Feature

Warning About Conflicts and Pandemics: How to Get Heard by Decision-Makers

July 1, 2020

by Christoph Meyer

As is often the case with warnings about conflict, there was a costly lack of timely responses to early warnings about the COVID-19 pandemic. Such delays are not necessarily just the fault of decision-makers. Expert warners can also do better. To be heard, they need to understand the world of policymakers, take risks and spell out expected consequences and actionable recommendations.

Could the mounting death toll, pain and costs from the coronavirus crisis have been prevented or at least lessened? Leaders and senior officials in the US and the UK have been accused of recklessly ignoring warnings, whilst Chinese officials even stand accused of suppressing them. The pandemic has been labelled the “worst intelligence failure in U.S. history” or UK’s “greatest science policy failure for a generation”. Future public inquiries will hopefully address not just questions of accountability but also, more importantly, which lessons should be learned.

Do Not Just Blame the Decision-Makers: Expert Warners Also Need to Do Better

However, even today there are striking parallels between the warning-response gap in conflict and mass atrocity prevention and the coronavirus crisis. Our extensive research on cases ranging from Rwanda 1994 to Crimea 2014 found a wide-spread tendency in the literature to overestimate the supply of “warnings” from inside and outside of government and to underestimate how difficult persuasive warning actually is. Warners are typically portrayed as altruistic, truthful and prescient, yet doomed to be ignored by irresponsible, ignorant and self-interested leaders. Imagine princess Cassandra of Troy trying to convince Mayor Vaughn from Jaws.

The first in-depth investigations of the decision-making on COVID-19 suggest that at least some of the warnings in the US case suffered from credibility problems whereas UK experts were criticised for not warning more forcefully, explicitly and earlier. This raises important questions about individual expert’s motivations, capabilities and strategies, but also about structural and cultural factors that can impede early, credible, actionable and, above all, persuasive warnings.

Expert Warners Need to Learn What the Obstacles Are for Their Messages to Be Heard

In our recent book we compare warning about war to the challenge of conquering an obstacle course against various competitors and often adverse weather conditions. The most successful competitors will be those who combine natural ability, high motivation, regular training, and risk-taking with a bit of luck. Many expert warners do not realise what the obstacles are, nor have they been trained to overcome them or are willing to take some of the professional risks involved in warning.

We found that the most effective warners tend to be those who (i) have acquired some personal trust as a result of previous personal contacts with decision-makers, (ii) can offer a positive professional reputation and track-record in their previous analysis and warnings, (iii) understand decision-makers’ agendas and “hot-buttons” (iv), share the same broad political or ideational outlook, and finally, (v) are willing to take some professional risks to get their message across.

Based on our research, we found that in order to increase their chances of being heard by decision-makers, expert warners should consider the following eight points.

1. Understand That Decision-Makers Work in a Completely Different Environment.

First and foremost, expert warners need to understand that senior officials inhabit a different world to themselves. Most experts tend to consume information from a relatively narrow range of quality sources focused on a specific subject area. They evaluate the quality of the method and evidence behind causal claims and, sometimes, the potential to solve a given problem. Warnings are relatively rare in this world. In contrast, decision-makers live in a world where warnings from different corners are plentiful and competing demands for their attention is constant and typically tied to requests for more government spending. They are trained to look for the interest behind the knowledge claim and are prone to see warnings as politically biased and potentially self-interested manipulation attempts. A New York Times investigation suggests, for example, that at least some of the coronavirus warnings were discounted as a result of perceived political bias regarding China.

2. Credibility Is Key to Who Is Being Noticed and Heard.

Even experts without an apparent or hidden agenda can and do contradict each other, including those working in the same field. On any given issue, there is rarely just one authoritative source of knowledge, but multiple individuals or organisations that supply knowledge. The cacophony gets greater when assessing the proportionality and unintended effects of the measures to control the disease, including the inadvertent increase of non-COVID deaths and severe loss of quality of life.

When politicians claim to be only following “expert advice” as was the case in the UK, they obscure necessary decisions about difficult trade-offs and dilemmas arising from diverse expert advice. Decision-makers need to decide whose advice to accept and to what extent. This is why credibility is key to who is being noticed and believed.

That means warners need to ask themselves whether they are likely to be perceived as credible or rather with suspicion by the people that ultimately take political decisions. If the latter is the case, they can try to target more receptive scientists sitting on official expert committee instead or organisations closer to decision-makers. They can publish pieces in news media likely to be consumed by politicians rather than those they might prefer themselves. Or they can boost their credibility by teaming up with others through open-letters or joint statements.

