Centre for Grand Strategy

In recent times, much has been written about “the return of history”, “end of dreams” and “revenge of geography” in international affairs. The aim of Grand Strategy is to secure the long-term security, peace and prosperity of a nation in the face of such uncertainties. Grand Strategy might also be called “big picture” or “long-term” thinking, but it is unique for its emphasis on the importance of bringing history into those calculations.

The Centre for Grand Strategy at King's College London seeks to bring a greater degree of historical and strategic expertise to statecraft, diplomacy and foreign policy. Through a series of research projects, external engagement activities and a number of undergraduate and executive education teaching programmes, the Centre focuses on “knowledge transfer”: bringing top-class academic expertise to bear on the policy-making process and the public debate about foreign policy.

The Centre has four core aims:

To create a world-class Centre of Excellence for the study and practice of Grand Strategy
To build a Transatlantic Research Agenda on matters relating to national security
To restore a greater understanding of History, Strategy and Statecraft in an increasingly competitive and unpredictable international environment
To undertake a long-term Educational Mission to better equip the next generation of leaders in the fields of security, diplomacy, and business

Listen to Prof. John Bew outline the programme for Grand Strategy at King's

What is Grand Strategy?

The core emphasis of Grand Strategy is to secure the long-term security, peace and prosperity of a nation. It is used as short-hand to denote the need for coherent thinking for long-term objectives. Increasingly, it has been used to describe multi-layered strategies at the levels of business or government, and has a broader application than simply to a nation’s foreign policy. Grand Strategy might also be called ‘big picture’ or ‘long-term’ thinking, but it is unique for its emphasis on the importance of history in informing such thinking.

According to the British military historian, Basil Liddell Hart - whose archives is housed at King's College London - ‘The role of grand strategy – higher strategy – is to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object … the goal defined by fundamental policy.’ It is no coincidence that the notion of Grand Strategy crystallised at the time of the Second World War. However, as Liddell Hart made clear at the time, its significance is much broader than that, and includes the ‘civilian’ ‘economic’ and ‘moral’ resources of the nation.

The study of Grand Strategy has undergone a resurgence in recent times. Yet the Department of War Studies at King’s has been a hub of Grand Strategic thinking for many years. The work of this Centre goes right to the heart of the original ethos of the department, and aims to bring the study of Grand Strategy back to its spiritual home.

Climate Change and International Order Essay Prize 2022

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Climate Change and International Order Essay Prize 2022. A huge congratulations to the overall winner Professor Hugh S. Gorman, and the winner of our runner-up prize, Ms Sigrið Mohr Leivsdóttir.

Publications

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).

Awards

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.
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 Crawford
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 This 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.

Activities

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.

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.

Indo-Pacific Programme

Why an Indo-Pacific Programme at King’s?

The Indo-Pacific Programme responds to the growing international need for authoritative research, culturally informed strategic fluency, and evidence-based policy input to understand and interact with this region of the world. This IPP brings together the experience of the King’s Japan Programme (KJP) and the expertise at the Centre for Grand Strategy (CGS) and King’s College London’s (KCL) to develop the first UK university-based programme to foster cultural competency about this rich and diverse region and strategic fluency to address the relevance and impact of its security issues.

The IPP takes an inclusive approach to the conceptualisation of the Indo-Pacific region that seeks to define its ordering principles but not how far, or how close, they apply. The IPP considers maritime connectivity – both physical and digital – the region’s most fundamental ordering principle, one that weaves together an economically dynamic and politically diverse space. In this respect, the IPP takes the ocean as the main geopolitical lenses through which to understand key challenges and sources of instability.

These encompass the IPP’s three main areas of focus: maritime security, technology and defence, and climate change. Specifically, the IPP sets out to interrogate state on state tensions based on unresolved sovereign disputes and boundary delimitations, as well as structural competition unfolding from changes in regional maritime military balance, and the impact of technology on political influence and ambitions. Relatedly, the IPP engages with transnational global challenges unfolding from the consequences of climate change, from sea level rises to natural disasters, as much as resource mismanagement such as overfishing, all of which greatly affect this part of the world.

The IPP is a dynamic new voice in area studies within the UK, breaking out of traditional geographical delimitations and innovating the field by linking the understanding of a regional space to geopolitical and geostrategic perspectives. This programme will help reshaping the understanding of the Indo-Pacific region internationally, and will help to redefine the UK’s role in the region and its global significance.

Aims

Through the promotion of multidisciplinary teaching capacity, high quality research output, regionally-focused policy impact, global network building, and tailor-made professional development the IPP has the following two aims:

Building Problem-solving Cultural Competency. Through a culturally-relevant study of security issues from a range of different perspectives, The IPP will empower an international community of students, experts, and practitioners with a unique ability to identify and solve specific problems by learning how to communicate, listen, and process perspectives from within the region and to articulate a specific view in a way that can be clearly understood by interlocutors in the region.
Nurturing Security-focused Strategic fluency. The IPP offers a bespoke understanding of the region’s history, as well as its political, economic, and strategic dynamics that are relevant to engage with its security issues. It mobilises cultural competency for the specific objective of developing strategy. The IPP aims also to provide the intellectual frameworks to place security issues in the Indo-Pacific within a wider context, linking regional specificities to global trends.

