Interview – David Galbreath |
David J. Galbreath is Professor of War and Technology in the Department of Politics, Languages, and International Studies at the University of Bath. His research focuses on how technology shapes how we think about and do war. He has also been researching European security from European militaries and the trans-Atlantic relationship to resurgent Russia and the war in Ukraine. His current research is on what digital innovation tells us about the future of war. He has been the editor of European Security (2008-2015), Defence Studies (2014-2016), and Associate Editor of the European Journal of International Security (2016-2020). He is the co-editor (with John Deni, US Army War College) of the Routledge Handbook of Defence Studies (2019). Along with Aaron Brantly (Virginia Tech) and Manabrata Guha (Australian National University), he is co-editing the Routledge Handbook on War and Technology (forthcoming).
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Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?
The understanding of our relationship with technology is something that I am keen to understand and I think that much of the literature in environmental philosophy is one way that we could think of trying to conceptualise this and perhaps to understand it. I think that as a whole, understanding International Relations as something that includes things outside of, or prior to, the human experience will be important going forward.
How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?
My understanding of the world has continued to change as time, space and decision-making have continued to be crunched into smaller bits, what Paul Virilio talks about as fundamentals to ‘Pure War’. But, I think it was my chance encounter with Ruth Miller’s book, Snarl: In Defence of Stalled Traffic and Faulty Networks, that first brought to my attention a different way of understanding International Relations as beyond policies, agents and institutions. Miller showed that our inability to think about networks outside of ourselves means that networks will always fail. I see this being repeated in IR all the time.
Could President Trump's approach of using pressure and coercion be more effective than traditional diplomacy? How might this impact long-term stability in regions like Ukraine?
I think that this is a loaded question. The Trump administration may be able to do what others have not been able/ or sought to do but this is not the same as asking whether Trump will do what the Biden........