3. To Cut Through the Noise, You Might Have to Take Risks.

The next challenge is for warnings to stick-out from the everyday information and reporting “noise”. Officials may, for instance, choose an unusual channel or mode of communication. We know that ambassadors have used demarches as relatively rare and more formal formats to highlight the importance of their analysis rather than their routine reports.

Senior officials might cut through when they are ready to put their career and professional reputation on the line as Mukesh Kapila did when warning about Darfur in 2004 on BBC Radio 4. This lesson can also be drawn in the case of Capt. Brett E. Crozier who was fired after copying-in too many people into his outspoken warning about the spread of the virus on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt.

Many external experts as well as intelligence analysts, such as Professor for Epidemiology, Mark Woolhouse, are satisfied just to be “heard and understood”. They do not seek for their advice to be accepted, prioritised and acted upon. However, sometimes a more pro-active and risk-taking approach is needed as was arguably the case with COVID-19 according to Professor Jonathan Ball: “Perhaps some of us should have got up in front of BBC News and said you lot ought to be petrified because this is going to be a pandemic that will kill hundreds of thousands of people. None of us thought this was a particularly constructive thing to do, but maybe with hindsight we should have. If there had been more voices, maybe politicians would have taken this a bit more seriously.”

4. Spell Out a Range of Expected Consequences.

Given leaders’ constant need to prioritise, experts need to spell out the range of expected consequences. They need to dare to be more precise about what the likelihood is for something to happen, the timing, scale and nature of the consequences. Too often we found warnings to be rather vague or hedged. Similarly to the account by Balls, an in-depth Reuter’s investigation also suggests that UK ‘scientists did not articulate their fears forcefully to the government’ and could have spelled out the probable deaths involved earlier.

5. Focus on What Matters to Decision-Makers, Not Yourself.

Warners need to focus on what matters most to decision-makers, not to them. One of the most successful warnings we came across in our research on conflict warnings highlighted not just the humanitarian suffering, but also how this escalation would resonate with important domestic constituencies such as evangelical Christians and how it might harm electoral chances. NGOs focused on conflict prevention and peace may find it easier to make their case if they also highlight the indirect and less immediate effects of instability on migration, jobs and security.

6. Understand the Reference Points and Contexts That Decision-Makers Work With in Any Given Situation.

Warners should try to understand and, if necessary, challenge the cognitive reference points that underpin leaders’ thinking. In the area of foreign policy, decision-makers often draw on lessons learnt from seemingly similar or recent cases from the region. For instance, preventive action against ethnic conflict in Macedonia in 2001 benefited from fresh lessons learnt from the Kosovo conflict. Spelling out what precisely is similar or different in present threats in relation to lessons learnt from previous familiar cases can encourage decision-makers to question and change their beliefs.

In the current crisis, one reason why senior officials in Europe may have underestimated the danger of coronavirus was that their reference point and planning assumption was a flu epidemic. Many also still remembered that the UK was accused of overreacting to the much milder than expected swine flu in 2009. In contrast, leaders in many Asian countries had other more dangerous viruses as their cognitive reference points and underpinning their pandemic plans.

7. Know What Kind of Evidence and Methods Decision-Makers Trust the Most.

Experts should try to understand what kind of evidence and methods decision-makers and their close advisors consider the most credible. In foreign affairs, decision-makers often trust secret intelligence based on human sources more than assessment based on expert judgement using open-sources. Other decision-makers like indicators and econometric models as compared to qualitative expert judgements. If unfamiliar with these particular methods, they could seek to collaborate with those experts who are can translate their findings into the most suitable language.

8. Include Actionable Recommendations With the Warnings.

The best warnings are those that contain also actionable recommendations. Decision-makers are more receptive to warnings that give them information on which they can act today, ideally including a range of options. The influential model by the Imperial College team appeared to resonate so well not only because of the method they used, but also because it gave decision-makers a clear sense of how death rates might develop for different policy options under discussion.

The dilemma for warners is that they can undermine their own credibility by suggesting policy options that are considered politically unfeasible. According to a Reuters account, the lock-down measures adopted in China and Italy were considered initially inconceivable for the UK and thus not considered in-depth early on. Warners do need to resist a narrow understanding of what is feasible and sometimes need to push to widen the menu of policy options considered.

