 My name is John Bewe, and I'm a Professor of History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department at King's College London. I've been trained as a historian, I've written about a range of historical issues, really from 19th-century foreign policy, right through the 20th century to 21st-century questions of statecraft such as intervention and non-intervention. So, it's really historically-minded work, but with a present-minded application as well. I've written a number of biographies, some conceptual books as well such as a history of Real Politique, and my current research looks at the question of world order. Where does this idea of world order come from? What are the intellectual origins of the idea of world order? And what is the changing world order in today's world with the relative decline of western power and the rise of Asia and particularly China in India? And really that question, while it's historically-minded and it's historical research, goes to the core of some really central, crucial issues about 21st-century international stability and geopolitics, such as when one power arises, in the case of China, for example, how does an established power such as the United States respond? So, it really goes to the heart of questions of international stability, as I say, the avoidance of war peace, but also it appreciates the role of power in international affairs. So, one area I'm particularly interested in teaching and very much influences my work is the idea of grand strategy. Now, the concept of grand strategy has made a bit of a comeback or had a renaissance in recent years. And really, while there's debate about what grand strategy is, in essence it means big picture long-term thinking. And there's a tendency in some of the way in which academics look at global affairs for understandable reasons to focus on specific areas or countries. But something is missed in that occasionally, and that is the question of how everything connects together. So, grand strategy is a way of thinking and approaching international relations and big questions such as a rise and fall of nations as holistically as possible without dispensing with the necessary detail and expertise that comes on a case by case study. And also, grand strategy has a contemporary political application as well. In the 21st century, with a series of proliferating threats and challenges and the changing political atmosphere, governments often find it hard to deal with or respond to threats over the long term. It's very difficult for a government to think, particularly a democracy, to think beyond five-year terms or four-year terms in the case of the United States. And to think in terms of 10, 20, 30, 40 years ahead. And really grand strategy aims to bring back that, as I say, big picture long-term perspective. The States don't just plan about what comes around the corner. They don't simply crisis manage when it comes to international affairs. But they have some idea going forward about where they might want to end up. And academics can't provide really the answers because that must come from politicians. But they can remind politicians about the need to think about these big questions such as the rise of China, the relative decline of Western power as well. And that's the essence of grand strategy, as I say, to insert a different way of thinking back into political debate rather than obsessing all the time about the here and the now and the latest crisis. So, while I'm a historian, I always try and engage in contemporary debates. Now, that comes in different forms. It can be writing in newspapers or magazines. I've written extensively about Western foreign policy in Syria, for example, since 2011 and the whole question of intervention and non-intervention. But if I was to think of a specific anecdote in terms of influencing contemporary and public debate, it would be that recently I appeared before the Defence Select Committee at the House of Commons where I spoke on the whole question of the future of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the broader Western Alliance and all the components that go into that such as Britain's relationship with Europe, the changing role of the United States in the world and the whole cohesiveness of what was the international system that emerged at the end of the Second World War.