Prof, Int Security, @unibirmingham. Contributing Ed, @TheCriticMag. @RUSI_org. @CatoFP. Book on Realism out, book on Churchill soon. Repped Leigh Bureau. 🇦🇺🇬🇧
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Patrick Porter
Killing with kindness
This article is taken from the July 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here. There is once again a significant movement for disarmament in Britain. Previous generations of activists were motivated by a view of the arms industry as both wasteful and a source of pernicious destruction. What they were arguing for was what they aimed to achieve. Today’s movement is different.
How to Survive in a Hostile World: Power, Politics, and the Case for Realism
In this short, spirited book, Porter summarizes the core intellectual beliefs of the realist tradition of international relations. Realism offers a simple set of timeless insights: international life is intrinsically dangerous, the shadow of war is always present, foreigners can never be fully trusted, power is the currency of world politics, and, in a world of anarchy, the pursuit of the national interest is not just a necessity but an ethical obligation.
To Survive Trump, Starmer Must Think the Unthinkable
Donald Trump is on an imperial rampage and Britain is reeling. How else are we to interpret recent events? Note his strike on Venezuela. Note his coveting of Canada. Consider especially his preparations to coerce Denmark into ceding Greenland, which the White House now openly foreshadows in a taunting tweet. And hear his declaration that he himself is his only limit. This behaviour puts the world on notice that the North American superpower – with him at the helm – is a greedy and predatory state.
Against global Britain
Let’s defend our own backyard first Fifteen years ago at a London foreign policy breakfast in a bunker, a pathology that blights British statecraft reared its head. “We’ve got to have a global role”, insisted a senior member of parliament. All in the room nodded as though this were axiomatically true. “Our interests are our values”, piped up a highly regarded journalist, supporting the case for worldwide power projection and an unbounded sense of what matters.
The Case for Realism
We should be pessimistic about the possibility of change
The case for realism | Patrick Porter | The Critic Magazine
Trump’s Favorite Insult Reveals More Than He Might Realize This one small word the president likes to use offers a key window into his worldview. President Donald Trump has a long history of latching onto specific words and phrases, whether he’s describing people’s good looks as “central casting” or praising his own policies, businesses or seemingly …
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick
A prudent fear of the unpredictability of war has been the touchstone of realist thinkers Read Full Article » Show comments Hide Comments Related Articles
Speak softly and carry a big stick
This article is taken from the March 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. In a world where nuclear annihilation is possible, how much should we fear the danger of war escalating? The question has resurfaced with the conflict in Ukraine. It last seriously arose for the West during the Korean War of 1950–53 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Can You Get the Habit-Changing Benefits of Hypnosis through an App?
Dr. Patrick Porter recently received recognition in Goop’s latest article, where he explores the advantages of hypnotherapy. Dr. Porter covers the power of this meditative practice in reshaping our behaviors for the better.
Hard Choices in an Illiberal World
Now with the agony of Gaza, the gap between preachment and practice yawns more fully. Confident that Vladimir Putin’s Russian army could be declared guilty of genocide in Ukraine in 2022, in 2023 Sullivan discovered the White House does not want to play “judge and jury” over similar charges against the Israeli Defence Force. So what is it to be? Upholding liberal values as moral tutor? Or non‐judgemental solidarity with allies?
Study Reveals 15 Risk Factors for Young-Onset Dementia
Dr. Kavita Desai, Dr. Patrick Porter, and Dr. Dale Bredesen were all featured in Prevention’s article about young-onset dementia. These experts share the risk factors associated with young-onset dementia and Dr. Kavita Desai discusses ways to reduce these risks. Click here to read the full story. Source: prevention.com Posted on: January 17, 2024 Permalink | Posted in: Dale Bredesen, Dr Kavita Desai, News, Patrick K. Porter, Press |
October 7 Has Not Changed the Middle East
Beyond rulers, there is little sign of bottom‐up, paradigm‐changing revolt, let alone a revolutionary wave. Close observers speak of populations both incensed yet moderate in their protest, mostly unseduced by Hamas and its ilk, renouncing indiscriminate violence and opting for peaceful mobilisation. There seems little appetite for further attempts at toppling their own rulers. As for Washington, there is a familiar pattern: embracing Israel but exerting limited leverage.
Why Russia Is Still in Business
Then, as Russia’s initial assault met unexpected resistance, Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address in March 2022 spoke of a world response. Putin “thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead, he met a wall of strength he never imagined.” Large majorities of the UN General Assembly condemned the invasion and called for Russia’s unconditional and immediate withdrawal. Russia, observers enthused, was ever more “isolated”.
