Emma Salisbury is the Research Fellow in the Sea Power Laboratory at the Council on Geostrategy, an Associate Fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, and a Contributing Editor at War on the Rocks. She holds a PhD and an MSc from Birkbeck College, University of London, and an MA from the University of Oxford. She publishes widely on naval operations and strategy, military innovation, the defence-industrial base, procurement, and British and American defence policy.

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Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

The current geopolitical uncertainty is deeply anxiety-inducing, but it is at least giving rise to some fresh debates as the world changes inexorably around us. The proliferation of threats to the rules-based international order (if such a thing ever really existed) means that we have to think through new scenarios as well as the possibilities of multiple crises happening at the same time. A particular focus for me is how Europe will deal with a level of withdrawal of American security guarantees at a time of imminent threat from Russia – how Europe can best defend itself after decades of reliance on the United States, what the future of NATO looks like, and how new security structures can be built quickly and resiliently enough to deter Russian aggression. I am also interested in how warfare is changing with new technology, particularly uncrewed systems – and how the war in Ukraine teaches us fresh ways of fighting, linking together the old and the new.

How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

Even though I am still technically young, my lifetime has seen repeated groundbreaking shifts in how the world fits together – from the end of the Cold War, to the American unipolar moment, to the Global War on Terror, to our current phase of great-power competition. What has most shaped how I understand and cope with this is history. Naming all of the historians whose work has helped me make sense of the world would require more space than I can take here, but the core journey of understanding that they have all led me on has given me the ability to place what feel like wildly unprecedented events into their proper contexts – better understanding what went before, how the patterns of causation run, and how things connect together. History does not repeat, but it often rhymes, and building up a repository of knowledge has helped me to make sense of the world.

How vital is a strong maritime-industrial base for the UK’s national security, and how does it intersect with broader geostrategic concerns?

The various maritime industries were once a cornerstone of the British economy, but they are facing a series of complex challenges that need to be tackled – otherwise, the UK will not be able to build ships, generate energy offshore,........

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