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About Paul Rogers

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international-security editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers

A lecture by Paul Rogers on sustainable security, delivered to the Quaker yearly meeting on 3 August 2011, provides an overview of the analysis that underpins his openDemocracy column. It is available in two parts and can be accessed from here

Articles by Paul Rogers

Israel-Turkey-United States: Gaza’s global moment

Paul Rogers 3 June 2010
Israel’s assault on a flagship attempting to break the blockade of Gaza has sparked international condemnation. Behind the crisis lie deeper shifts in world politics in which Turkey is playing a key part.

America and the world’s jungle

Paul Rogers 27 May 2010
An official directive that grants the United States army expanded counterinsurgency powers reveals Washington’s imprisonment in an exhausted vision of security.

A world on the margin

Paul Rogers 20 May 2010
The diverse social insurgencies in such countries as Thailand, Greece, India and China can also be seen in a common frame, as responses to a global process that produces extreme inequality and exclusion.

Washington vs Waziristan: the far enemy

Paul Rogers 14 May 2010
The new pattern of United States military attacks in the AfPak borderlands is fuelling ever-greater hostility on the ground. The arrest of a presumed Taliban militant in New York is one of its symptoms. The long war is recharging itself.

Britain, let’s talk about security

Paul Rogers 9 May 2010

An inconclusive general election casts uncertainty over the shape of Britain’s next government. The issue of national security, amid conditions of severe financial constraint, will be high on the incoming administration’s agenda. But the political space for a fresh approach to the country’s defence needs is already narrowing.

Afghanistan: a phantom endgame

Paul Rogers 3 May 2010
The nature and future of Afghanistan’s war is now bound to international political calculation, not least the United States’s electoral timetable.

A tale of three cities: Washington, Baghdad, Tehran

Paul Rogers 22 April 2010
The United States's war in Iraq failed to curb Iranian influence in the region. The war's architects now seek to make Tehran pay for their mistake.

The nuclear-weapons risk

Paul Rogers 15 April 2010
The Washington-hosted summit on nuclear security heard Barack Obama warn of the fearful prospect of a non-state group using a nuclear weapon. How realistic is it, and how to prevent it?

The AfPak war: failures of success

Paul Rogers 8 April 2010
The Barack Obama administration places drone attacks at the heart of its military strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But its enemy too is capable of making deadly use of evolving technology.

Beyond "liddism": towards real global security

Paul Rogers 1 April 2010

A decade of pitiless wars and brutal inequalities has made the arguments of the book “Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century” - first published before 9/11, and now in its third edition - more relevant than ever. In his 450th column for openDemocracy, Paul Rogers looks back and forward.

Afghanistan: victory talk, regional tide

Paul Rogers 25 March 2010
A seductive narrative of military progress in Afghanistan is spreading among United States analysts. The real story is more complicated.

America and Israel: a historic choice

Paul Rogers 22 March 2010

The serious row between Washington and Tel Aviv is about far more than the construction of homes in east Jerusalem; it goes to the heart of the close military alliance between the two states.

(This article was first published on 18 March 2010)

Climate science: a peace-studies lesson

Paul Rogers 11 March 2010
The doubters of global warming are emboldened by their new ability - as in the “climategate” affair - to put climate researchers on the defensive. But the experience of comparable assaults on the discipline of peace studies in the 1980s suggests that hostile scrutiny can have longer-term benefits for the target.

The nuclear-weapons moment

Paul Rogers 5 March 2010

The global effort to extinguish the nuclear peril needs to regain momentum. A bold act of leadership and imagination by one of the weapons-states could provide it.

The Afghan whirlwind

Paul Rogers 26 February 2010
The United States’s long-term operations in Helmand and elsewhere in Afghanistan face acute military and political pressures.

Afghanistan: what it’s like

Paul Rogers 18 February 2010
The ground-level realities of western military involvement in Afghanistan - including a few dozen soldiers in an isolated base - reveal the intractability of the war.

Afghanistan: propaganda of the deed

Paul Rogers 11 February 2010
The deluge of publicity about a large-scale military operation against the Taliban must be set against Afghan realities that tell a different story.

Iraq's shadow over Afghanistan

Paul Rogers 4 February 2010
The Barack Obama administration’s plans for subduing the Taliban are endangered by continuing insecurity in Iraq

Afghanistan: the politics of war

Paul Rogers 29 January 2010
The American-led effort to map Afghanistan’s future neglects the role of the country’s neighbours – and could yet be derailed by events over Iran.

This week's guest editors

openGlobalRights editors

Our guest editors James Ron, Leslie Vinjamuri, Sophie Arie and Archana Pandya introduce this week's theme of:

Emerging powers and human rights.

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Iran myths

Iranian presidential candidate and chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalill

Myths, falsehoods and misrepresentations about Iran
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Palestine, peoples and borders in the new Middle East map
Ahmad Samih Khalidi

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Europe from the bottom up

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A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

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The media in Europe

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Mali: the plot thickens

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Remote control war

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