Brian Drohan – författare

A highly illustrated study of the battle of the Imjin River in Korea, a heroic defense by the US and UK forces against overwhelming Chinese numbers.After China’s November 1950 intervention in the war and the subsequent battle of the Chosin Reservoir, UN forces faced a new onslaught in the spring of 1951 with over 350,000 veteran troops attacking along the Imjin River. The US 3rd Infantry Division took the brunt of the attack along with the attached British 29th Infantry Brigade which included the Gloucestershire Regiment (the “Glosters”).The heroic defence of the American and British forces would pass into legend, most especially the doomed effort of the Glosters, as they sought to buy time for the rest of the UN forces to regroup and organise an effective defence of Seoul, the South Korean capital city.Featuring full colour commissioned artwork, maps and first-hand accounts, this is the compelling story of one of the most epic clashes of the Korean War.

In Brutality in an Age of Human Rights, Brian Drohan demonstrates that British officials' choices concerning counterinsurgency methods have long been deeply influenced or even redirected by the work of human rights activists. To reveal how that influence was manifested by military policies and practices, Drohan examines three British counterinsurgency campaigns—Cyprus (1955–1959), Aden (1963–1967), and the peak of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland (1969–1976). This book is enriched by Drohan's use of a newly available collection of 1.2 million colonial-era files, International Committee of the Red Cross files, the extensive Troubles collection at Linen Hall Library in Belfast, and many other sources. Drohan argues that when faced with human rights activism, British officials sought to evade, discredit, and deflect public criticism of their actions to avoid drawing attention to brutal counterinsurgency practices such as the use of torture during interrogation. Some of the topics discussed in the book, such as the use of violence against civilians, the desire to uphold human rights values while simultaneously employing brutal methods, and the dynamic of wars waged in the glare of the media, are of critical interest to scholars, lawyers, and government officials dealing with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those to come in the future.

While interconnections between humanitarian actors and military operations are a pervasive feature of contemporary conflicts around the globe today, Military Humanitarianism challenges the idea that these interactions are a recent phenomenon. Instead, this volume offers an alternative interpretation to the traditional framing of military actors as a homogenous group and humanitarian actors as impartial intermediaries between armed groups and aid recipients. In tracing a longer lineage beyond the post–Cold War period and twenty-first century, Military Humanitarianism uncovers a deeper history of entanglement between "humanitarian" and "military" actors – supposedly distinct categories that have long been mutually constitutive. By examining the malleability of these concepts and bringing different contexts into conversation, both editors and contributors reveal the tensions, ambiguities, and paradoxes of defining "humanitarian" action in practice, particularly in contrast to military operations. As a result, Military Humanitarianism provides timely insight into the understanding and politics of humanitarian operations, on and beyond the battlefield. It asks not just what it means to "help" but who gets to – and why.Contributors: Cedric Cotter, Maria Cullen, Lewis Defrates, Bronwen Everill, Matilda Greig, Baher Ibrahim, Julia F. Irwin, Norman Joshua, Jonathan McCollum, Justine Meberg, Michelle Moyd, Daniel Palmieri, Elisabeth Piller, Lou Pingeot, Pietro Stefanini, and Jiayi Tao.