Christopher Griffin
Biographic Data
| ID | 3637474 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Griffin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Griffin |
| SIGNATURE | GRIFFIN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Université catholique de l'Ouest |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4530-5436 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Sub-Saharan Africa and French National Security
Is the African continent still a strategic priority for France? Most recent discussions about France in Africa focus on the closures of French bases on the continent starting in 2022 and continuing into 2025. The reductions in prepositioned forces in West and Central Africa represents a significant loss of operational capacity for the French Army to respond to crises in those regions. Despite these setbacks, sub-Saharan Africa remains a concern f…
Comparing British and American military doctrine in the transition to major combat operations
International audience
The Use of History in American Military Doctrine
American military forces have been working on a major doctrinal change since the middle of the last decade to move away from counterinsurgency and toward large-scale conventional warfare. The introduction of the concept of Multi-Dimensional Operations ( MDO ) to fight peer competitors has been accompanied by extensive historical studies of previous conventional campaigns. This article looks at the lessons learned from one of the main recent colle…
The American Government and “Total War” on Covid-19
In the Economic Impact Payment letter to American citizens in Spring 2020, President Donald Trump wrote that “we wage total war on this invisible enemy.” Trump likely did not intend to explicitly link this to the rich theory about “total war” in military history, but this article examines the American rhetoric surrounding the war on COVID-19 to see whether it corresponds to definitions of total war in military strategic thought. The Clausewitzian…
Immunising Birthsex
On 30 March 2020, the Hungarian parliament approved emergency measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, granting prime minister Viktor Orbán the power to rule by decree. The very next day, the government repealed the legal recognition of transgenderism, ruling that assignations of biological sex are binary and permanent. The decision to place sexual difference under house arrest during a time of lockdown was not coincidental. As I argue in t…
France and the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970
During the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), France chose to support Biafra, but only on a limited scale, providing mercenaries and obsolete weaponry to Ojukwu’s regime. General Charles de Gaulle’s assistance to Ojukwu was conditioned by the French military drawdown after 1961, the increased power of French secret services on the continent, and the interventions in Katanga (1960–1963), Gabon (1964) and Chad (1968–1972). France supported Biafra prim…
Operation Barkhane and Boko Haram
This article examines the current coalition campaign against Boko Haram in Nigeria in the context of French military cooperation with the Francophone countries involved. The French government is actively supporting and facilitating the offensive against Boko Haram through both structural and operational military cooperation with Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The current effectiveness and operational state of the armies in those three countries is la…
A hybrid epidemic model for deindividuation and antinormative behavior in online social networks
French military policy in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970
During the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), France chose to support Biafra, but only on a limited scale, providing mercenaries and obsolete weaponry to Ojukwu's regime. General Charles de Gaulle's assistance to Ojukwu was conditioned by the French military drawdown after 1961, the increased power of French secret services on the continent, and the interventions in Katanga (1960–1963), Gabon (1964) and Chad (1968–1972). France supported Biafra prim…
From Limited War to Limited Victory
The United States and its allies entered Afghanistan with nearly unlimited war aims, but with the intention of only using limited force. This strategic error undermined the intervention and made success difficult or impossible. Through an examination of Clausewitzian thought about popular war, limited war and the culminating point of victory, this article shows the enduring value of Clausewitzian concepts in contemporary conflicts against non-sta…
Why and how to deceive
British and American military operations in the Battle of Helmand, 2006–2011
In summer 2006, elements of the British Army were deployed to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The US Army followed with a surge in 2009 and 2010. The British and American military forces attempted to construct a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach to win the war in Helmand from 2006 until 2011, but the operational approach implemented was most often that of conventional warfighting. The inability to successfully implement COIN owed not to…
Major Combat Operations and Counterinsurgency Warfare
International audience
The Religion and Social Organisation of Irish Travellers on a London Caravan Site (Part I)
Given Ireland's age-old reputation for religiosity, scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the religion of Irish Travelling People. One fairly recent book on Traveller society (McCann et al. 1994), for instance, included only two index entries on religion in a list of over 400, and even these were minor. Other work, including some fine ethnography, remains unclear about whether the ritual data apply equally to Irish Travellers as the…
