Those who study international security and those who practice it see the same world through very different conceptual lenses. Academics are a conflicted lot, simultaneously cherishing and bemoaning their isolation from the world. Pursuing the life of the mind necessarily entails cultivating independence and even detachment from politics, the news cycle, and government policy. Yet detachment can easily become irrelevance, and in recent years, there has been a tidal wave of concern—from academics and non-academics alike—that international relations scholarship has become ever more remote from the affairs of state.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in Washington, said Defence chiefs will struggle to sustain much more than a brigade – around 6,500 troops – in a future war because of a significant slashing in the number of troops, a Washington-based think-tank said in May.  British forces peaked at 46,000 during the invasion phase and then fell away year on year to 4,100 in May 2009 when the UK formally withdrew from Iraq. There are currently just 78,407 regular soldiers in the Army, down from 102,000 in 2010.  The US report also criticised the strength of the Royal Navy, saying it is still unclear whether there will be enough jets to fly off Britain's new aircraft carriers.

U.S. foreign policy is likely to be wracked by crises in the coming years. Yet crises are often symptoms of deeper structural transformations, and the fundamental fact of international politics today is that the post-Cold War era has reached its end. That period was defined by uncontested U.S. and Western primacy, a marked decline in ideological struggle and great-power conflict, and a historically remarkable degree of global cooperation in addressing international disorder. Today, however, the international system has reverted to a more contested state.

This is the question Hal Brands (who blogs over at Shadow Government) and I tackled in a recent article for Survival, the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies: “Was the Rise of ISIS Inevitable? Spoiler alert: We argue the Islamic State threat was not inevitable. We take considerable pains to show how different choices by Presidents George W. Bush and Obama would have likely headed off the Islamic State threat long before it reached its peak in late 2014. Nothing in our argument transfers blame for the toll from the terrorists, where it belongs, to American policymakers, who could have made different choices that would have stymied the terrorists more effectively. But weighing carefully where American policies fell short is a vital part of policy analysis and essential to doing better against whatever terrorist threats emerge after the Islamic State.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) said London will also face 'severe constraints' on its ability to engage in air warfare overseas. Those constraints have 'already been felt' in the campaign against Islamic State, to which the UK has only been able to make a 'very modest contribution', it says. The report, from a Washington-based think-tank, will infuriate ministers who have repeatedly emphasised the significant role the UK has played in the defeat of IS. American experts found America's closest and most powerful allies had all seen their military power 'erode substantially in the past two decades'. The report, 'Dealing with allies in decline', says: 'America's most important NATO allies have been gutting their military capabilities over the past quarter century. 'Indeed, the decline of UK military capabilities offers a particularly stark national example of the overall European trend.'

The ancient Greeks took tragedy seriously. At the very height of Athenian power in the 5th century B.C., in fact, citizens of the world’s first democracy gathered annually to experience tragedy. Great theatrical productions were staged, presented to the entire community, and financed by the public treasury. While the dialogue and plot lines varied, the form, and the lesson, remained consistent. Prominent individuals fell from great heights due to their own errors, ignorance, and hubris. The injunction was clear: The destiny of society was in the hands of fallible men, and even in its hour of triumph that society was always perched on the abyss of catastrophic failure.