Rate My Professor Phillips O’Brien

Professor Phillips O’Brien is the Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. In September 2016, he joined the university as the inaugural Chair in Strategic Studies and became associated with the Institute for the Study of War and Strategy. His research specializations include strategic studies, the interrelationship between politics and grand strategy, how leaders at the apex of decision-making structures shape peacetime and wartime policies, grand strategy in the Second World War, analytic failures in the Russia-Ukraine war, and the implications of organizational strategy for strategic studies. O’Brien’s interdisciplinary approach links Strategic Studies with Management Studies and contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. He engages in public policy impact work, including analysis of aiding Ukrainian defense and lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War, as well as briefings for policymakers on European security responses to Russia, such as a November 2024 Westminster event addressing US election impacts and North Korean involvement in Ukraine.

O’Brien has authored numerous influential publications on military history, strategy, and contemporary conflicts. Key books include War and Power: Who Wins Wars – and Why (Penguin Viking, 2025), The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler – How War Made Them, and How They Made War (Viking, 2024), The Russia-Ukraine War: A Study in Analytic Failure (with Eliot Cohen, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2024), The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff (Dutton, 2019), and How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Selected articles comprise “Organizational Strategy and its Implications for Strategic Studies: A Review Essay” (with J. Hughes et al., Journal of Strategic Studies, 2021), “The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Atom Bomb, the American Military Mind and the End of the Second World War” (Journal of Strategic Studies, 2020), and “The American Press, Public, and the Reaction to the Outbreak of the First World War” (Diplomatic History, 2013). Prior to St Andrews, he held positions at the University of Glasgow, including running the Scottish Centre for War Studies. O’Brien served on the editorial board of War in History (2014–2020) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2023.