Iacovos Kareklas - "Thucydides on International Law and Political Theory"

This week, CCW hosted Dr Iacovos Kareklas, a current Visiting Resarch Fellow at CCW, to celebrate his recent book, Thucydides on International Law and Political Theory.

Iacovos spoke on his research for the book and the key conclusions, arguing that even the great powers of the ancient world, namely the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta, did acknowledge early forms of international law and concepts of morality and just war. It is a refreshing and engaging look at at topic which is too often reduced to the concept of the “Thucydides Trap.”

Iacovos’s talk was followed by discussion from Fellows and colleagues from CCW, Pembroke College, and the wider University.

Thucydides on International Law and Political Theory (2020) is published by Lexington Books.

A short description of the book can be read below:

Thucydides on International Law and Political Theory demonstrates that in classical times, especially in the era of the Peloponnesian War, international law and strategy existed in an advanced form among the city-states of ancient Greece. It shows how the work of Thucydides and classical Greek international law and politics have influenced aspects of modern international law and international politics. Iacovos Kareklas extensively analyzes Thucydidean political realism and indicates how it differs from modern realist and neo-realist theories of politics and presents that the “just war” theory of Thucydides’s time formed the legal and political basis of contemporary kinds of military intervention. Further, interstate treaties as listed in the work of Thucydides are categorized, interpreted, and commented upon. The military strategy of classical Greece and the role of religion in foreign policy decision making are also emphasized.

Congratulations to Steve Coulson for publishing his new paper: 'Lanchester Modelling of Intelligence in Combat'

Congratulations to CCW Visiting Research Fellow, Steve Coulson, whose paper on 'Lanchester Modelling of Intelligence in Combat' has just been published online at: https://academic.oup.com/imaman/advance-articles.

The print version of his paper will be released shortly. 

Abstract: While the utility of intelligence as force multiplier during warfare is widely accepted there have been few attempts to quantify its benefits. In this paper Lanchester combat models are developed to understand how superiority in intelligence can compensate for an inferior force ratio and how the time for one side to defeat the other is affected by the use of intelligence. It is found that intelligence does act as a force multiplier; however, its utility to compensate for inferior force ratio is less than commonly appreciated, proportional to the square root of the relative advantage in intelligence. Similarly, the time to defeat is proportional to the inverse of the square root of the relative advantage in intelligence, so that greatly increasing one side’s superiority in intelligence only produces a modest decrease in the time to defeat. The Lanchester combat models are extended to a hyperbolic system of partial differential equation (PDE) to investigate how intelligence influences manoeuvre warfare. These suggest that high tempo attacking operations are less sensitive to the effects of intelligence than slower operations.