It Is Also up to Government Bureaucracies and Decision-Makers to Be Open for Warnings

All of this is not to deny that the key explanation may ultimately lie with unreceptive decision-makers who cannot deal with uncomfortable advice or who create blame-shifting cultures in which many officials just seek to cover their backs. We should approach any justification why leaders did not notice or believe a warning with a healthy dose of scepticism. Politicians can be expected to ring-fence at least some of their time to regularly consider new and serious threats to the security and well-being of citizens, regardless of distractions by media headlines. There should be clarity about who is responsible to act or not to act on warnings. They should ask probing questions of experts that bring them reassuring news to tease out key uncertainties and down-side risks as was allegedly lacking in the UK case. They need to ensure there is sufficient diversity in the advice they are getting through expert committees, create channels for fast-tracking warnings and opportunities for informally expressing dissent with prevailing wisdom. Leaders have a responsibility to build cultures in which high-quality warnings can be expressed without fear of punishment or career disadvantage.

One of the questions to be addressed in postmortems will be whether the relationship of politicians to the intelligence community in the US and to health professionals in the UK was conducive to timely warning and preventive action. Have experts allowed themselves to be politicised? Have they cried wolf too often and on too many issues? Or, conversely, have they been affected by group-think and hesitated to ask difficult questions sooner and more forcefully? Keeping expert warners in the picture matters greatly to learning the right lessons from the crisis. The best experts with the most important messages need to find ways of cutting through, regardless of who happens to sit in the White House, Downing Street, the Élysée Palace or the Chancellery. Only with the benefit of hindsight is warning and acting on it easy.

This article is a reposting of Christoph Meyer’s article with the kind cooperation of Peacelab, please follow this link to see the original.

Christoph Meyer is the co-author (with Chiara De Franco and Florian Otto) of “Warning about War: Conflict, Persuasion and Foreign Policy” and leads a research project on Learning and Intelligence in European Foreign Policy. Support from the European Research Council and the UK Economic and Social Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.

British Foreign Policy towards China: Short-sightedness Disguised as ‘Pragmatism’?

June 19, 2020

by Anna Tan

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the celebrations for Chinese New Year in London, 2020 (Image credit: AFP)

When COVID-19 is the product of a breach of human rights within China itself, ignoring human rights in a post-COVID world order is frankly naïve and hardly “pragmatic”.

In his 1941 State of Union address, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined the Four Fundamental Freedoms that every person in the world is entitled to enjoy: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four principles would later serve as the foundation upon which the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formed, ushering in a new era in which the human rights violations of states became a matter of concern that permeates far beyond its own sovereign territories. Contemporary human rights were borne out of a pragmatic concern that our ideals and principles at a certain level become a personal matter; since without human rights, there can be no human security.

The end of the Cold War would put an end to ideological conflict over the value of fundamental freedoms. Today, our post-Cold War world order lacks such kind of predictability and, thus, more uncertainty with regards to the international order can be expected. Moreover, in a post-COVID-19 world and amid a crumbling Pax Americana under Trump, the traditional state advocates of human rights are now MIA. This is an erosion of the liberal world order which is eating itself from within, with President Trump projecting an image of the USA is quite the opposite of most of its traditional ideals. Across the Atlantic, Brexit has further distorted unity both in the Anglosphere and within Europe.

Indeed, some seem more concerned about the economic damage that COVID-19 will bring if we do not appease Xi Jinping’s China, citing Realpolitik as a justification. In this regard, Professor Kerry Brown argues that given Brexit, the UK should reconsider its stance towards the Hong Kong crisis, given the country’s weak economic relations with China. One can disagree with this assertion since the notion of China as a ‘successful capitalist nation’ leaves the causes and consequences behind this success undefined. That is not to say that relations with Australia and New Zealand are not anything positive, but we have to consider fostering free trade relations across the D-10 member states, as well as with the EU. As for China, the scrapping of the Green GDP Initiative in 2007 is an example. The initiative would have reduced the data on China’s real GDP growth to zero. Indeed, Green GDP took into account environmental degradation, socioeconomic inequalities, and loss of biodiversity in China’s real GDP growth. The environment being hardly a significant concern for the cold realism of the status quo international relations and diplomacy is of course no surprise to anyone.

But that clearly misses the point of what we are faced with during the COVID-19 crisis. Ideally, this pandemic will serve as a tipping point and a shift away from business-as-usual in dealings with China. Arguably, it was the country’s repression of the fundamental freedoms (primarily freedom of speech) of its own scientists and academics that lays at the root of the current crisis. Never has there been a more urgent time to stress the significance of human rights than in this time of Corona. Indeed, our quality of life can only flourish when our fundamental freedoms are respected.

