I\u2019m not sure anything actually surprised me, because I have a lot of Ukrainian friends and colleagues who told me what Kyiv was like. But, of course, stories can\u2019t compare to actually being here. First and foremost, I was struck by the city\u2019s size and beauty, and how open, inquisitive, and engaging the people here are. Wherever I go, as soon as someone hears my accent, they stop me and start a conversation: \u201cOh my God, where are you from? What do you do?\u201d I\u2019ve met so many people here who are doing genuinely impressive things locally while also thinking and operating on a global scale. It\u2019s incredible. For example, I\u2019m from Los Angeles, and yesterday I met a young Ukrainian architect at a coffee shop who has designed spaces in LA. He showed me some of the projects he was working on there, and it was a wonderful reminder not only of how interconnected we all are, but also just how important and integral Ukraine and Ukrainians are to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You started out studying history and then became a military historian. Why did you decide to focus on this aspect of history?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, as a child, I always wanted to play with toy guns, but my mom wouldn\u2019t let me \u2014 she thought it was too violent. So I decided to do it as an adult \u2014 perhaps as an act of rebellion. But over time, as I delved deeper into the study of war, I began to see it differently. War is, sadly, one of the most common forms of human activity. People have always engaged in it and, unfortunately, always will. That\u2019s why there is immense value in understanding it as deeply as possible \u2014 both as a society and as individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Especially since 2022, this has become a personal mission for me: to help people better understand what war is \u2014 how it starts, how it affects those who experience it, and how we can and should respond to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has become customary to view and study history primarily through the lens of wars and conquests. Do you agree with this approach?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s really interesting. If you walk into a bookstore and go to the history section \u2014 especially in the U.K. \u2014 \u201chistory\u201d there actually means the history of wars. There might be a small section on monarchs or politics, but books about war dominate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Western tradition, the oldest histories we have are actually histories of wars. So, there is something about war that captures the human imagination and memory more powerfully than perhaps anything else, and that does make a lot of sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With war comes loss, and when we lose people, we want to remember them. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n We place a huge emphasis on memory and on preserving whatever we can of that pre-war life, and this perversely compels us to focus on war again and again. This means that many periods of history, all over the world, are actually counted or categorized by their wars. We use the term \u201cinterwar period\u201d to refer to the 1920s and 1930s. What other time and space do you define by an absence of something? That\u2019s really strange, isn\u2019t it? In other periods of human history, when there might not be a war going on, or at least not a major one, we don\u2019t call them \u201cnon-war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I believe that war, as Clausewitz [a Prussian military commander, participant in the Napoleonic Wars, theorist and philosopher of war \u2014 Ed.<\/em>] wrote, is a serious matter, and it demands serious attention, serious reflection, and a serious response. And perhaps this seriousness makes it more prominent in historical memory than other things that are no less important, like the economy, culture, art \u2014 everything that actually makes life possible and fulfilling. And there is a certain irony in this. We remember best what destroys us, and much less what sustains us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You studied in the U.S. and then moved to the U.K. How do the academic environments of these two countries differ, and how did they shape you as a researcher?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was still studying in the U.S., I realized quite early on \u2014 around the age of 18 \u2014 that I wanted to be a historian. Even back then, I found war to be an interesting subject. I told my academic advisors about this, and they replied, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t. It\u2019s career suicide.\u201d And they were probably right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United States, it\u2019s very difficult to be a scholar of war and find a job. It\u2019s not impossible, but the path is much narrower. The general advice I got was: focus on related topics \u2014 cultural, social or political history \u2014 through which you could then approach the subject of war. So, you can become a historian of culture, society or politics and eventually switch to focusing more directly on war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United Kingdom, especially 20 years ago, the situation was different. There, studying war as a discrete subject was much easier and more natural. It didn\u2019t carry the same political implications, or at least I didn\u2019t feel like it to me. In the U.S., however \u2014 at least since the 1960s \u2014 interest in war is often perceived as a political stance. It\u2019s as if the very choice of this topic automatically means you\u2019re \u201cpro-war\u201d, or a right-wing radical, or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine this scenario: an 18- or 19-year-old student in the U.S. tells their advisor, \u201cI want to get a PhD in military studies.