While the steady increase in joint programs offered by British and French universities is cause for considerable celebration, a variety of obstacles, including language constraints, financial pressures, and political uncertainty, have hindered their continued expansion. Bringing together contributors from within academia, the government, and prominent institutions, Franco-British Academic Partnerships: The Next Chapter takes stock of intensifying bilateral cooperation in higher education and explores how institutions on either side of the Channel can help realize the enormous potential of Franco-British partnerships. With its wealth of suggestions for new initiatives and areas for collaboration, this book will be required reading for academics and university leaders.

A broad-ranging study of the relationship between alliances and the conduct of grand strategy, examined through historical case studies.

This collection of essays reviews the politico-military relationship between Britain and France between the two World Wars. As well as examining the relationship between the two nations' armed services, the book's contributors also analyse key themes in Anglo-French inter-war defence politics - disarmament, intelligence and imperial defence - and joint military, political and economic preparations for a second world war.

Nearly fourteen million people died during the First World War. But why, and for what reason? Already many contemporaries saw the Great War as a "pointless carnage" (Pope Benedict XV, 1917). Was there a point, at least in the eyes of the political and military decision makers? How did they justify the losses, and why did they not try to end the war earlier? In this volume twelve international specialists analyses and compares the hopes and expectations of the political and military leaders of the main belligerent countries and of their respective societies. It shows that the war aims adopted during the First World War were not, for the most part, the cause of the conflict, but a reaction to it, an attempt to give the tragedy a purpose - even if the consequence was to oblige the belligerents to go on fighting until victory. The volume tries to explain why - and for what - the contemporaries thought that they had to fight the Great War.

This book focuses on the prospects now opening up for Franco-British co-operation in the fields of defence and security. Looking at the situation from the viewpoints of both Britain and France, it builds on the indications of a developing awareness within the two governments of the benefits to be derived from a closer partnership. The book argues forcefully that it is now time for both Britain and France to give up their long-standing attitude of mutual indifference or even rivalry, and to recognise openly the similarities and natural affinities that exist between them. Although the ways in which defence problems are discussed in the two countries do not always coincide, the solutions proposed are often alike: in other words, Paris and London have much more in common in their approaches to defence and security questions than is generally recognised. The solutions put forward are intended not only to increase co-operation between France and Britain, but also to lead to greater political and military cohesion among all the West European allies.

In The Shadow of the Past, Gregory D. Miller examines the role that reputation plays in international politics, emphasizing the importance of reliability-confidence that, based on past political actions, a country will make good on its promises-in the formation of military alliances. Challenging recent scholarship that focuses on the importance of credibility-a state's reputation for following through on its threats-Miller finds that reliable states have much greater freedom in forming alliances than those that invest resources in building military force but then use it inconsistently. To explore the formation and maintenance of alliances based on reputation, Miller draws on insights from both political science and business theory to track the evolution of great power relations before the First World War. He starts with the British decision to abandon "splendid isolation" in 1900 and examines three crises--the First Moroccan Crisis (1905-6), the Bosnia-Herzegovina Crisis (1908-9), and the Agadir Crisis (1911)-leading up to the war. He determines that states with a reputation for being a reliable ally have an easier time finding other reliable allies, and have greater autonomy within their alliances, than do states with a reputation for unreliability. Further, a history of reliability carries long-term benefits, as states tend not to lose allies even when their reputation declines.