To do so, we ought to do away with this perception that our idealist concerns can never overlap with our pragmatic ones. That is not to disregard China’s ability to be one of the most powerful economies in the world without civil and political liberation as illegitimate. But the staggering boom of China’s economy over the past couple of decades simultaneously led to the accumulation of enormous amounts of inequalities, on top of excessive environmental pollution and abuse. This abuse of nature also notably contributed to the ongoing pandemic. Even with these factors aside, the political economies of our free societies are not designed to compete with state capitalism.

British foreign policy is becoming more inconsistent by the day, whilst China’s policies remain consistently expansionist.

The formation of a Democratic 10 (D-10) and the potential intake of British National (Overseas), or BN(O), passport holders from Hong Kong (combined with potential ‘burden-sharing’ agreement amongst the Five-Eyes) is of course considerably an improvement from its initial blasé stance. But the latter fails to address the rights of the remaining Hong Kongers, and most importantly, should not be a panacea to the growing Chinese aggression in its blatant disregard for international norms. That is not to argue that this development has not been provoked by the Trump Administration, but my point is that this can be a recurring theme not just for Hong Kong but in any part of the world. If so, should our response be the same? The recent decision to merge the Department for International Development (DFID) with the Foreign Office is another example of how not to respond. Though a little premature to say, this could lessen the UK’s room of maneuverability and upset future British diplomacy. In so doing, it could also render the idea of “Global Britain” an oxymoron, given China’s usage of COVID to increase its influence in Africa, for instance. British foreign policy is becoming more inconsistent by the day, whilst China’s policies remain consistently expansionist.

However, China’s new National Security Legislation (NSL) for Hong Kong is more of a distraction from Xi Jinping’s party-state’s own mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak in China itself, which has evidently hurt his standing amongst the elites of his own party. Those pragmatists who justify the incentive for us to appease President Xi in order to safeguard the financial repercussions of Brexit and of COVID-19 are too short-sighted. Those who are truly pragmatic will consider the long-term implications of our free societies and our very own public health and economic welfare; spurring our foreign policies towards China on to become more sophisticated and paying more close attention to human rights.

Over the past year, we have seen the relentless resistance of the people of Hong Kong against the Chinese state’s incursions. The more active approach that has now been taken towards creating a D-10 should extend to Hong Kong as well. If not, the crisis there is bound to produce refugee flows and further destabilise an already volatile region. This would be miscalculation at a time when Western influence in Southeast Asia is still lagging behind that of China. At the same time, a Cold War with China must remain off the table. The real pragmatic solutions should lie somewhere in between. There should be more craftsmanship put into our foreign policies. China’s declaration of its NSL in Hong Kong is clearly against the Basic Law that governs the city. Insofar as China lacks territorial legitimacy (at least until 2047) and the British by a supermajority in Hong Kong hold political legitimacy, there is little reason why this cannot be an advantage to British foreign policy. Commercial interests count too in the picture.

Despite our current obsession not to exacerbate the status quo, it is clear that we would not have arrived here in the first place if we had been standing up against Beijing’s disrespect for fundamental human rights. The country’s blatant disrespect for these rights emanates far beyond its sovereign territory. Previously, we in the West have considered that the effects of China’s unique form of governance (which is firmly opposed to human rights) was confined to its national borders. Yet, this pandemic has aptly demonstrated the far-reaching impact of China’s illiberalism at home. As such, Western policies ought to revise their hitherto assumptions and economic relationship vis-à-vis the CCP regime. So too must we reconsider our assumption that China’s diplomacy will be more scrupulous given Deng Xiaoping’s guiding philosophy of ‘hide your strength and bide your time’. Clearly, this time has now passed. China’s new position in the world order means that it can afford more knee-jerk reactions such as what we have in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and now COVID-19.

This is significant despite the facts that while Donald Trump may not be re-elected in November and that Asia’s future will still considerably depend on Western financial institutions and trade relations. The lack of a cohesive strategy in the European and Anglosphere will mean that our intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations will be more vulnerable to be dictated by China and Russia. How can we, coming from free, liberal societies, protect our own fundamental freedoms if we are not taking proactive steps in maintaining a world order that is now presenting to be getting less liberal and orderly?

