British political scientist (1953–2023)
Christopher Coker (28 March 1953 – 5 September 2023) was a British political scientist and political philosopher who wrote extensively on war. He was Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) for almost 40 years, from 1982 until 2019. Despite being retired from his professorship, Coker was Director of LSE IDEAS, LSE's foreign policy think tank and continued to be a regular participant or consultant in UK and NATO military education and strategic planning circles. He was also the Director of the Rațiu Forum in Romania. He was a NATO Fellow in 1981. He was a member of Council of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Coker died on 5 September 2023, at the age of 70. Studying in Oxford and Cambridge, his supervisor was Michael Howard. Other influences on him were Hedley Bull and Philip Windsor. Obituaries highlighted Christopher Coker's commitment to mentoring students.
Scholarship.
Coker believed that war is a feature of ‘human nature’ or ‘humanity’ in general. In the 2021 book "Why War?", Coker argued that war is central to the human condition and is part of the evolutionary inheritance which has allowed humans to survive and thrive. New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and new geopolitical battles may transform the face and purpose of war in the 21st century, but humans' capacity for war remains undiminished. Coker concluded that humanity will not see the end of war until it exhausts its own evolutionary possibilities.
In his 2019 book "The Rise of the Civilizational State", Coker investigates how Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia seek to challenge Western powers and liberal international order with concepts of civilizational states.
In July 2023, Christopher Coker wrote a reflection on the state of war studies, which can be read as a summary of his key views on the state of war, after the invasion of Ukraine. In this short essay that also references other major literature on the subject, Coker argues that "Our relationship with war is so long and deep that we could, if we wish, tell the story of humanity entirely through the lens of conflict."
The annual Christopher Coker Prize recognizes the best paper in strategic studies published in the journal "International Politics" in the previous year.
References.
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