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This is a series of solicited articles requested by the editors of Vol. 51, emerging from a roundtable discussion held at the 2022 International Studies Association Convention. Each short contribution seeks to demonstrate the newest research of the English School of International Relations. These contributions tackle key questions including: the decline of liberal hegemony, the rise of China, the divide between soldaristic and pluralistic ethics, the engagement of the English School with Area Studies, theoretical approaches to grounding English School research and an investigation of the English School’s intellectual legacy.

The world’s littorals is an important theater for all sorts of human interaction. So, also for naval warfare, which increasingly has led defense planners to focus on littoral capabilities rather than on Mahanian high-sea battles. We address the question of what littoral warfare means for different types of states. To that end, we develop a set of opposing ideal-types with regards to each type’s operational environment, aims, methods, and means for littoral warfare. We then use these ideal-types to analyze the naval doctrines of Sweden, the UK, and the US. This comparison generates some interesting results. For blue-water navies, littoral warfare is an additional burden and a high-risk endeavor, since the littoral, which the planning concerns is somebody else’s. For the small coastal state, correspondingly, littoral warfare is the sole purpose of its navy, and it can focus all its resources there as well as on cooperation with its air force and army, which are necessarily nearby. For blue-water navies, the objective of littoral warfare is to defeat the enemy, whereas for the small coastal state, it is deterrence.

Genetic technologies are revolutionizing human health. In parallel, geopolitical instability has prompted renewed discussions on the risks of DNA technology being weaponized in international conflict. With today’s changing security environment, we argue that risk assessments must be broadened from genetically targeted weapons to a series of new domains.

This article is a reply to Bevir and Hall, who recently argued in this journal that the English School needs to reflect more on its philosophy. They are right. Yet, their preferred distinction between a structural and an interpretivist strand of the School is not a constructive way forward. This is because their distinction between a structural and an interpretivist strand of the school is too stark, their chosen dimensions for sorting through the School are arguably not the most fruitful, and the inclusion of the English School’s normative agenda must remain independent of whether one is inclined to start from structure or from agency. After elaborating these points, the article moves on to suggesting a number of other philosophical issues which would be more relevant for the English School to work through. It ends with an empirical illustration of what an integrated English School approach, inspired by structuration, could look like.

The Covid-19 pandemic that emerged in the spring of 2020 caused severe political, social, and economic turmoil throughout the world. In spite of early warning signals from the World Health Organization, countries struggled to shape their policy responses and countermeasures for curtailing the spread of the virus while also minimising the damage that any restrictions would inflict on the health and well-being of society at large. While some countries have adopted strict regulations and extraordinary measures after declaring ‘states of exception’ and ‘national emergencies’, others have relied upon expert recommendations and individual responsibility. Sweden is viewed as having adopted one of the latter type of approaches in that it places the responsibility for social distancing upon the individual. Is this an instance of a failed ‘securitisation’ process, or rather a sensible constitutional and political response to a severe security event? This article presents an in-depth analysis of the Swedish strategy for coping with Covid-19, arguing that this case illustrates that security management in a democratic state should direct greater attention to rule following in accordance with a logic of appropriateness rather than the rule breaking envisaged by securitisation theory.

The aim of this article is to assess how the European Union advances its role as a global security actor and how it deploys the military forces provided by the member states. Tracing the current debate of the identity and means of the European Union, we analyze the two maritime operations, EU NAVFOR Somalia (Operation Atalanta) and EUNAVFOR MED (Operation Sophia) from a naval diplomacy perspective. Naval diplomacy acknowledge a more versatile role for naval forces, not just military advancement and force projection. For this purpose, we need to go beyond mission descriptions and operational mandates in order to analyze and assess the two operations from within, relying on internal reports and interviews with senior officers who have participated in the operations. Results show that naval forces seeks cooperation with International organizations, NGOs, and third countries in order to facilitate security and good order of the global common of international water. Still, complex security problems are not resolved in this manner and EU maritime operations are highly political, thus facing an uncertain future as a tool of CSDP.

Contemporary theories of deterrence place a strong emphasis on coherency between model and theory. Schelling’s contention of irrational threats for successful deterrence abandons the rationality assumption to explain how a player can deter, thereby departing from the standard game theoretic solution concepts. It is a misfit model in relation to a deterrence theory and, therefore, excluded. The article defends and remodels Schelling’s intuition by employing the level-k model. It is shown that an unsophisticated player that randomizes over its strategies brings about an advantageous outcome. The model also shows that the belief that a player randomizes has the same deterrent effect, as an actual stochastic choice, like Schelling suggested. While this means Schelling’s idea can be saved, it is still problematic how we should view contributions of bounded rationality in relation to current deterrence theory. The article suggests that separating the purpose of a model in conjunction with allowing other scientific ideals than model-theory coherence permits a broader and philosophically sounder approach.

Game theoretic analysis of deterrence has been criticized for not capturing how actors realistically behave. It is alleged that prospect theoretical re-modeling provides a better foundation for a deterrence theory. The article analyzes how the strategies change when a prospect theoretical function is applied to a central deterrence game. While the probability distributions changes, it cannot alter the general dynamics. When considered together with previous research, it shows that prospect theory neither can or should replace standard assumptions when constructing a deterrence theory. However, viewed as a compliment, prospect theory expands the modeling possibilities and opens up for important new aspects.