Why Russia is still in business
This article is taken from the May 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. Here’s what was meant to happen. After Russia fell upon Ukraine in February 2022, the international community — other than designated rogue and pariah states — would rally to condemn and resist the atrocity. The largest act of predation against a sovereign state in living memory was a great wrong that must be righted.
How Europe Can Defend Itself
In some ways, circumstances today are milder than at the turn of the 20th Century. There is no equivalent of the German Kaiserreich, threatening to seize hegemony over the region, while Britain then was close to civil war over Ireland and the constitution. In other ways, however, the situation is worse. Nuclear weapons make even a depleted, thwarted Russia an enduring problem, a giant North Korea on Nato’s frontiers.
How Europe can defend itself
Consider a very British scenario. A beloved monarch has just died, and the stability they embodied is starting to fade. At home, there is growing industrial conflict between capital and labour, and growing constitutional conflict between secessionism and Unionism. Externally, too, the world is becoming increasingly hostile, defined by escalating rivalries and rearmament in Europe and Asia. A recent Russian war demonstrates the possibility of an era of armed conflict.
How Europe can defend itself
BritainDefenceEuropeHistoryRussiaUKUkraineWar Consider a very British scenario. A beloved monarch has just died, and the stability they embodied is starting to fade. At home, there is growing industrial conflict between capital and labour, and growing constitutional conflict between secessionism and Unionism. Externally, too, the world is becoming increasingly hostile, defined by escalating rivalries and rearmament in Europe and Asia.
Cold War Contradictions | Patrick Porter
Kennan: A Life Between Worlds by frank costigliola princeton, 648 pages, $39.95 Another Kennan biography? The study of George Kennan—American diplomat, strategic mind, and architect of the “containment” doctrine that guided U.S. policy throughout the Cold War—is so persistent in academic and policy circles that it has become almost a sub-discipline in itself.
Attacking Russia in Ukraine Means War
Despite calling for the United States to bear such stark risks, proponents have yet to make a compelling argument as to why Putin’s use of nuclear weapons turns the Ukraine war from its current — a cause worth a proxy war with some limited risk — into a cause worth a significantly elevated risk of a far worse outcome. Indeed, the case being offered for a conventional response is contradictory in the extreme.
Can Russia’s War in Ukraine End Without Nuclear Weapons?
This post was adapted from a transcript of a panel at the 2022 Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference. It has been edited and condensed for clarity. The panel was moderated by RAND Corporation senior political scientist Michael Mazarr and featured speakers Kori Schake, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Patrick Porter, professor of international security and strategy at the University of Birmingham; and Polina Sinovets, head of the Odessa Center for Nonproliferation.
A Lost Opportunity Of A Grand Bargain: Security Architecture Between NATO And Russia
Abstract Ukraine is existential to Russia, but peripheral to American interests. The “escalation dominance” advantage is with Moscow, and no amount of military aid or economic coercion, short of an actual war, will deter Moscow, given the asymmetry of interests and differing threat perceptions. American public opinion remains firmly opposed to risking a potential great power war.
We’re not all Ukrainians now
JEA: Well, well, well. It seems that much of the world, including some media outlets, can no longer stand the essentially Satanic activities that the New World Order and its agents have unleashed upon the West, and Politico’s recent article seems to be an example of that. A few months ago, almost every Zionist outlet was saying that “We are all Ukrainians now.” Now the political pendulum is changing.
We’re Not All Ukrainians Now
For British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, “one of the proudest boasts in the free world is, ‘Ya Ukrainets’ — ‘I am a Ukrainian’.” According to U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, “our job is to support the Ukrainians. They’ll set the military objectives, the objectives at the bargaining table … we’re not going to define the outcome of this for them.
We’re not all Ukrainians now Original
Patrick Porteris professor of international security and strategy at the University of Birmingham. Benjamin H. Friedman is policy director at Defense Priorities. Justin Logan is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Insisting that the United States and its NATO allies should want exactly what Ukraine does is understandable politics — but it’s also dangerous policy.
Thucydides was a Realist
The study of Thucydides has become so sophisticated that it has reached the point of overcorrection. When it comes to reading and interpreting the Athenian admiral, exile and historian, who wrote of the cataclysmic Peloponnesian war (431-404BC) between Athens, Sparta and their allies, specialist scholars frequently accuse International Relations theorists of oversimplification.
Four steps to surviving the Russia crisis
In just days, Russia’s high-risk war of aggression in Ukraine has become a nuclear crisis. A nuclear crisis is a confrontation with a heightened probability of military hostilities, that takes place in, and is conditioned by, the shadow of nuclear weapons and their possible use. And this nuclear crisis may endure for some time. We don’t know how long this will last or where it is headed. As things stand, Ukraine may be spared a rapid conquest.