Background

Existing regional security programmes have focused on developing education and research specific to sub-regional contexts. Whilst effective in developing country-specific expertise, such an approach fails to appreciate that regional security contexts are not defined by the physical boundaries separating them from other regions. They are defined by how space is conceptualised as a conduit shaping the extents of interactions in international affairs. Universities that aspire to be innovative and leading in how to provide relevant answers to such dynamics need to rethink their approach to regional security.

This what the IPP aims to do. In particular, the idea for the IPP as a maritime-centric geopolitical space stems from a recognition about why and how the Indo-Pacific matters internationally, and it matters specifically to the UK. There is little doubt that today the Indo-Pacific stands as one of the most consequential regions in international affairs. It is one of the driving engines of the ways in which global industrial productivity and digital connectivity are changing societies. It is home to centres of excellence in technological innovations and neuralgic centres of global supply chains. The global maritime transportation and digital communication systems are central to how prosperity is built in the Indo-Pacific, and how the region contributed to global growth and development. Further, the trilateral defence pact bringing together Australia, the UK, and the United States, known as AUKUS, both cemented the UK’s interests in, and links to, the Indo-Pacific. AUKUS has created specific research opportunities in science ad technology for the purpose of national security.

This significance, in turn, is imposing an unprecedented demand on stakeholders across governments, business, and academia – in Europe as elsewhere – to develop the intellectual and practical competencies to engage with region. The IPP responds to this increasing demand by enhancing education and research about the region, and by promoting collaborations with the region and beyond in both areas. Specifically, the IPP leverages policy-relevant academic expertise to interrogate long term trends through academic output and to provide timely assessments to advance policy-making.

Methodology

The IPP methodology has no equal in the UK. This methodology has been pioneered by the KJP and places the understanding of area studies in the fields of grand strategy and statecraft, international and military history, and international security. The IPP takes a similar view in that it seeks to place the understanding of the Indo-Pacific region within wider disciplinary to achieve:

Exceptional Thematic Integration. The IPP embeds the study of the Indo-Pacific region in a broader disciplinary context – beyond the boundaries of ‘area studies’;
Widened Thematic Scope. The IPP explores the Indo-Pacific from the broader perspectives of international security, diplomacy, history and strategy – perspectives with no established home in UK universities;
Facilitated Cross-field Collaborations. The IPP invites collaborative research on themes from outside the realm of area studies to benefit from regional views – enhancing the potential for global impact;
Broadened Audience. The IPP takes area studies to broader audiences with less direct exposure to the Indo-Pacific and its role in international relations, history, and strategic thought, as well as professionals in civil service.
Enhanced High-Impact Global Network. The IPP empowers KCL to lead in the pursuit of high-impact networks for innovative collaboration in education, research, and executive opportunities – redefining UK convening capacity in higher education.

Over an initial period of three years, the methodology developed for the IPP aims to deliver results in five specific areas: teaching capacity, research, policy impact, international network, and professional education.

Teaching: The IPP embeds the study of the Indo-Pacific in the fields of strategic studies, international history and security, military history and analysis. The IPP aims also to establish a new degree with partners from the PLuS Alliance network in the United States and Australia, as well as partners in Japan with an eye to respond to demands unfolding from the new AUKUS agreement as well as new Anglo-Japanese agreements.
Research: The IPP draws upon CGS’s convening capacity to organise a robust programme of international seminars and workshops. The IPP will nurture and amplify international research collaborations on the three key themes: maritime security, technology and defence, and climate security. The IPP intends to act as an attracting beacon for KCL, working together with the newly established Indo-Pacific Research Group, and the wider international academic communities working on the Indo-Pacific to pursue funding opportunities.
Policy impact: The IPP draws on CGS’ established reputation and unique capacity for policy impact to provide innovative ways to challenge assumptions, refine policies, and develop new opportunities across a range of stakeholders. The IPP uses three tools to achieve impact: regular submissions to, and participation as oral witnesses for, Parliamentary and Government Inquiries; commissioning of reports for government departments or as collaborations with partner universities or think tanks; advice and support to civilian and military institutions engaged in addressing regional security issues.
International network: The IPP brings together the academic and non-academic networks of the KJP and CGS, drawing upon their large and diverse set of partnerships from across three continents (North America, Europe, and Australasia) and more than a dozen countries. The IPP will expand, consolidate, and systematise those networks and deploy these resources to achieve different objectives in education, research, and impact.
Professional education: The IPP works in close collaboration with the King’s Institute for Applied Security Studies to develop cutting edge advanced executive education to enable professionals to engage with, and operate it, the Indo-Pacific region. The portfolio of programmes currently under development is tailor-made to specific needs and will draw upon the IPP global network and expertise to deliver strategic fluency and support the development of a wider community of practice of specialist culturally aware of working with a diverse and complex region of the world.