The withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer was regarded in some quarters as a watershed moment in US-UK relations. For some senior Conservative politicians, the debacle signalled a “demise” in the partnership and the “biggest foreign policy disaster” since the Suez Crisis of 1956. Yet the UK-US alliance has long been a story of episodic peaks and troughs. Indeed, despite these grim auguries made in August 2021, the AUKUS agreement was signed just a month later. This case illustrates the need for deeper, historically informed research about the nature and character of US-UK strategic relations.
To that end, the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre and the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies of King’s College London have co-organised a series of public seminars to study the different facets of the relationship. Invited speakers will present research papers, which speak to areas of cooperation and tension. The seminars will be held biweekly during the 2022/23 academic year at 17.15 in All Souls College, Oxford. We intend this project to be several years in duration, targeting specific themes (e.g., military-to-military cooperation) to the role of big ideas such as Atlanticism or declinism. Part of our goal is to avoid the usual cases that are cited, such as the Suez Crisis or the 2003 Iraq War, and focus on understudied elements and examples of US-UK strategic relations.
All are welcome to attend. The line-up for Michaelmas term 2022 is as follows:
Wednesday, 12 October 2022
‘Anglo-American clandestine cooperation: the past, present and future of the Special Intelligence Relationship’
Dr Thomas Maguire (Leiden University) and Dr David V. Gioe (King’s College London and West Point)
Wednesday, 26 October 2022
‘The United States, the United Kingdom and the international financial system since 1945’
Dr Michael Hopkins (University of Liverpool)
Wednesday, 9 November 2022
‘An Exceptional Relationship? US nuclear strategy and the US-UK Nuclear Relationship’
Dr Suzanne Doyle (University of East Anglia)
Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Theme: TBD
Dr Kristin Cook (SOAS)
If you are interested in presenting a paper in future, please contact Dr William James (william.james@pmb.ox.ac.uk) and Professor Greg Kennedy (greg.kennedy@kcl.ac.uk).
