About

I am Dr Patrick Porter, an Australian-Briton and Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham.

Before that, I worked at the University of Exeter 2015-2018, Reading from 2011-2015, and the British Defence Academy, King’s College London, from 2006-2011.

From October 2013-2014, I held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.

I research and teach International Relations at its bloodier edges, with a particular interest in foreign and defence policy, American and British wars in the past and present, strategic thought, and of armed force as an instrument of policy, political realism, and lately the question of international security in Asia.

More broadly, I’m a sort of drifter between history and international relations, in grand strategy and diplomatic history, the way nations think and behave on the grand chessboard, how they rise and fall, how they think about force in human affairs and as a tool of policy.

Mini-bio: born in Canberra, grew up in Melbourne, and completed by doctorate at Magdalen College, Oxford.

I have an article in International Security, ‘Why American Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit and Grand Strategy.’

My next book is Blunder: Why Britain invaded Iraq, coming out with Oxford University Press in 2018, for the fifteenth anniversary.

My first book came out in 2009 with Columbia University Press and Hurst, Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes. 

My most recent book is The Global Village Myth: Distance, War and the Limits of Power with Georgetown University Press and Hurst, out now.

I’ve written articles in the European Journal of International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Diplomacy and Statecraft, War in History, International Affairs (x2) , and War and Society among others.

I’ve written in The National Interest, a couple of pieces for the Australian press on defence/security related matters, a piece for Le Monde Diplomatique, also podcasted here, one for The World Today, and done an interview for CNN.

Hobbies: cigars, beer, low-brow ancient Rome novels, watching footy and cricket, playing with my cat, and writing.

Unlike many blogs, this one isn’t interactive and doesn’t do ‘comments.’ Hopefully it attracts readers, but without the cacophany.