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.
People
Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy Research Fellow
Senior Lecturer in Wargaming
Research Associate
Professor of War in the Modern World
Professor in History and Foreign Policy
PhD Student
Projects
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.
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.
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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.
News
Australian and UK ministers outline importance of the Indo-Pacific region to global security and prosperity
The Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the UK Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific Anne-Marie Trevelyan spoke of the importance of deepening...
Security Studies academics contribute to UK government's foreign policy and defence review
School of Security Studies Academics contributed to the Integrated Review
Events
King's Experts Series: Peace and security in a turbulent world
We live in a turbulent world, where uncertainties surrounding peace, security, and the prosperity of societies are ever-growing.
Please note: this event has passed.
Book Launch: 'Intelligence and Contemporary Conflict: Communication in Diplomacy, Statecraft and War'
Book Launch: 'Intelligence and Contemporary Conflict: Communication in Diplomacy, Statecraft and War' by Matthew Hefler
Please note: this event has passed.
Submerged Identity: Climate degradation and altered perceptions of diaspora and identity in Small Island Developing States
In a time of increased discourse surrounding the existential threat faced by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) as a result of climate insecurity, this...
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Avalanche Decoupling - economic contingency planning for a Taiwan crisis
Avalanche Decoupling - economic contingency planning for a Taiwan crisis
Please note: this event has passed.
Rethinking the Liberal International Order: Book Launch of The League of Nations (Cambridge, 2025) by Laura Robson and Joseph Maiolo
Rethinking the Liberal International Order: Book Launch of The League of Nations (Cambridge, 2025) by Laura Robson and Joseph Maiolo
Please note: this event has passed.
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.
People
Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy Research Fellow
Senior Lecturer in Wargaming
Research Associate
Professor of War in the Modern World
Professor in History and Foreign Policy
PhD Student
Projects
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.
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.
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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.
News
Australian and UK ministers outline importance of the Indo-Pacific region to global security and prosperity
The Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the UK Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific Anne-Marie Trevelyan spoke of the importance of deepening...
Security Studies academics contribute to UK government's foreign policy and defence review
School of Security Studies Academics contributed to the Integrated Review
Events
King's Experts Series: Peace and security in a turbulent world
We live in a turbulent world, where uncertainties surrounding peace, security, and the prosperity of societies are ever-growing.
Please note: this event has passed.
Book Launch: 'Intelligence and Contemporary Conflict: Communication in Diplomacy, Statecraft and War'
Book Launch: 'Intelligence and Contemporary Conflict: Communication in Diplomacy, Statecraft and War' by Matthew Hefler
Please note: this event has passed.
Submerged Identity: Climate degradation and altered perceptions of diaspora and identity in Small Island Developing States
In a time of increased discourse surrounding the existential threat faced by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) as a result of climate insecurity, this...
Please note: this event has passed.
Avalanche Decoupling - economic contingency planning for a Taiwan crisis
Avalanche Decoupling - economic contingency planning for a Taiwan crisis
Please note: this event has passed.
Rethinking the Liberal International Order: Book Launch of The League of Nations (Cambridge, 2025) by Laura Robson and Joseph Maiolo
Rethinking the Liberal International Order: Book Launch of The League of Nations (Cambridge, 2025) by Laura Robson and Joseph Maiolo
Please note: this event has passed.
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.