In 2010 the Arab Spring and subsequent armed rebellions destabilised authoritarian regimes in the Middle-East and North Africa, causing the downfall of many long-standing dictators and oligarchs. Although Syria was engulfed by the movement and the Civil War that followed, unlike his counterparts, President Bashar al-Assad survived the onslaught and has since regained control of most of the nation. […]
In recent years, tensions in the South China Sea have dominated security concerns in the Pacific. In this piece, Tenny Kristiana discusses threats in the East China Sea that have slowly but surely been developing in the shadow of its southern counterpart. With close proximity to Mainland China, North and South Korea and Taiwan, Okinawa’s strategic importance has only […]
Colonialism manifested itself in all walks of lives of the subjugated populace. In this article Abinand Lagisetti muses on the legacy of football, a sport imported from Imperial Britain to the Raj in India, and retraces its journey from an exclusive recreational activity to an avenue of resistance for non-white communities in the Indian sub-continent.
Sport is largely considered to […]
For more than twenty years, Vladislav Surkov was a known quantity in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. Dubbed the ‘Grey Cardinal’ and the Kremlin’s main ideologist, Surkov is commonly regarded as the mastermind of Putin’s Ukraine policy which plunged Moscow into open conflict with the West. By late February 2020, however, he had apparently fallen from grace and was unexpectedly sacked […]
In the international governance of disaster which has emerged since the early twentieth century, governments have been reluctant to invest in disaster preparedness. In this article, Dr Lukas Schemper discusses the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of the historical and continuing problem of lack of action in preparing for national and global disasters.
“Why We Fail to Prepare for Disasters”
Several […]
US efforts to secure the vast oil resources of the Persian Gulf exacerbated the military incompetence of Imperial Iran and Saudi Arabia. In this article, by examining the military incompetence of Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Imperial Iran in Dhofar (Oman), Jack Sargent outlines the failure of the US to encourage meaningful reforms.
US engagement with the Persian Gulf in […]
In the 1930s, a period fraught with diplomatic tension and uncertainty, the Chamberlain government was unwilling to go to bat to protect Austria from Nazi encroachment. However, from within the British Legation in Vienna, dissenting voices emerged who argued that Britain should take a stronger stance to safeguard Austrian interests. Reflecting upon Dominic Raab’s VE Day address to Austria, […]
In Benedict Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’, he argued that the novel and the newspaper were the key mediums of the imagined community. However, in our increasingly connected and globalised world, the internet provides us with a shared digital culture that allows us to communicate with one another across the globe. In the latest LSE International History blog, Trinity College Dublin PhD […]
In 1945, USA occupied Japan following the East Asian Empire’s unconditional surrender. This occupation was accompanied with political and social reforms. In this article, Tenny Kristiana examines the diplomatic negotiations between the two nations, and how domestic politics and the evolving international order impacted the creation of a democratic government in Japan.
Diplomacy on a global stage has an extended […]
This week, an International Olympic Committee organiser and Shinzo Abe have hinted that the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo could be postponed until 2021 due to the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus). We have yet to receive a definitive answer. LSE-PKU MSc student Claire H. Evans writes that Japan’s delay in postponing the Games could loom large in its legacy […]
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