When thinking of war, the first thing one may picture is military action. But looking into past conflicts and identifying their triggers, features, and impact can help bring about a better future. Today, the world’s geopolitics demands a discipline that informs individuals about global conflicts and their causes. War Studies is one subject, which helps create better defence professionals, diplomats and global changemakers.
It provides an opportunity to understand politically motivated violent areas at the domestic and international level. The development of society has, and will continue to be, intertwined with and shaped by warfare and other kinds of politically directed violence. It is central to social, political and economic development. Today, warfare within inter-state relations is still critical, given the potential impact of modern weapons’ destructive capacity. There are the broader threats to security born from contemporary issues such as inequality, climate change, gender discrimination and uneven access to resources. All these factors make War Studies a vast subject that is particularly well designed to meet modern society’s global and local challenges.
It gives students with an inclusive approach to understand international politics and conflicted areas and benefits them vastly. Fundamentally, they will understand that power lies in history, the dynamics between countries, and the contemporary world’s economy, influenced by military force. However, it also highlights the limits of the utility of force and its place in international diplomacy. Students of War Studies can understand continuity in human affairs, the trends changing the world and the lessons learned from world history. Such understanding is applicable in a wide variety of careers.
What it entails
The discipline goes beyond theoretical knowledge, also focuses on its real-time application, and on competencies and the proficiencies needed. Some institutions build this into their assessments; for example, risk assessments, policy briefs, defence planning and operations planning.
A degree in War Studies sees students move to commissions in the armed forces, police, intelligence services, and defence ministry with a solid, informed approach. Graduates can also work as diplomats, state ambassadors or human rights workers. Students can also move on to research, global think tanks and academia after graduating.
Through this, students get an opportunity to study crucial military theory; land and sea power strategies; terrorism; insurgency and counter-insurgency; nuclear warfare; cyber-war; maritime security, and more. Students study within the context of past conflicts with examples drawn from across the world.
Though the pandemic has made education challenging, evolving teaching materials and access to digital learning has helped institutions globally make the best out of the crisis. The world increasingly needs dynamic courses like War Studies to keep up with the changing paradigms of global politics and to drive an international community of individuals who use what they have learned from history and are dedicated to helping society build a better tomorrow.
The writer is SFHEA, Reader in Maritime Security Studies, Head of Department of Politics
