Professor Patrick Porter

Patrick Porter is Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham, and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He has also worked at the British Defence Academy, King's College London, the University of Reading, and the University of Exeter.

Patrick grew up in Melbourne, and graduated at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, where he obtained his doctorate in history. He has written four books. Blunder: Britain’s War in Iraq appeared in November 2018 with Oxford University Press. His latest book is The False Promise of Liberal Order, published by Polity in 2020. He has also written for Politico, The National Interest, The Critic, The New Statesman, The American Conservative, and The Washington Quarterly, with academic articles in International Security, Security Studies, International Affairs and War in History, amongst others.

His research interests are US and British foreign and defence policy, great power politics, realism, and in particular the causes and consequences of power shifts and the problem of self-defeating behaviour.