Conveners
War and Strategy
- Chiara Libiseller (Leiden University)
Description
War has returned to Europe. However, European strategic thinking and understanding of war remain underdeveloped, stemming from a long-standing reliance on U.S. security guarantees and the widespread belief that war was a relic of the past. As European actors grapple with this new reality, now is an opportune moment to critically examine existing knowledge on war and strategy, assess its relevance to contemporary contexts, and encourage innovative perspectives. This panel seeks to serve as a platform for advancing a European debate on the use of force for political purposes. It invites papers addressing war and strategy in a broad and inclusive sense, drawing from a variety of disciplines—such as history, political science, and sociology—and engaging with diverse approaches—from fundamental ontological and theoretical questions (such as, what is war and how do we know?) to empirical analyses examining the specifics of military capabilities and their implications for strategy. Submissions may focus on both historical and contemporary topics and explore various factors shaping strategy, including technological, cultural, social, and environmental influences, moral and ethical considerations, and the role of ideas, discourses, and imaginaries of (future) war in shaping today’s thinking. The panel also encourages innovative engagements with key concepts in strategic studies—such as deterrence, escalation, and violence—and contributions that critically but constructively evaluate the current state of the field or the dynamics and outcomes of knowledge production on war.
Europe – and much of the traditional liberal democratic world – has not had to think much about war for the last 30 years. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed this, while Sino-American competition and an America-first agenda only intensifies it. Where war was part of the collective policy framework or cultural imaginary it was wars of choice, not wars of necessity. International security, not...
As world politics has shifted towards strategic competition, states increasingly navigate an international terrain marked by intensified, protracted political conflict. Here, subversion appears as a central, but not fully understood form of statecraft. Great powers find themselves interlocked in a subversive-countersubversive dynamic characterized by the employment of a mixture of military and...
Coercion is a central strategy for states in an increasingly competitive and hostile international environment, and there are several military means or tools they can use to coerce an opponent into submission, such as, air power, invasions and land grabs, or even nuclear threats. Military assistance, i.e. the training, equipping and advising of foreign state and non-state armed forces to...