The Real Lesson of Pearl Harbor: Geography Is America's Great Advantage
Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is rightly viewed as a lesson in surprise, unpreparedness, and poor decision-making, despite a wealth of indicators and warnings. As Roberta Wohlstetter famously wrote of the failures that enabled the Japanese attack to succeed, “Never before have we had so complete an intelligence picture of the enemy.” Pearl Harbor’s foremost lesson for Americans, however, should be a positive one.
The United States Should Not Defend Taiwan
Background: Xiamen, Fujian Province, People’s Republic of China; foreground: Kinmen Islands, Taiwan (An Rong Xu/Getty Images) Options to deter or respond to Beijing exist, but war shouldn’t be among them The United States should not fight a war with China over Taiwan. And in the hope of preventing a conflict, it should not commit itself to Taiwan’s defense beforehand. While remaining outwardly ambiguous, it should presume against becoming a belligerent.
Unipolar America: another imperial delusion ends
As Baghdad fell to US-led forces in April 2003, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld fired out a terse ‘snowflake’ memo to his staff. ‘We also need to solve the Pakistan problem. And Korea doesn’t seem to be going well. Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around?’ It could serve as Rumsfeld’s epitaph. On the day of the 9/11 atrocities, he helped carry the dead out of the Pentagon before telling advisors America should use the emergency to eliminate its enemies.
Military Orientalism
Eastern War Through Western Eyes Part of the Critical Strategic Studies series ‘An accessible and well-written book … The author has bravely tackled a contentious yet persistent issue–Orientalism–through the lens of military conflict, and the reader is wiser as a result.’ — International Affairs Description From the Ancient Greeks’ obsession with the armies of the Persians, Westerners have been irresistibly drawn to the exotic nature of ‘Oriental’ warfare and have sought either to emulate...
America Should Reject Fighting Global Authoritarianism
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Subscribe to RSS Print Topic: Grand Strategy Region: World Tags: LiberalismDemocracyAuthoritarianismCold WarAmerican ExceptionalismDemocratic PartyPrimacy The issue is not whether the United States will pursue an “open world,” but how, and how expensively, it is forced to adjust to the realities of international life before the consequences of the doctrine run amok. WHAT SHOULD America’s foreign policy be the day after Donald Trump?
Desert Shield of the Republic? A Realist Case for Abandoning the Middle East
Abstract Political realists disagree on what America should “do” and “be” in the Middle East. All are skeptical toward extravagant geopolitical projects to transform the region. Yet they differ over whether hegemony in the Gulf and its wider environs are worth the substantial investment of blood and treasure. Hegemonic “primacy realism” finds the commitment effective and affordable, and that Washington should stay to stabilize the region to ensure a favorable concentration of power.
Opinion | Why We Can’t Be Friends with Our Allies
Joe Biden campaigns on Oct. 2, 2020 in Grand Rapids, Mich. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Patrick Porter is professor of international security and strategy at the University of Birmingham, a senior associate fellow with the Royal United Service Institute and fellow of the Quincy Institute. Joshua Shifrinson is an assistant professor of international relations at Boston University, an associate of the MIT Security Studies Program and non-resident fellow with the Quincy Institute.
Rethinking the Liberal World Order – Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
With the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, a chorus of voices in the national security establishment have decried the collapse of the “liberal international order.” America no longer leads, they say, and the benevolent order is in freefall. In The False Promise of Liberal Order, Patrick Porter dishes up bad news to the distressed panegyrists of the order that America made, then proffers suggestions for the way forward.
Democracy Always Prevails in Great Power Competition—Well, Almost Always | The American Conservative
Matt Kroenig is getting a lot of kudos for his new tome, but it turns out there are plenty of caveats he did not consider. Hoplite fight from Athens Archaeological Museum. WikiMedia Creative Commons. The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy Versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China, by Matthew Kroenig, Oxford University Press, March 2020, 304 pages.
Wrestling with Fog: On the Elusiveness of Liberal Order
What was life like before the presidency of Donald Trump? And when, or if, his misrule ends, what should the United States and its allies aspire to build? One answer — simple and powerful — is to restore what has been lost during the Trump administration. Recent, wrenching events in international life have prompted anxious commentators to worry about the demise of what they recall as a “liberal international order,” or a “rules-based international order,” under the United States’ aegis.
Why a US policy of fomenting regime change in Iran is a bad idea - Responsible Statecraft
Stephen Wickenton / Shutterstock.com In a recent Washington Post column, Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Ray Tayekh made an impassioned case for seeking regime change in Iran while bemoaning the supposed risk they run of being “scorned as a warmonger, a fomenter of chaos.” The tone of their article is best captured in its final two sentences, “Seeking regime change isn’t rude.