Surely bargaining our fundamental freedoms for the sake of what is likely to end up as imbalanced trade relations with authoritarian regimes clearly is not what our forefathers have lost their lives for. At present, the ball remains in Britain’s court and we still get to call much of the shots even without the leverage of the EU. Through the D-10, one can be hopeful that the EU can still continue to render a force of unity and perhaps learn that referendums can seriously backfire. It is not to say that illiberalism anywhere will always affect us – it really depends on the power and reach of the country we are dealing with. While human rights may not be at the forefront of foreign policy-making, what we have now with COVID-19 is already a net financial loss. Realpolitik should seek to include human rights in its approach given the reciprocal implications on our fundamental freedoms, national security, and economic prosperity. It is unclear whether the British government realises this.

Anna Tan is a postgraduate and a student ambassador for Global Affairs at King’s College London. She is also a Series Editor on Strife Blog and Journal of the Department of War Studies and has formerly worked for UNDP and the American Red Cross. Her research is focused on Western Human Rights diplomacy vis-à-vis authoritarian states in Asia.

Call for Papers – Strife Series on Forgotten Wars

June 18, 2020

Strife blog is pleased to announce the call for contributions to its ‘Forgotten Wars’ Series.

This series is looking to publish on a range of topics on the relationship between terrorism, conventional warfare, and conflict spaces, the themes could include but are not limited to:

Counterterrorism and defence industry/production
Area and conflict case studies
Conflict entrenchment
Counterterrorism/counter-extremism and humanitarian action
Strategy and asymmetric engagement
Issues surrounding law and use of force against terrorism in conflict zones

There is no restriction as to period or geographical focus. Articles should be around 1000-1200 words in length and meet with all of the submission guidelines. Articles will be subject to a review by the Series Editor and the Blog Managing Editor prior to acceptance to the series articles that do not meet referencing and formatting guidelines risk being rejected for publication.

If you are interested in submitting an article for publication, or have an idea or query you wish to discuss, please contact our editorial team at: editors@strifeblog.org The deadline for expressions of interest is 20^th July 2020.

Book Review: ‘Breaking Hate’

June 15, 2020

by Isabela Betoret Garcia

Christian Picciolini. Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism. Hachette Books, London, 2020. ISBN 978-0316522939. Pp. 272. Hardcover, £22.85.

Stories about the alt-right rarely have happy endings. Many associate the movement with white supremacists, those men and women who have left a path of violence and death in their wake. Connotations of ‘white supremacy’ tend to include men marching in a university campus in well-tailored trousers and neat haircuts chanting propaganda, such as the ones that marched in Charlottesville; or perhaps the young men who perpetrated unspeakable acts of violence in houses of worship, like Dylann Roof did in Charleston when he massacred nine people or the Christchurch Mosque Shooting where 51 were murdered. The image conjured up is that of hate, a hate that is so unforgiving to those in its path that it does not invite any kind of compassion. Yet, that is exactly what author and activist Christian Picciolini asks of us in his latest book: Breaking Hate.

Picciolini was born to Italian immigrants, in Illinois; by the age of 14 he had joined one of the most violent racist groups in the United States, the Chicago Area Skinheads. By 16 he had become the leader of the group, as well as formed a white supremacist punk band, W.A.Y (White American Youth). Even though he left the movement at 22, he had spent eight years helping it grow. Such a drastic U-turn came, he claims, from interactions he had with the people he had been conditioned to hate – black, Jewish, and homosexual people – and finding some common ground which left him unable to justify his hate. After leaving his former violent life, having spent some years in a dark space of apathy and depression by his own admission, he began to do what became his life’s calling: telling his story. His first book, White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement— and How I Got Out, focused on his life. Picciolini seemed to understand that for people to truly believe that his theory of de-radicalisation could work, they had to understand how he had come to believe in them himself.

Breaking-Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism serves both as a culmination and as a new chapter. A culmination in that it is not only a collection of stories of men and women Christian has helped de-radicalise; it also allows Christian to share the steps of extremist disengagement he has come to believe. With each new chapter, however, it becomes clear to the reader that there is much work to be done, and that extremism really is an embedded cultural problem.

