So, what was the original purpose of Strife? 

Back in 2012, I created Strife as an online space for my MA students to get their work out into the wider world. When students apply for a job, employers will google them to find out more about them and I thought it was really important for our students to have something related to an area of conflict expertise linked to their name in a professional capacity. So, this was basically an initiative to help students establish and develop their voices as subject matter ‘experts’.  

With that original purpose in mind, do you think it achieved that? 

Absolutely. At its peak, Strife was racking up about a million page views a year. It was really quite something – especially under the leadership of Joanna Cook and Anna Plunkett who put in a lot of time and effort into growing Strife. It was an excellent showcase of the department’s student talent— from our BAs all the way through to our PhDs. It also created a real sense of a dynamic environment of War Studies as a hub of thematic and area experts. 

Why did now feel like the right time to bring Strife back?

We’re going through a period of international turmoil right now and, at the same time, we’ve got AI and an endless stream hot takes and instant opinions. Given that we are a department of War Studies, it feels like we are particularly well-placed to meet the moment. So I’m hoping that Strife can be a solid source of analysis during this period— a place on the internet that is grounded in facts and reasoned argument. I want Strife to become a trusted source.  

Separately, I know that there’s tremendous knowledge in the scholarly space but that few people would bother accessing because the texts are often too long (a 10,000-word journal article is not everyone’s cup of tea) or too impenetrable or just a little too dull. Which means that these ideas, frameworks, and deep country expertise are not making their way out into the wider world. Students are the perfect translators for this space— they are grappling with the scholarship anyway in their own work. They can bring that knowledge to the public space, apply it, and build on it for Strife. 

I’m thinking about Strife as occupying a middle ground: more rigorous and analytical than hot takes, more accessible than journals, and with more political or thematic context than a typical newspaper article.  

Do you think that post-graduates bring a different perspective on these issues? 

Every generation will have a particular lens for seeing world. In your lifetime as a twenty-something, Trump has been elected President twice, we’ve had ISIS, Brexit, covid, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, and now, the war on Iran – these will be formative events in your life. For me, the formative events were the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, and the invasion of Iraq. And in the background of all this, there was always a rock-solid relationship between America and Europe. Given our differing life experiences, it just makes sense that my historical perspective will be very different from your historical perspective. You and I are from different generations and it’s not surprise that we’re going to see the world differently.

Compounding this problem, the things that you see as urgent (e.g., climate crisis) may not feel as urgent to older generations like mine. If, as a society, we don’t properly weight the perspectives of younger generations then we’re missing a trick, right? Your generation will have to live with the consequences of the policy decisions that are being made now on security, on climate, and on cuts to public services— and how to balance these competing demands. All of this becomes even more problematic because young people tend to vote less and aren’t as active in political parties— which means your preferences won’t be reflected as clearly in the democratic process. So if we don’t do more to get your perspectives out into the world, your generation is going to get shafted. Strife is meant to be one of those platforms. 

I suppose in one way it’s a form of empowerment.

Absolutely. 

What are some of the biggest changes in conflict, peace, and security that we’ve seen between the original iteration of Strife and this current one? 

If you were born and bred in The West like me, then it feels like the entire world order has been turned upside down since 2012, when Strife first began. (If you aren’t from The Global North, then the difference isn’t so stark.) I’ve already mentioned a few of the big historical ‘moments’ that have unfolded in the past decade or so, but I also want to point out three key structural changes. First, the normalisation of the far right all over the Global North – from Geert Wilders to Orban to Le Pen to Farage to Trump and Musk. Second, the rise of social media as a tool of armed conflict – especially in combination with disinformation. Third, and perhaps it’s telling that I’m talking about it last— is the UN’s increasing irrelevance when it comes to international peace and security. It’s hard to overstate how dramatically international politics has changed since 2012.  

In quite a condensed period of time too. 

