Strategic thinking
Issued: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:36:00 BST
The Scottish Centre for War Studies has become one of the leading centres in the UK for strategic studies. It is based at Glasgow with links to other universities, institutions and individuals with related research interests, including the armed services and promotes research in, and understanding of, war in all its aspects, from past to present, from causes to consequences.
Since its founding in 1995, the centre has run more than ten major conferences, sponsored almost 100 seminar talks and seen the publication of a number of important works. The centre hosts at least four research seminars every semester which bring leading scholars in war studies to Glasgow and highlight the research of our own staff and students.
Early in 2010 the centre hosted a major international conference to discuss the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. The event brought together high-ranking soldiers, scholars, diplomats and journalists from around the world. Speakers included Brigadier Sean Crane, Senior Military Advisor to UN SRSG in Afghanistan 2007-08; Professors Marc Genest and Andrea Dew, Directors of the Centre for Irregular Warfare & Armed Groups at the Naval War College in Newport Rhode Island; and Dr Antonio Giustozzi, author of Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop.
Among the key themes addressed was the degree of progress currently being made in Afghanistan in the light of President Obama’s American troop surge in the country, the debate over the course of counter-narcotics policy in the country, and the particular challenges of coordinating the coalition of over 40 different countries.
Dr Alex Marshall is convener of the Centre for War Studies: '2011 will mark the tenth anniversary of the NATO intervention in Afghanistan, placing the coalition presence there on the same timescale footing as the Soviet intervention of the 1980s. It also underlines the fact that this conflict has now been more prolonged than either of the two world wars.
'Many of the current issues generating conflict in Afghanistan today reflect wider regional tensions and cross-border movements – from insurgents trained and based in Pakistan now operating in Afghanistan to wider Pakistani-Indian geopolitical rivalry and, of course, the smuggling of heroin through Iran, Russia and Central Asia to Europe.
'With public opinion clearly divided over the value of prolonging the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan, we felt that this conflict was the premier contemporary security dilemma around which to organise a conference marking the 15th anniversary of the centre’s establishment.'
The centre plans to build on the success of the Afghanistan conference to develop a new research agenda investigating the trans-national networks that look set to shape the nature of human conflict in the 21st century.