The Religion and Social Organisation of Irish Travellers (Part II)
Introduction The social organisation of semi-nomadic Irish Travellers is characterised on the one hand by internal autonomy and tension between domestic groups, and on the other by a barely muted sense of conflict between themselves and non-Travellers. Correspondingly, there are two modes of religious-cum-ritual expression: one personal, private and interior, that draws on diffuse and condensed symbols (to use Mary Douglas's terms 1978, 1984); th…
In the Time of the Gypsies
Towards a Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean [and Comments and Reply]
Davis's People of the Mediterranean provides a detailed survey of the writings of anthropologists who have worked in Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Its author focuses on economic organization, stratification, patronage, family and kinship, and the way anthropologists have dealt with history. He concludes that they have failed to compare, to work in cities, to relate part to whole, and to make use of history. These failures, h…
Towards a Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean [and Comments and Reply]
Davis's People of the Mediterranean provides a detailed survey of the writings of anthropologists who have worked in Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Its author focuses on economic organization, stratification, patronage, family and kinship, and the way anthropologists have dealt with history. He concludes that they have failed to compare, to work in cities, to relate part to whole, and to make use of history. These failures, h…
Operation Barkhane and Boko Haram
This article examines the current coalition campaign against Boko Haram in Nigeria in the context of French military cooperation with the Francophone countries involved. The French government is actively supporting and facilitating the offensive against Boko Haram through both structural and operational military cooperation with Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The current effectiveness and operational state of the armies in those three countries is la…
Major Combat Operations and Counterinsurgency Warfare
International audience
French military policy in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970
During the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), France chose to support Biafra, but only on a limited scale, providing mercenaries and obsolete weaponry to Ojukwu's regime. General Charles de Gaulle's assistance to Ojukwu was conditioned by the French military drawdown after 1961, the increased power of French secret services on the continent, and the interventions in Katanga (1960–1963), Gabon (1964) and Chad (1968–1972). France supported Biafra prim…
The Religion and Social Organisation of Irish Travellers (Part II)
Introduction The social organisation of semi-nomadic Irish Travellers is characterised on the one hand by internal autonomy and tension between domestic groups, and on the other by a barely muted sense of conflict between themselves and non-Travellers. Correspondingly, there are two modes of religious-cum-ritual expression: one personal, private and interior, that draws on diffuse and condensed symbols (to use Mary Douglas's terms 1978, 1984); th…
The Religion and Social Organisation of Irish Travellers on a London Caravan Site (Part I)
Given Ireland's age-old reputation for religiosity, scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the religion of Irish Travelling People. One fairly recent book on Traveller society (McCann et al. 1994), for instance, included only two index entries on religion in a list of over 400, and even these were minor. Other work, including some fine ethnography, remains unclear about whether the ritual data apply equally to Irish Travellers as the…
From Limited War to Limited Victory
The United States and its allies entered Afghanistan with nearly unlimited war aims, but with the intention of only using limited force. This strategic error undermined the intervention and made success difficult or impossible. Through an examination of Clausewitzian thought about popular war, limited war and the culminating point of victory, this article shows the enduring value of Clausewitzian concepts in contemporary conflicts against non-sta…
Why and how to deceive
British and American military operations in the Battle of Helmand, 2006–2011
In summer 2006, elements of the British Army were deployed to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The US Army followed with a surge in 2009 and 2010. The British and American military forces attempted to construct a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach to win the war in Helmand from 2006 until 2011, but the operational approach implemented was most often that of conventional warfighting. The inability to successfully implement COIN owed not to…
In the Time of the Gypsies
Towards a Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean [and Comments and Reply]
Davis's People of the Mediterranean provides a detailed survey of the writings of anthropologists who have worked in Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Its author focuses on economic organization, stratification, patronage, family and kinship, and the way anthropologists have dealt with history. He concludes that they have failed to compare, to work in cities, to relate part to whole, and to make use of history. These failures, h…
In the Time of the Gypsies
The Religion and Social Organisation of Irish Travellers on a London Caravan Site (Part I)
Given Ireland's age-old reputation for religiosity, scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the religion of Irish Travelling People. One fairly recent book on Traveller society (McCann et al. 1994), for instance, included only two index entries on religion in a list of over 400, and even these were minor. Other work, including some fine ethnography, remains unclear about whether the ritual data apply equally to Irish Travellers as the…