Yes, and it’s been quite unsettling. Especially this past year for those of us who live in the Global North. In the UK, I would say 2016 was another turning point because we had both Brexit and then the election of Trump and then there were several years of extreme political turmoil. From my vantage point in London, the world of international politics has just felt incredibly unstable since 2016, with one major crisis after another, and then another and another. It feels like every actor is constantly realigning itself to the most current order, and then, as a scholar, I’m trying to understand and explain all of these changes even as the next iteration of that order appears. 

On top of this, I’m also trying to figure out my own normative position. I find it hard because I’ve often been critical of The West, of the UN, and of the ‘liberal order’ – but I’ve always approached this work as a critical friend. I see my work as trying to improve the peace and conflict ecosystem as it used to be. But what happens when that ecosystem is being actively destroyed? What kind of work should all of us be doing? What is the new normative project?  

How do you think contributors to Strife should address these changes? 

In terms of editorial encouragement, I’d encourage you all to be brave and to think about new architectures for international peace and security. How might we reshape the international system? What could new forms of cooperation look like? What are the doomsday scenarios that we ought to take more seriously? I’d love to see you all think the unthinkable, and say all the quiet parts out loud.

I think people need a wake-up call— especially in the UK. The broader public knows that things aren’t great but political leaders have done a poor job of explaining why the UK’s future is at risk. So much is taken for granted but actually, our political institutions are much more fragile than most of us want to believe. For example, it’s not clear to me what would stop ICE-style deportations being carried out by masked men in this country. And please don’t say the courts. We should be thinking about resilience in our political systems. I’d love to see students offer fresh approaches to this problem!  All we have to do is look across the pond to the United States and we can see that, yes, their institutions have been able to withstand quite a lot of pressure. But at some point, institutions break. We’re now facing live questions about the states and systems we live in in a way that I never thought would have been possible— and students shouldn’t shy away from this challenge of reimagining how the system could work.  

 We’ve covered a lot of challenges to the international order and the nature of the state, but what do you think are some challenges or changes that people aren’t noticing but are still important? 

The answer to this depends on where you are positioned in the international system. There is so much change happening under the radar. For example, I wrote a paper in 2024 on China’s grey zone attacks on the UK. Researching that paper terrified me— the scale of China’s surveillance machine and their countless points of leverage were deeply alarming— and it’s not like I was unaware of Chinese capabilities. But the scale of it was astonishing, and our lack of preparedness was even more worrying.  

If you’re Estonian, you’re very alert to what Russia is doing to your country, right? Estonians understand that their national survival is at stake. If you’re Taiwanese, you’re experiencing all sorts of attacks and threats from China in different domains. But here in the UK, if there’s no violence involved, we pay less attention to these types of non-kinetic attacks.  

Another related challenge sits at the individual level: I worry about how closely we’re all being surveilled by either our own governments or by other governments. The recent fight between Anthropic and the US government tells me that I’m right to be concerned. At this point, I assume that if somebody wants access to what I’ve done or said, they can probably find a way to get it. It’s impossible to not be found if someone out there really wants to find you. In this age of AI, it’s now possible to dig up everything you’ve ever said publicly on topic X— which has all sorts of implications for free speech. Knowing that you’re being watched or that your political views could be later used against you is going to affect our society and our politics. We aren’t alive to these problems yet but they will show up much sooner than we’re ready for. 

 And so, our last question is, if you had to give one piece of advice to Strife readers, what would it be? 

Every crisis is an opportunity. The rules of the game are being set afresh. The rupture has happened and it’s 1945 all over again. So what should this new world look like? It’s not clear. It’s not even clear if it will be a single order or a multi-order system. What is clear is that all the rules are being thrown out— which means it’s all up for grabs. 

 I think there’s tremendous potential in this moment for those who are willing to look forward creatively. I think Trump has actually exposed the hypocrisies that were so obvious to people in the Global South, so now there are opportunities to build new architectures around how to solve the actual problems. The good news is that in some cases, the vested interests that made parts of the international system sclerotic are now gone. What rises in its place is up to all of us – and I’d love to see Strife be the place to surface these new ideas! 

That’s a challenge for all of us!