Villains, victims, and sheriffs: Strategic studies and security for an interwar period

“Villains, victims, and sheriffs” argues that bad times always return in international politics, and that the center of gravity of concern for scholars should be the need of potential victims for protection by (state or coalition) “sheriffs” against thuggish polities. Strategic studies is a practical field whose scholarly professionals are all but obliged to seek to be socially useful. Unfortunately the core problem area of the field, war (and its “causes"), shows no sign of yielding its secrets to scholarly assault. The scholar of strategy, indeed of international politics, focuses on conflict for the same reason that doctors focus on disease. Neither profession pretends to address the totality of human life, but both focus on conditions that, if neglected, can prove lethal. Four broad assumptions important to safety in statecraft are advanced and explained: (1) bad times return; (2) there are thugs out there; (3) military power is trumps; and (4) new world orders come and go, and come again. “Villains, victims, and sheriffs” seeks to identify the knowledge most essential to international security that scholarly professionals should neither forget nor neglect. Finally, I make a strong personal statement concerning what I perceive to be my duty as a scholar‐citizen. I argue that the scholar of strategy has a duty: to be able to explain the structure of security problems, to “mind the store” of existing knowledge, to expose fallacies, and to undertake for society those studies that the public and its policymakers are not well‐equipped to make for themselves.