Dr Robert Johnson

Dr Robert Johnson
Senior Research Fellow
Pembroke
robert.johnson@pmb.ox.ac.uk

Dr Johnson’s specialisms are in War; Strategy and Strategic Thinking; and Conflict in South West and Central Asia

I work on the History of War in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular interest in the First World War, the Indian Army and the so-called 'sideshows'; the Inter-War Years, and more recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Middle East. Thematically, I focus on strategy, conventional operations, tactical developments, revolutionary warfare, intelligence and counter-insurgency.

 

See page on Pembroke College website

Research

Robert Johnson works in the following periods:

  • Military and International Diplomatic History

I am the Director of the Changing Character of War Programme which is an interdisciplinary study of war and armed conflict. In 2013-14, the research priorities of the programme are the changing relationship between war and the state, war in a connected world, the history of insurgency and counterinsurgency, the history of the laws of warfare and the moral dimensions of war. There is a particular interest in ‘Civilians in War’ which will be developed as a research strand through the CCW programme’s Visiting Research Fellows.  The CCW programme has been particularly successful in developing the dialogue between scholars, the armed services, governments and multinational organisations, and engaging in joint research projects, conferences and seminars.

Publications

  • The Great War in the Middle East

    January 2019
    |
    c-book
    This edited collection offers chapters covering various aspects of the First World War in the Middle East: strategic, military, artistic, informational, literary, religious, experiential, and social. It is therefore one of the most broad studies of the conflict in a single volume in recent decades.

  • Before military intervention: Upstream stabilisation in theory and practice

    September 2018
    |
    c-book
    © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. All rights reserved. This book explores the natures of recent stabilisation efforts and global upstream threats. As prevention is always cheaper than the crisis of state collapse or civil war, the future character of conflict will increasingly involve upstream stabilisation operations. However, the unpredictability and variability of state instability requires governments and militaries to adopt a diversity of approach, conceptualisation and vocabulary. Offering perspectives from theory and practice, the chapters in this collection provide crucial insight into military roles and capabilities, opportunities, risks and limitations, doctrine, strategy and tactics, and measures of effect relevant to operations in upstream environments. This volume will appeal to researchers and practitioners seeking to understand historical and current conflict.

  • The de Bunsen committee and a revision of the ‘conspiracy’ of Sykes–Picot

    July 2018
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Middle Eastern Studies

  • Designing a Research Platform for Engaged Learning

    May 2018
    |
    Conference paper
    |
    Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries
    © 2018 Authors. This panel addresses the opportunities and challenges of using multi-institutional collaborations and digital approaches to drive engaged-learning and archive-focused projects. It focuses in particular on the opportunities presented by the archives related to the negotiation of constitutions and international treaties.

  • The War Outside of Europe

    May 2018
    |
    Chapter
    |
    1918 Winning the War, Losing the War
    The chapter details the fighting fronts in Africa and the Middle East in 1918 This wide-ranging collection of articles by some of the most renowned names in the subject explores the tumultuous events of the final year of the war.
    History

  • Hybrid War and Its Countermeasures: A Critique of the Literature

    January 2018
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Small Wars and Insurgencies
    © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article examines critically the literature of hybrid war and evaluates the countermeasures often proposed. It explains the concept of hybrid warfare and its varied interpretations, illustrating how it is a manifestation of current anxieties in armed conflict. The selection of the literature is based on works that are referenced, that offer a scientific approach, and which review either the phenomenon of hybrid warfare or its countermeasures empirically. Unscientific works have been omitted. The analysis of the literature presented here shows that the antidotes to ‘hybridity’ lie not in the operational or tactical sphere but in strategic and political domains.

  • The First World War and the Middle East: a literature review of recent scholarship

    January 2018
    |
    Journal article
    |
    MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

  • UK Defence Policy: The New Canada and International by Design

    January 2018
    |
    Chapter
    |
    The United Kingdom's Defence After Brexit: Britain's Alliances, Coalitions and Partnerships
    UK Defence, Strategy, Security

  • True to Their Salt Indigenous Personnel in Western Armed Forces

    August 2017
    |
    Book
    He then offers a comprehensive survey of the post-colonial legacy, particularly the recent utilisation of surrogates and auxiliaries, the work of embedded training teams, and mentoring.
    Armed Forces

  • The first world war and the middle east

    July 2017
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Asian Affairs
    © 2017 The Royal Society for Asian Affairs. The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman dominion. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalized old ones – from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence or the modernizing Atatürk, and it completely re-drew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, For many, the self-serving intervention of these powers in the region between 1914 and 1919 is the major reason for the conflicts that have raged there on and off ever since. Yet many of the most common assertions about the First World War in the Middle East and its aftermath are devoid of context. This article argues that, far from being a mere sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the centre of gravity in a war for imperial interests. Moreover, contrary to another persistent myth of the First World War in the Middle East, local leaders and their forces were not simply the puppets of the Great Powers. The way in which these local forces embraced, resisted, succumbed to, disrupted, or on occasion overturned the plans of the imperialist powers for their own interests in fact played an important role in shaping the immediate aftermath of the conflict – and in laying the foundations for the troubled Middle East.
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