V-E Day Plus 75 - Responsible Statecraft
President Harry Truman announcing the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) The 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender in May 1945 ought to prompt thoughtful reflection. For Americans, V-E Day, as it was then commonly called, marked the beginning of “our times.” The Covid-19 pandemic may signal that our times are now coming to an end. Tom Engelhardt, editor and proprietor of TomDispatch, was born less than a year prior to V-E Day.
'The Blob' strikes back, and misses – Responsible Statecraft
We don’t just need foreign policy experts, we need to challenge the foundation of the bipartisan consensus that has ravaged U.S. foreign policy. In an age of war, debt, and plague, is America’s foreign policy establishment, or “the Blob” as it has been dubbed, part of the problem? Or part of the answer? According to Hal Brands, Peter Feaver, and William Inboden, three sharp minds who served in government and the academy, America needs its specialist class of experts at the helm.
America's Accidental Militarism | The American Conservative
We now know why President Donald Trump authorized the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. It was not a pre-emptive measure, prompted by a specific warning of an imminent threat from Iran or its proxies. Officials have abandoned that claim, and shifted the rationale to restoring “deterrence” via overwhelming force. Contrary to explanations that focus on flawed procedure or Trump’s dysfunctional personality, we know that this was not a solo impulse.
Tapping into history
As soon as you enter Idagio.com you can kiss your working day goodbye One summer’s evening in the early 1990s, I met a student called Till at a festival in Schleswig-Holstein where major soloists were making music in cleaned-up cowsheds amid the lowing of displaced Friesians in nearby fields. Among the cowpats, I found some serious blue-sky dreamers.
WHY BRITAIN DOESN'T DO GRAND STRATEGY
Patrick Porter Dr Patrick Porter is a Senior Lecturer at King's College London and at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, British Defence Academy, in the Defence Studies Department. He was born in Canberra, grew up in Melbourne, and completed a doctorate at Oxford University. An historian with an interest in strategy and diplomatic history, he is writing a book on American grand strategy from Pearl Harbor to Iraq.
"The war party is reluctant to dwell on the historic blunder of invading Iraq. Instead, it eagerly rewrites the history as one of premature a […]"
Simple way to say, human #History is millions of years old, and measured in the manner of Chaturyuga (4 main yugas/cycles). In due time, the Races of mankind (and/or, genetic make-up) gets diluted, lost, assembled/reassembled, out-mixing (w/other species), unregulated mixing, etc. & via such phenomena in successive ages.
Correspondence: The Establishment and U.S. Grand Strategy
Peter D. Feaver Peter D. Feaver is a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, where he heads the Program in American Grand Strategy and the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. Hal Brands Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Correspondence: The Establishment and U.S. Grand Strategy
Peter D. Feaver Peter D. Feaver is a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, where he heads the Program in American Grand Strategy and the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. Hal Brands Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
International Security
Steven E. Miller, Editor-in-ChiefSean M. Lynn-Jones and Owen R. Coté Jr., Editors Diane J. McCree, Managing Editor International Security publishes lucid, well-documented essays on the full range of contemporary security issues. Its articles address traditional topics such as war and peace as well as more recent dimensions of security, including the growing importance of environmental, demographic, and humanitarian issues, and the rise of global terrorist networks.
Advice for a Dark Age: Managing Great Power Competition
Elliott School of International Affairs 1957 E Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20052 Phone: 202-994-4626 | Fax: 202-994-5477 [email protected]
Iraq Wasn’t Blair’s War, but Britain’s
In 2003 Britain joined a US-led coalition to invade Iraq. In folk memory, it has become ‘Blair’s War’, driven by his delusions, his bad faith and his close alignment with a US president. But it was not just Blair’s War. It was Britain’s. The will to war was wider than many like to recall. As long as Blair is the scapegoat, Britons will fail to confront questions of security and power. It could all happen again.
Iraq Wasn’t Blair’s War, but Britain’s
In 2003 Britain joined a US-led coalition to invade Iraq. In folk memory, it has become ‘Blair’s War’, driven by his delusions, his bad faith and his close alignment with a US president. But it was not just Blair’s War. It was Britain’s. The will to war was wider than many like to recall. As long as Blair is the scapegoat, Britons will fail to confront questions of security and power. It could all happen again.
Not Blair’s War, but Britain’s
In 2003 Britain joined a US-led coalition to invade Iraq. In folk memory, it has become ‘Blair’s War’, driven by his delusions, his bad faith and his close alignment with a US president. But it was not just Blair’s War. It was Britain’s. The will to war was wider than many like to recall. As long as Blair is the scapegoat, Britons will fail to confront questions of security and power. It could all happen again.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Patrick
Contact Patrick, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack