orthodox (and otherwise) thinking within the Labour party, and the left more broadly, on issues such as anti-appeasement, federal union, and liberal internationalism more broadly.
How does images of the future impact national strategy? - Assessing the role of foresight and expectations of the future in shaping Swedish and Finnish post-Cold War strategies
Project lead: Malin Severin
Digital activism in India: transnational politics, the feminist movement, and technology
Project lead: Claire Reynolds.
States of Disorder: Complexity Theory and UN State-building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan
Project lead: Adam Day
The rise of British international order in the declining Spanish world, 1815-1865
Project lead: Alfonso Goizueta Alfaro. Alfonso’s thesis aims to investigate the strategies and policies through which 19th century Britain forged an international order that was the embryo of the Anglo-Saxon order of the twentieth century. The project will study Britain’s absorption of a declining global structure – the Spanish World – in order to enhance its own version of international order in the post-1815 world. Britain’s relationship toward the Spanish world between 1815 and 1865 has been analysed by historiography through three separate lenses: diplomacy, informal economic imperialism, and political inter-meddling. However, this project seeks to offer a combined version that will reveal that they were part of one grand strategy of international domination.
A comparative analysis of Chinese OFDI to the developing world
Project lead: Linda Calabrese. Since the turn of the century, Chinese companies are increasingly investing in developing countries, both in China’s neighbourhood and farther away. The inflow of Chinese investment in the developing world has prompted questions about the impact of this investment on the host countries’ economic development, both in its own right and in comparison with other foreign investment. The question of whether the impact of Chinese investment differs from that of investment from other countries, and if so in what ways, is important but understudied. This research project aims to fill this gap in the literature and to answer this question using the ‘varieties of capitalism’ framework developed by Hall and Soskice (2011).
Recovery from Recessions, and the role of Developing Countries in the Quest for Global Supremacy
Project lead: Shakeba Foster. The PhD project will tackle the question of the potential economic growth and power trajectories of the major players in the West and the East, and importantly, how these trajectories depend on the economic outcomes of the developing countries ‘in the middle’, specifically their ability to strongly recover from recessions.
Rising India and the Global Order: Explaining the Post-Cold War Shift in Worldview
Project lead: Sumitha Narayanan Kutty. This research aims to examine why, given its ambition to be a “leading power,” has India shown reduced proclivity toward intervention after the Cold War despite significant growth in material capabilities? The shift from India’s first worldview, i.e. weak state with greater projection of force during the Cold War, to the second worldview – a rising power that is less coercive – contests the popular reading of rising power behaviour. This study proposes to explain the shift by examining select cases during and after the Cold War and takes into account both material and ideational factors that shaped India’s strategic behaviour.
A Conceptual Inquiry into the Idea of the Future in International Relations
Project lead: Christian Marks. This research attends to ‘the future’ as a neglected concept in the nevertheless future-oriented discipline of IR. It is concerned with exploring and describing the idea(s) of ‘the future’ in IR and international politics under the premise of an interpretive, contextual methodology and asks for what this idea means in relation to its historical, socio-political, theoretical, and material context. The answer to this question then combines an intellectual history with international political theory while also drawing on wider sociological, anthropological, and philosophical thought.
The Policy Planning Staff and the Making of American Grand Strategy, 1947-1992
Project lead: Angus Reilly. thesis will be a study of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. State Department and how it shaped American grand strategy through the Cold War. The project will be an interlinked history of six Directors of Policy Planning - George F. Kennan, Paul Nitze, Robert Bowie, Walt Rostow, Winston Lord, and Dennis Ross – and their contributions to American foreign policy from 1947 to 1992.