Engelsberg Ideas

24/06/2025

As Israel eyes Damascus and Iran stirs unrest, can Syria avoid becoming the region’s next battleground?

James Snell on why the battle for Syria isn’t over. Click the link in bio to read more.

Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

23/06/2025

Airpower advocates have long claimed that modern wars can be won from above, rendering ground troops obsolete. But from NATO’s campaign in Kosovo to the US strikes on Iran, strategic victory still depends on boots on the ground.

Lessons in the limits of airpower | Peter Caddick-Adams

Airpower advocates have long claimed that modern wars can be won from above, rendering ground troops obsolete. But from NATO’s campaign in Kosovo to the US strikes on Iran, strategic victory still depends on boots on the ground.

23/06/2025

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was the most significant cultural achievement of the 18th century, a landmark work of great skill, effort and erudition.

Samuel Johnson’s last word | Malcolm Forbes

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was the most significant cultural achievement of the 18th century, a landmark work of great skill, effort and erudition.

23/06/2025

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard believed that despair could be transformed into hope, under the influence of love, a message that resonated in an age of pessimism.

Zachary Hardman on Kierkegaard’s philosophy of love. Click the link in bio to read the notebook.

Image credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Alamy Stock Photo

20/06/2025

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard believed that despair could be transformed into hope, under the influence of love, a message that resonates in an age of pessimism.

Kierkegaard’s philosophy of love | Zachary Hardman

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard believed that despair could be transformed into hope, under the influence of love, a message that resonates in an age of pessimism.

19/06/2025

The great scholar of intellectual history, Quentin Skinner, has set the terms for a debate that is only just beginning about what liberty looks like after liberalism.

Conflicting ideas of liberty | David Wootton

The great scholar of intellectual history, Quentin Skinner, has set the terms for a debate that is only just beginning about what liberty looks like after liberalism.

19/06/2025

All are agreed that the UN is in desperate need of reform, but nobody can agree on what that should look like.

Hamstrung by history: the United Nations 80 years on | Keith Lowe

All are agreed that the UN is in desperate need of reform, but nobody can agree on what that should look like.

18/06/2025

Roosevelt’s rationale for his transformative and hard-nosed approach to American foreign policy is a warning from history to both isolationist opinion in the US, and to those of its allies who remain ‘opulent, aggressive, and unarmed.’

Charlie Laderman on Theodore Roosevelt’s lessons in global power. Click the link in bio to learn more.

Credit: Granger - Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

18/06/2025

Since 7 October 2023, the pillars of Iran’s military doctrine have collapsed one by one, paving the way for Israel’s lightning strike on the country’s military facilities and the possible implosion of the Islamic Republic.
aarabi on Iran’s grand strategy collapsed. Click the link in bio to read more.

Image credit: ZUMA Press Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

17/06/2025

William Blake, the poet-painter who created a mythology all his own, is also the central figure in biographer Philip Hoare’s private cosmos. Such a personal obsession is a major flaw of the bewildering books.

Image: From illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy by William Blake. Credit : ART collection / Alamy Stock Photo

17/06/2025

Blaise Metreweli, set to become the first female chief of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, stands on the shoulders of generations of British women who spied with courage and distinction during the 20th century.

on the rise of the female spymaster.

Image credit: the bust of the British-French Special Operations Executive (SOE) spy Violette Szabo on top of the SOE memorial in London. Philip Bird / Alamy Stock Photo.

16/06/2025

The KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin's painstaking records of the Soviet Union's espionage activities offer insights that are just as relevant now as when they were first released 35 years ago.

How Mitrokhin waged war from the archives | Gill Bennett

The KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin's painstaking records of the Soviet Union's espionage activities offer just as relevant insights now as they did thirty-five years ago, when they were first released.