The Religion and Social Organisation of Irish Travellers (Part II)
Introduction The social organisation of semi-nomadic Irish Travellers is characterised on the one hand by internal autonomy and tension between domestic groups, and on the other by a barely muted sense of conflict between themselves and non-Travellers. Correspondingly, there are two modes of religious-cum-ritual expression: one personal, private and interior, that draws on diffuse and condensed symbols (to use Mary Douglas's terms 1978, 1984); th…
Major Combat Operations and Counterinsurgency Warfare
International audience
British and American military operations in the Battle of Helmand, 2006–2011
In summer 2006, elements of the British Army were deployed to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The US Army followed with a surge in 2009 and 2010. The British and American military forces attempted to construct a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach to win the war in Helmand from 2006 until 2011, but the operational approach implemented was most often that of conventional warfighting. The inability to successfully implement COIN owed not to…
From Limited War to Limited Victory
The United States and its allies entered Afghanistan with nearly unlimited war aims, but with the intention of only using limited force. This strategic error undermined the intervention and made success difficult or impossible. Through an examination of Clausewitzian thought about popular war, limited war and the culminating point of victory, this article shows the enduring value of Clausewitzian concepts in contemporary conflicts against non-sta…
Why and how to deceive
French military policy in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970
During the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), France chose to support Biafra, but only on a limited scale, providing mercenaries and obsolete weaponry to Ojukwu's regime. General Charles de Gaulle's assistance to Ojukwu was conditioned by the French military drawdown after 1961, the increased power of French secret services on the continent, and the interventions in Katanga (1960–1963), Gabon (1964) and Chad (1968–1972). France supported Biafra prim…
A hybrid epidemic model for deindividuation and antinormative behavior in online social networks
France and the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970
During the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), France chose to support Biafra, but only on a limited scale, providing mercenaries and obsolete weaponry to Ojukwu’s regime. General Charles de Gaulle’s assistance to Ojukwu was conditioned by the French military drawdown after 1961, the increased power of French secret services on the continent, and the interventions in Katanga (1960–1963), Gabon (1964) and Chad (1968–1972). France supported Biafra prim…
Operation Barkhane and Boko Haram
This article examines the current coalition campaign against Boko Haram in Nigeria in the context of French military cooperation with the Francophone countries involved. The French government is actively supporting and facilitating the offensive against Boko Haram through both structural and operational military cooperation with Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The current effectiveness and operational state of the armies in those three countries is la…
Immunising Birthsex
On 30 March 2020, the Hungarian parliament approved emergency measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, granting prime minister Viktor Orbán the power to rule by decree. The very next day, the government repealed the legal recognition of transgenderism, ruling that assignations of biological sex are binary and permanent. The decision to place sexual difference under house arrest during a time of lockdown was not coincidental. As I argue in t…
The American Government and “Total War” on Covid-19
In the Economic Impact Payment letter to American citizens in Spring 2020, President Donald Trump wrote that “we wage total war on this invisible enemy.” Trump likely did not intend to explicitly link this to the rich theory about “total war” in military history, but this article examines the American rhetoric surrounding the war on COVID-19 to see whether it corresponds to definitions of total war in military strategic thought. The Clausewitzian…
The Use of History in American Military Doctrine
American military forces have been working on a major doctrinal change since the middle of the last decade to move away from counterinsurgency and toward large-scale conventional warfare. The introduction of the concept of Multi-Dimensional Operations ( MDO ) to fight peer competitors has been accompanied by extensive historical studies of previous conventional campaigns. This article looks at the lessons learned from one of the main recent colle…
Sub-Saharan Africa and French National Security
Is the African continent still a strategic priority for France? Most recent discussions about France in Africa focus on the closures of French bases on the continent starting in 2022 and continuing into 2025. The reductions in prepositioned forces in West and Central Africa represents a significant loss of operational capacity for the French Army to respond to crises in those regions. Despite these setbacks, sub-Saharan Africa remains a concern f…
Comparing British and American military doctrine in the transition to major combat operations
International audience
History (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Ancient history (6 works) · History (6 works) · Military History and Strategy (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Geography (4 works)