\u201d And in response, they hear something like, \u201cDoes that mean you\u2019re a Trump supporter? Are you a fascist?\u201d \u2014 in other words, a reaction that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the U.K., this is also becoming the case increasingly, sadly. I\u2019ve had students tell me that when they tell their friends they want to study war or work in the defense sector \u2014 in think tanks or government agencies or what have you \u2014 they often hear in response: \u201cOh, does that mean you\u2019re a fascist?\u201d This is a tragic response at a time when we can least afford it. Because now, more than ever, the U.K., the U.S. and Western Europe, in particular, really need to have a better understanding of war, and we risk losing the young people who could be doing critical war-related work in the future. This isn\u2019t just about military expertise in the narrow sense. Given the apparent likelihood of large-scale wars becoming more and more common in the coming years or decades, we need brilliant young people who understand war across every domain: the technical, historical, theoretical, humanitarian and philosophical. And at the same time, we are making access to this knowledge, its acquisition, development and dissemination, increasingly difficult. And so we find ourselves trapped in a very complicated situation, which, in my opinion, was probably a little better 20 years ago \u2014 at least in the U.K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did the culture of studying war as an interdisciplinary phenomenon develop in the United Kingdom? And why does this topic remain politically sensitive in the United States?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United Kingdom, several institutions are dedicated to the study of war. One of them is the Department of War Studies at King\u2019s College London, where I was educated. It was founded by the historian Sir Michael Howard and was, really, a product of the Cold War. Its creation reflected the idea that war is a complex and significant phenomenon that cannot be left solely to historians or political scientists. To truly understand it, you need multiple perspectives \u2014 law, sociology, psychology, history, economics \u2014 a truly interdisciplinary approach. And largely thanks to Howard and his colleagues, this intellectual culture in Britain took shape as we know it today. Without them, it would look entirely different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Kingdom also benefits from having a national history and culture that is heavily centered on the experience of the Second World War. Today, both the United States and the United Kingdom base a significant part of their national identity on this period. Even I do, and I\u2019m aware of it! It\u2019s inescapable. My grandmother, when she was a young girl in London, survived the Blitz, the German bombing of British cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If three years ago someone had asked me whether I would ever drink tea in a city under bombardment myself, as she did, I would have said, \u201cYou\u2019re out of your mind.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n of our reality, after just two generations. And we\u2019re the lucky ones! This experience, it seems, gives the British a little more freedom to study war in a way that Americans don\u2019t necessarily have, because Americans don\u2019t have that same victim narrative or portray themselves as victims, despite Pearl Harbor. For similar reasons, it\u2019s probably easier to study imperialism in the U.S. Although the United States has imperial traits, it doesn\u2019t have the same historical memory of empire as Britain does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Britain, it\u2019s difficult to write a history about empire that\u2019s neutral: you have to be at least somewhat critical \u2014 in fact, very critical \u2014 otherwise you simply wouldn\u2019t be taken seriously. And that\u2019s understandable. Imperialism is horrible, and I would be suspicious of anyone who claimed that imperialism benefits anyone (although, as in every system, there are always individuals who find a way to sail with the prevailing winds and profit a bit themselves through empire, or whatever other oppressive structure).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the way research is shaped and directed \u2014 often in very subtle ways, without overt pressure \u2014 has a long-term impact on what a country can or cannot study. And this, in turn, influences society, its culture, and how it responds to conflicts. Sometimes I ask myself: if the U.S. had greater freedom to conduct an in-depth, multifaceted study of war, would they be as eager to go to war as they are now? I\u2019d like to believe not. But, unfortunately, the opposite effect is also possible \u2014 it could make them even more enthusiastic about war. And that would truly be a disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They say that history teaches us only that it teaches us nothing. Do you agree?