Videos

13 July 2021 - One does not immediately think of communism as in any way involved in the outbreak of war in 1939. But it was centrally involved. In the 1920s not only did it play a critically destabilising role immediately after World War I, resulting in the emergence of fascism in Italy and an overriding fear of...

25 June 2021 - Prior to the current pandemic, the impact of the Spanish Flu pandemic 1918-20 was largely neglected in studies of 20 th century geopolitics. As the Liberal International Order, whose foundations were laid by statesmen during the height of Spanish Flu, stands at a crossroads, we ask how the confluence of a...

10 June 2021 - Former UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke speaks with Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center about how Russia currently sees the Baltic, and how countries active in the Baltic Sea region can work to lower tensions. Kaliningrad and St Petersburg, on the Baltic Sea, are Russia’s western border...

31 May 2021 - The Middle East is Europe’s geographical neighbour. The politics and economics of both regions are intricately linked and interconnected. From the 1970s onwards, the EEC and later EU have attempted to formulate a common approach towards the MENA region. Still, “Europe” as external actor in the Middle East has...

20 May 2021 - Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a new and more savage stage in the history of the Second World War. Within months, German armies had penetrated deep into the Soviet territory, capturing millions of prisoners (many of whom were starved to death), and murdering almost a million Jews...

12 May 2021 - Globalisation and Order - Insights from the Middle Ages and Early Modern World Globalisation 2.0: Mongol Eurasia to Modern Eurasia (EAEU and BRI), Dr Prajakti Kalra, Affiliated Lecturer, Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge From secession to the world: the early modern Dutch Republic as an...

5 May 2021 - The trauma of the Second World War in the Baltic was followed by the upheaval of its aftermath. Millions of people were expelled from lands annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. In the Baltic states nationalist partisans fought on for several years against the return of Soviet rule. Finland and Sweden armed...

29 April 2021 - Napoleon once said that the policy of every state lay in its geography. The connection between location and grand strategy is now commonplace, but also little understood. Tim Marshall has done more than most to make geopolitics accessible to a wider audience through his books, which have gained a global...

15 April 2021 - Under former US President Donald Trump, US relations with several African countries appreciably soured and deteriorated, allowing for China to increase its economic and political influence across Africa. The administration of newly elected US President Joseph Biden has a unique geopolitical window to...

10 March 2021 - Noting its historically important role in the region, our panel will ask whether the UK will be able to sustain its role into the future, and if so in what ways?  The critical part played by the UK in deterring Russian aggression through NATO might come under increasing strain, especially if the eventual...

20 January 2021 - Online launch of the Centre's new Baltic Geopolitics Programme. HE Kersti Kaljulaid, the President of the Republic of Estonia, gave opening remarks followed by Professor John Bew, Professor David Abulafia and Edward Lucas, who then took part in a panel discussion. Professor Brendan Simms, the Director of...

2 December 2020 - Nearly 80 years ago President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill drew up the statement which became the Atlantic Charter, cementing the transatlantic alliance. Today that alliance is at a low point but is not beyond resurrection. While the Trump presidency brought into stark focus the modern challenges for...

18 November 2020 - The United Kingdom has a long history in the Western Baltic. From the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, and again in the early twentieth century, the Royal Navy and then the RAF repeatedly intervened in the area. Close commercial and dynastic ties have existed alongside moments of extreme...

11 August 2020 - What happens when Crimes against Humanity and Genocide are perpetrated by a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council? The situation in Xinjiang might be the severest test yet faced by the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). (How) can international society compel China to reverse it policies...

21 October 2020 - This book launch explores how polarised interpretations of America’s past influence the present. Competing Protestant reactions to President Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan evidence a fundamental divide over how Americans remember or forget historical racism, sexism and exploitation...

14 October 2020 - Discussion on how we should think about the Christian legacy of R2P, particularly in light of the ongoing effort to foster broad international adherence to R2P principles. How do contemporary notions of R2P intersect with governmental and non-governmental initiatives to protect persecuted Christian...

23 September panel discussion organised jointly with Cambridge in America as part of the 2020 Alumni Festival. Nearly 120 years ago, the African-American writer W.E.B. du Bois first spoke of the 'colour line' and predicted that it would define the twentieth century. More recently, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis...

The 18 August 2020 panel discusses the legal and societal responses to the National Security Law, and suggests an urgent stake for the international society to take a stance on China’s breach of treaty obligations and the rights of the people of Hong Kong.

This 15 July 2020 panel considers h ow can we understand R2P as a mechanism for protecting minority groups subject to long standing historical practices of oppression? And how does the ‘State-centric’ focus of R2P account for the formal rights of autonomy and self-determination held by many indigenous peoples? Extended...

This 1 July panel discussion looks at how the memory of the Rwandan Genocide continues to shape the atrocity prevention agenda today, and what more needs to be done to truly deliver on the promise of ‘never again’.

At a time when some seek once again to challenge the sovereignty of the Baltic countries, and the UK is delivering a major part of NATO deterrence in the region, the Centre for Geopolitics has assembled a distinguished cast of politicians, diplomats, and historians to explore the history of the time, what the occupation...

This panel considers whether the key antagonism here is between India and Pakistan, or between India and China? Given China's dominance of the Indian market, what is the balance between economic and strategic factors? Is this a new Geopolitics of Corona, or simply the latest manifestation of a long-established strategic...

What will be the role of the NGO sector - economic, cultural and political - in a post-Covid world? And what is the role of governments like the UK in ensuring NGOs can continue supporting the most marginalized people in the world?

As tensions rise within Sweden over the controversial Covid-19 policy, our panel take stock. Is there anything in Swedish history and society which can explain this extraordinary Sonderweg?

In this panel, we attempt to understand better how the contexts of conflict and insecurity in the region are changing through Covid-19, how the pandemic might impact existing crisis and what new challenges might emerge.

The panel focuses on current challenges for mass atrocity prevention in the Asia Pacific region and is jointly hosted with the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

Watch the 13 May panel featuring Andrew Mitchell, MP; Savita Pawnday, Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect; and Max Pensky, U of Binghamton.

Watch the 7 May discussion hosted by Bridget Kendall, featuring Sir John Sawers, Rory Stewart and Suzanne Raine.

Watch the 29 April panel discussion on Responsibility to Protect (R2) as it applies to European states and their vulnerable populations in the current crisis.