New Books in Military History15 Maj 2024

Chris Stephen, "The Future of War Crimes Justice" (Melville House, 2024)

The Future of War Crimes Justice (Melville House, 2024), journalist and war correspondent Chris Stephen takes a colourful look at the erratic history of war crimes justice, and the pioneers who created it. He examines its shortcomings, and options for making it more effective, including the case for prosecuting the corporations and banks who fund warlords. Casting the net wider, he examines alternatives to war crimes trials, and looks into the minds of war criminals themselves through an evaluation of evidence from psychiatric studies. With international law advocates fighting for justice on one side, and reluctant governments unwilling to relinquish control on the other, he sets out to answer whether the world of the future will be governed by the rule of law or might is right.

The podcast begins by exploring what is meant by ‘justice’ in the context of war crimes – whether it is (or should be) a process and collection of rights-respecting investigations and trials, or an outcome (the prosecution, conviction and sentencing of people who have committed the worst crimes) – and then discusses the challenges at the heart of the system of international war crimes justice as it has developed from the post-World War II trials of Nuremberg and Toyko. Chris Stephen discusses the impossibility of bringing leaders of major powers to justice, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, under the current system of war crimes justice, acknowledging the role that realpolitik and national state interest plays in preventing greater engagement with the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. Twitter: @batesmith. LinkedIn.

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Arthur der Weduwen, "The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada" (Princeton UP, 2026)

In popular accounts of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the autocratic Catholic King James II was ousted by his subjects and replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary Stuart, wife of James’s nephew, th...

22 Sep 56min

Edward Willis, "WWII in East Timor: An Australian Army Site and Travel Guide" (2/2 Commando Association of Australia, 2024)

WWII in East Timor: An Australian Army Site and Travel Guide (2/2 Commando Association of Australia, 2024) is an overdue addition to the history of a campaign that remains surprisingly little known ...

22 Sep 1h 11min

Stefano Recchia, "Strategies for Approval: Building Support for Military Intervention at the UN Security Council" (Yale UP, 2025)

When powerful states go to war, why do they bother asking permission? In Strategies for Approval: Building Support for Military Intervention at the UN Security Council (Yale University Press, 2025), S...

20 Sep 51min

Xiaofei Tian, "Writing Empire and Self: Poetic and Cultural Transformation in Early Medieval China" (Columbia UP, 2026)

China’s early medieval period, from the fifth through the early seventh century, from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through the unified Sui, was a time of political fragmentation, military strif...

19 Sep 57min

Francesca Lessa and Sebastián Santana, "Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent" (Storia, 2025)

In Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent (Storia, 2025), Francesca Lessa uncovers the shadowy machinery behind one of the most chilling transnational terror campaigns of the twentieth...

12 Sep 1h 3min

Michael E. Neagle, "Chasing Bandits: America's Long War on Terror" (UNC Press, 2025)

While the war on terror has been America's largest and most publicized attempt to root out foreign enemies this century, the quest to identify and destroy real or imagined threats to national security...

11 Sep 45min

Charles Lachman, "They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted" (Diversion Books, 2026)

May 1945. The Reich is in ruins. Hitler is dead. Yet for the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, the real war has just begun. They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wa...

11 Sep 31min

Emily Matson, "China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II (U Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Emily Matson is an in-depth investigation of the Chinese Communist Party’s remapping of China’s World ...

6 Sep 36min