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, coming back to Michael Howard \u2014 who was, you could say, my academic \u201cgrandfather,\u201d my supervisor\u2019s supervisor at Oxford. In 1989, at the time of the Soviet Union\u2019s collapse, he said in an interview (roughly paraphrased): \u201cHistory tells us nothing \u2014 historians tell us things. And they are just as prone to error as anyone else. So be wary of those who put on the mask and say, \u201cI am history, and this is what I tell you.\u201d So, on the one hand, history cannot offer easy lessons. But it does offer something else \u2014 an opportunity to understand people a little better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m a historian, so my sincere apologies to any quantum physicists reading this, I\u2019m sadly going to butcher one of their great contributions to human knowledge in my ignorance. You will have heard of the concept of superposition \u2014 that reality exists not as a fixed, concrete certainty, but rather as a near-infinite series of probabilities. And so, if we look at life \u2014 at human decisions, whether individual, social or political \u2014 as well as at the conduct and outcome of war, as part of that long chain of probabilities, then hope emerges. By understanding patterns of the past \u2014 how people think and act under certain circumstances \u2014 we can gain a clearer sense of the probabilities and make slightly better decisions. So, if you make hundreds or thousands of decisions based on slightly better data, then, hopefully, your overall results will also be a little bit better \u2014 even if any single decision may not necessarily change or lead to a better or worse outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does history help us understand what is happening in Europe today?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, in a sense. One of the keys to understanding this, to my mind, is the logic of empire. One of my greatest disappointments in 2022 was that many of my friends and colleagues who had opposed imperialism for decades turned out to be insufficiently critical of Russia, in my view. For various reasons, they either failed or refused to see what lay behind its actions \u2014 the motives, ambitions and, ultimately, the inevitable consequences. This is not just about war as such: the killing of civilians, the execution of prisoners of war, forced \u201cre-education\u201d in occupied territories, the mass abduction of children. None of this is unique. These phenomena have a long tail of heartbreaking precedents \u2014 particularly so in the history of land-based empires that pursue this kind of expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we compare this to, say, the United States\u2019 and Canada\u2019s policies toward Indigenous peoples in the 1870s\u20131890s, or indeed before and after, the parallels are pretty obvious. Children are taken from their families, forced to speak a language not their own, and sent to schools designed to erase their culture and replace it with the new imperial one. This has happened before. Such practices have been repeated many times throughout history, especially in land-based empires \u2014 probably because they lack the distance that bodies of water provide. So, when peoples exist as neighbors but have different languages, histories, cultures and ways of thinking \u2014 as in the case of Ukrainians and Russians \u2014 the imperial power can\u2019t accept this. Such difference is a living argument against empire; it demands independence, uniqueness and individuality \u2014 everything that empire seeks to destroy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Russian Empire sought to turn everyone into Russians. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In its later years, the Ottoman Empire sought to turn everyone into Ottomans. But such efforts are always futile. So, of course, there are parallels and analogies. Knowing about this doesn\u2019t guarantee that such processes can be prevented, but it does allow us to spot their signs earlier \u2014 and, perhaps, to respond better or at least mitigate their consequences. If we look at Russia\u2019s history, the idea that after 1989\u20131991 it would never again try to expand westward was truly absurd. It is a recurring cycle with brief intervals, which proved quite short-lived in this case. First came political and economic pressure; later, open military aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are there any patterns in the history of wars that humanity stubbornly ignores?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sure. It seems to me that \u2014 both in the past and today \u2014 we define the boundaries of war too narrowly. In reality, war extends far beyond its discrete geographical or temporal confines. I\u2019m actually finishing writing a book on anti-colonial uprisings during the First World War. The people I write about were from Sudan, Nigeria, Senegal, New Caledonia, Vietnam, Ukraine, Kazakhstan \u2014 places perceived as peripheral, unimportant, or even \u201coutside the war.