Christian’s proposal is clear: No one is born into hate, and violent ideologies are not what lead people down the road of extremism. When someone encounters what he calls ‘potholes’ in life, they will be in danger of never fulfilling their sense of identity, community, and purpose (ICP). De-Radicalisation is a contested concept with no single accepted process, and many doubt the effectiveness of it. In the field of de-radicalisation many scholars such as Daniel Koeher have pointed to ideology as a key aspect in the road to radicalisation. Picciolini’s theory differs significantly. It is when they trip on their search of ICP that extremism may find them, but ideology itself is the last step. Only by listening to their stories and identifying these potholes, presumably extraordinary patience and compassion, one can extend a hand to bring them back to a normal life. The process he uses includes 7 steps: Link, Listen, Learn, Leverage, Lift, Love, Live. These steps are meant to form a link with the subject, understand how their path in life brought them to radicalisation, help them make amends, and eventually life free. Though his argument is fascinating and compelling, Picciolini does not spend much time discussing alternative theories of de-radicalisation that have an ideological basis, which would lend more credibility to his argument.

“The answer is love”: the message could not be more clear (Image credit: Christian Picciolini)

The structure of the book relies on the reader connecting with the stories told within. From veterans and men recruited in prison, to a former ISIS fighter, to a seventeen year-old girl caught in a scam that seemed to lead all the way to the 2016 Presidential election— the stories Christian relates are raw and tender. They are simultaneously full of sorrow, anger, and hope. Yet there are underlining reminders that even if disengagement is successful, the subjects of the book may be atoning for their actions for the rest of their lives.

The message of the book is, for the most part, effectively conveyed and persuasive. Because most of the subjects Christian examines in the book were part of the Alt-Right we might ask if ideology truly does not matter as much as other experts say in the de-radicalisation process, and the book would benefit from exploring other theories for Picciolini to more effectively defend his own. The book’s persuasiveness does rely on the author himself, and on the anecdotal evidence he provides of the cases present in the text, which could be more effective if paired with quantifiable evidence of the success of his methods. Upon closing the book, however, a reader will likely reconsider any previously held notions on the psychology of radicalisation which rely on ideology and be willing to consider compassion, and in this point the book is undeniably successful.

Picciolini admits to sometimes almost losing patience, hope, and control when trying to help extremists disengage. But here is where he comes to the most important lesson of all: see the child, not the monster. This is not meant to excuse the actions of extremists because of the abuse they may have suffered, the severe lack of ICP that delivered them into the arms of hate. But rather to remember that basic premise, that no one is born into hate; and if they find their way into it, they can find their way out.

Isabela first completed a Foundation Programme in International Relations and is now a third-year War Studies and History BA. She also works as an International Relations and Politics Tutor for King’s Foundations. She is Mexican-Spanish and lived most of her life in Mexico until she moved to London, and this background has given her a keen interest in migration. She is also interested in how the every-day has become politicised through media, and what this means for the future of journalism and politics. You can follow her on Twitter @isa_betoret.

Call for Papers – KSLR-Strife Joint Edition

June 11, 2020

The King’s Student Law Review and Strife are pleased to announce the publication of the third joint, special edition of our journal under the overarching theme of ‘Law and War’.

Submissions must be relevant to the subjects that relate to the intersection between ‘Law and War’. This overarching theme encompasses a vast range of topics such as challenging the effectiveness of ‘Jus in bello‘ (international humanitarian law) in light of the ‘war on terror’, ‘rogue states’, the historical origins of the laws of conventional warfare, or on broader themes such as the legal practice in international human rights, translation of legal norms within war and martial and strategic law. In particular, the editors would be interested in contributions addressing the implications for law and war of the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit, protest movements, space exploration, and big data and AI. For examples of accepted works please see our second joint edition here.

All articles must be between 4,000 and 6,000 words in length. Articles must comply with extension OSCOLA Guidelines (4th edition). Please click here for a conclusive guide. Guidance can be provided to authors unfamiliar with OSCOLA referencing requirements.

If you are interested in submitting an article for this exciting joint publication, please send the full text, as well as the required information (outlined below) to the following email address: kslr.strife.jointedition@gmail.com

Required Information

Title of the article, set in bold, ranged left and unjustified.
Name of the author or authors directly below the title, followed by institution affiliation, if applicable.
Five or six keywords.
Abstract of around 350 words
Article of between 4,000 and 6,000 words

We will be accepting submissions until Monday 3^rd August 2020 at 6pm (BST). We look forward to receiving your submissions.

The King’s Student Law Review and Strife

For any general enquiries, please contact: kslr.strife.jointedition@gmail.com

If you have any enquiries that are law-related or relate to KSLR’s work in this project or more generally, please contact: kclstudentlawreview@gmail.com.

If you have any enquiries related to the topic of conflict more broadly or that relate to Strife’s collaboration in this project, please contact: journal.strife@gmail.com