The Duck of Minerva

Patrick Porter

Patrick Porter is Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham. He is also Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London. His research interests are great power politics, grand strategy, realism, the causes and consequences of major powers’ decline, the Iraq war of 2003, foreign and defence policy in the US and UK, and the intellectual life of major powers and their foreign policy establishments. He has written four books. His book Blunder: Britain's War in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018) was shortlisted for the British Army Military Book of the Year Prize, 2019. His most recent book is The False Promise of Liberal Order: Nostalgia, Delusion and the Rise of Trump (Polity, 2020). He also wrote The Global Village Myth: Distance, War and the Limits of Power (Georgetown University Press, 2015) and Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes (Columbia University Press, 2009.

Recent Posts

Is Victory Bad for Business?

by Patrick Porter | 15 August, 2012 |

All wars end. Or do they?Rather too often, we are being reminded that the 'war on terror' against the Al Qaeda terrorist network is far from over, in fact that it will never end and even, that it can never end. One military analyst, for example,a former employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the US, states OBL and his closest circle in Pakistan were hardly influential to AQ franchises and affiliates. In his last few years as AQ’s leader, OBL was never concerned in the operational aspects of AQ. This perhaps means that the death of OBL, though a great success for counterterrorism,...

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Why worry about an Iranian bomb?

by Patrick Porter | 5 August, 2012 |

With sanctions and talks – and a big stick in the background – the United States and its allies are trying to curtail Tehran’s nuclear programme. Australia is playing its part. Canberra recently blocked a shipment of industrial equipment to Iran. Australia’s Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr, believes preventing a nuclear Iran is vital. Is he right?Kenneth Waltz thinks not. The celebrated American political scientist says we should redefine the problem. The real difficulty in the Gulf is not Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he argues. It is the fact that one state in the area (Israel) has a...

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The Neocons Made Me Do It: Iraq and the Alibi of Liberal Hawks

by Patrick Porter | 24 March, 2012 |

Looking back on the disaster (or extremely Pyhrric Victory) that was the Iraq War, Stephen Walt reflects:'The remarkable thing about the Iraq war is how few people it took to engineer. It wasn't promoted by the U.S. military, the CIA, the State Department, or oil companies. Instead, the main architects were a group of well-connected neoconservatives, who began openly lobbying for war during the Clinton administration... As the New York Times' Thomas Friedman told Ha'aretz in May 2003: 'Iraq was the war neoconservatives wanted... the war the neoconservatives marketed.... I could give you the...

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The unconquerable village

by Patrick Porter | 5 March, 2012 |

I'm very much looking forward to attending this year's International Studies Association conference in lovely San Diego. This is partly because I can fight a losing struggle against its declared theme for this year:'Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message,” and coined the term “global village.” McLuhan died in 1980, but his insights are even more relevant today. The information environment is drastically different from that of even a decade ago, as new forms of information flows come into existence almost annually.Facebook now has over 500...

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How to Be a Good Realist

by Patrick Porter | 18 February, 2012 |

I'm going to delve clumsily into IR Theory here, so I'd be grateful to get some feedback on the question of the 'Realist' minimum.In a fascinating post recently on US-China relations, Stephen Walt wrote:"First, as a good realist, I think that the basic state of Sino-American relations will be driven more by balances of power and configurations of interest than by the personalities of individual leaders. As I've noted before, if China continues to grow more powerful, Bejing and Washington will view each other with an increasingly wary eye and are likely to find more issues about which to...

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Begging to differ on Libya and R2P

by Patrick Porter | 12 February, 2012 |

In a reflective post not long ago, Robert E. Kelly noted:"...we are elated that the Libya operation worked, (against all odds given the Iraq experience and what we know about foreign intervention in LDCs generally). Lots of Duck writers supported the intervention. (I found Jon Western’s arguments last spring particularly persuasive; some of my writing on Libya is here and here.) Even if you didn’t support it, and worried that it meant more ‘empire,’ it still tugged at your heartstrings to see Libyans fighting and dying against a nasty tyrant. So you probably supported the NATO intervention...

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On Security Dilemmas and The Absurdity of Newt Gingrich

by Patrick Porter | 1 February, 2012 |

When he isn't comparing himself to Ronald Reagan (whose withdrawal of troops from Lebanon, arms control negotiations with Gorbachev, nuclear abolitionist visions and moderation on immigration, and general sunny persona suggest they aren't politically identical), Newt Gingrich says things like this:I would say that the most dangerous thing — which, by the way, Barack Obama just did — the Iranians are practicing closing the Strait of Hormuz, actively taunting us, so he cancels a military exercise with the Israelis so as not to be provocative?"Dictatorships respond to strength, they don’t...

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Obama’s Offshore Dominance

by Patrick Porter | 25 January, 2012 |

Before I launch in, I just wanted to say quickly to Dan Nexon and all the folk at the Duck, thanks for letting me stay on board! I normally lose respect for institutions that decide to keep me as a member, but this is one exception.Its a little late in coming, but I wanted to post some thoughts on Peter Beinart's thoughtful recent description of President Obama's evolving approach to US grand strategy as 'offshore balancing.'Stephen Walt has already responded, and there have already been some great posts on the broader issue of what really counts as offshore balancing, here, and here.One of...

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The Iraq surge: vindicated then exposed?

by Patrick Porter | 22 December, 2011 |

We haven’t got all the details, but promptly after the departure of US combat troops the Iraqi Prime Minister is feuding badly with Sunni political figures, and a bomb blast suggests that Iraq may be escalating into more sectarian conflict.If so, what does this say about the surge? On one hand, the relatively quiet withdrawal of American troops on Tuesday vindicated one objective of the surge: to create more stable conditions to that America could pull out quietly without it being humiliated and without the kind of chaotic flight to the exits that would polarize its society.On the other...

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Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

by Patrick Porter | 17 December, 2011 |

Christopher Hitchens has died. The world has lost one of its most luminous minds.He will be acclaimed for his literary criticism, his political stances, and his raw physical courage as a writer-journalist, entering dangerous battlespaces from Belgrade to Baghdad. Not to mention his wit, occasional rudeness, his filthy limericks, and his dignified and reflective meditations on his coming death. His greatest work, I think, was Why Orwell Matters – a penetrating study of another brave and ferociously sharp Englishman.I was lucky enough to meet him a few times, and interview him. He drank a...

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