\u201d But their impact was enormous. First and foremost, it was economic. Even a hundred years ago, the global economy was interconnected. When war broke out, its consequences were quickly felt far beyond the front lines. For example, the loss of readily available Ukrainian grain almost immediately led to food scarcity in various parts of the world, especially in South Asia and Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The military impact on these more remote regions was profound and extended far beyond the \u201ccanonical\u201d battlefronts. The large-scale anti-colonial uprisings in West Africa during the First World War were just as much a part of that war as Verdun or the Somme, the Battle of Riga, or any other famous battles. People don\u2019t recognize this because it doesn\u2019t fit into the usual narrative. If we apply this to today, people in Argentina, California, the United Kingdom or Portugal might think this war doesn\u2019t concern them, but that\u2019s not true at all. The war affects them \u2014 and they, in turn, affect the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People don\u2019t realize it, but they influence the war in a million little ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every time they interact with systems related to Russian exports, when they pay taxes, part of which goes toward military spending, the little things they privately share with their friends or family, when they post something on social media \u2014 all of this takes place in the context of the war and, in one way or another, influences it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On an individual level, this might seem insignificant, but when multiplied by hundreds of millions or billions of people, the cumulative effect becomes colossal. We forget this because we get caught up in our own petty problems or mistakes: the train is late (never here, but all the time in the U.K.), the internet isn\u2019t working (never here, but all the time in the U.K.). And we forget that, in reality, we are all global players, and every small decision we make exists within this broader context. We build the world \u2014 moment by moment, day by day \u2014 which is both inspiring and can make us feel truly quite small at times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope that studying the past can remind us of the power of an individual, of a single decision, or some small act of love or kindness.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Because, multiplied by billions, it becomes something far larger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If aggressive war is a marker of empires (or imperial phantom pains), does that mean that if there are no empires, there will be no wars? Or is it some kind of a new utopia?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no such thing as a world without empires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not even in the future?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s impossible. At least, historical experience gives us reason to be skeptical. My former colleague and one of the scholars I look up to, John Darwin, writes in his book \u201cAfter Tamerlane\u201d (paraphrased) that an empire is likely the most typical form of political organization in human history. He describes an empire very simply: it is the rule of one people over another. So, if you are Welsh today, no matter what you think of Great Britain, no matter how you feel about your own country, strictly speaking, you live within the English empire. The English have all the money; they hold the overwhelming majority of political power and make up the overwhelming majority of the population. Even if you speak Welsh at home, when you do business, you most likely speak English, not Welsh. And this sort of thing happens all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you live in the parts of the Russian Federation located in Central Asia, you live in an empire. If you are Hawaiian or a member of a Native American nation \u2014 Lakota, Cheyenne or any other \u2014 you live in the American empire. Even these nations were empires themselves. I tell my students: wherever you look, it\u2019s empire upon empire. It\u2019s simply the way people operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s try to imagine a future in which, for some reason, there are no empires and every nation, however it is defined, governs itself. Sooner or later, one nation would begin to gain control over another through economic, political, cultural or military means \u2014 it is inevitable! And from this advantage grows influence and from influence \u2014 expansion. This continues until that power encounters another power large enough to stop it, usually another empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From a European perspective, the British and French conquest of Africa in the 1870s and 1880s is often portrayed as Europeans arriving and subjugating African societies that were supposedly ethnically homogeneous. But this is absurd. Even small communities were usually very diverse, ethnically and linguistically. People lived in complex networks of connections, with intersecting identities, as is, after all, the case everywhere else in the world. It takes only a few generations of intermarriage, migration and contact, and no community is \u201cpure\u201d or homogeneous anymore. If you are Wolof and see a cute Serer girl, marry her and move to her village, it doesn\u2019t take long for it to become a mixed community. So in Africa, as in other parts of the world, European empires often encountered not \u201cempty space,\u201d but other African entities \u2014 very often of an imperial nature as well: the Sokoto Caliphate, the Ashanti Empire, Benin and countless others. And this, unfortunately, is the normal course of action for human societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we take a closer look, Kyiv, where we\u2019re sitting right now, was also at the crossroads of empires. In the 20th century, over a very short period, the city passed under the control of various empires, most notably the Polish and Russian ones. And if we broaden our perspective to, say, Western Ukraine, this story becomes even more complex. So, empires are everywhere and in this history, we almost always find ourselves simultaneously in the role of both the conquerors and the conquered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From a humanistic perspective, war is always bad because it brings death, suffering and destruction. But is war ever studied as a positive phenomenon?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It has been for many years, but rather less so now. When I first meet students, whether they\u2019re first-year undergraduates or army officers, I ask the same question: \u201cWhat is war?\u201d Those who are a bit more well-read sometimes answer: \u201cWar is politics by other means.\u201d All right, that\u2019s Clausewitz. But to make them think, I answer this question this way: war is the killing of civilians and the destruction of their property. It is comparatively rare to find a war in which the military bears a greater burden of suffering and loss than civilians, which runs counter to every cultural expectation we have of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we look at the Second World War, hopefully the biggest we will ever fight, although I doubt it, the scale of military casualties was truly staggering. But the losses among the civilian population were somehow even greater. There are isolated cases where the military suffers greater losses \u2014 both human and material \u2014 than civilians. But these are usually smaller, short-lived and isolated conflicts. In most wars, the opposite is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any conflict, as soon as the war reaches cities and broad segments of the population, civilians suffer. For a long time, I hoped \u2014 though I have far less hope now than I did before \u2014 that if those in power truly understood this, it might make war less likely. Because, in essence, the decision to start a war means killing civilians to achieve political goals. This is entirely different from saying, \u201cWe are striking military targets to neutralize them and protect our interests.\u201d Such language sounds clean and rational, as if there were nothing too terrible behind it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we were to say outright, \u201cWe want to enrich our country by killing their civilians and seizing their natural resources,\u201d that would be much harder to sell. But, in essence, that is largely what war is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we look at Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine from this perspective, on one level, it\u2019s no different: we want to kill Ukrainian civilians and seize Ukraine\u2019s raw materials and human resources. Even states that are less directly involved in this war, such as the United States of America (at least under the current administration), are willing to accept the deaths of Ukrainian civilians due to insufficient military, financial or air defense support in exchange for being able to profit from Ukraine\u2019s resources, both human and physical, in the future. This, in my view, is the fundamental nature of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You mentioned the famous Clausewitz quote about war as the continuation of politics by other means. But how relevant are historical military experience, strategy, tactics, theory and philosophy today? How relevant are figures like Clausewitz, Napoleon, Suvorov, Sahaidachnyi or Sun Tzu? After all, it is often said that a completely different war is currently being waged in Ukraine \u2014 a war of new technologies, which requires new tactics.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My first reaction as a historian to any \u201cnew\u201d phenomenon is to question its novelty. Almost everything has already happened before. Take drones, for example. Essentially, they are just another way to kill from a distance. Ever since humans were able to throw stones, the logic of ranged warfare has not changed. Only the means change \u2014 they become more effective, cheaper or more accessible, but it\u2019s all driven by the same idea. This doesn\u2019t mean that drones haven\u2019t changed anything. At the tactical level, they have indeed forced a rethinking of warfare and a rewriting of military tactics around the world. Ukrainians are receiving great praise for this, and they deserve it, but their innovations would have likely happened anyway eventually; it was an inevitable development. As far back as 10\u201315 years ago, drones were used by, among others, Hezbollah, weren\u2019t they? In other words, drones were never the exclusive domain of states or large armies. For a long time, they have been a way for armed forces to do more with less. When firepower increases \u2014 as it does with the advent of drones \u2014 and at the same time the ability to quickly detect and strike targets grows, it brings the warring parties to a stalemate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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