“War in Context is an exceptionally valuable source of information about international affairs in general and conflicts and crises in particular. It has many merits: broad coverage, a liberal perspective, sound editorial policy, a user-friendly format, and, above all, a healthy scepticism towards the claims made by governments. War in Context enables me to keep up-to-date with my main research interest – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I also enjoy the range of materials it offers on other regions such a film footage of hot spots and interviews with peace activists like Noam Chomsky. All in all, it is a first-rate online service for its readers.”
— Avi Shlaim, FBA, Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford, and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World 1948-1998

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

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If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

“If you are seriously interested in international politics, especially the Middle East, War in Context is one of the best sites on the web. Not only does it say smart things about war on a daily basis, but it also deals extensively with the broader political context in which war takes place. In that sense, Paul Woodward is a Clausewitzian at heart. He is also tough-minded, smart, and goes where the evidence takes him. The end result is first-rate analysis on the key issues of the day, something that is increasingly difficult to find in the mainstream media. It is for good reason that I make sure to read War in Context every day.”
— John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

Dear Readers — I created War in Context in January 2002. Prior to that “The war in context” was just the subject line on emails I started sending out to colleagues and friends shortly after 9/11.

At a time when America had become seized by the mantra of “terrorism” there was a dearth of political analysis. While the mainstream media was propagating political slogans — that “the terrorists” “hate America” and want to “destroy our way of life” — I wanted to shed light on historical currents and political issues, providing context for what then seemed destined to become an era of unprecedented violence.

Then I was introduced to blogging — that was back when using Blogger, one of the first blogging platforms, meant logging on to a server in Evan Williams’ house in San Francisco.

Since then, after initially using Blogger, then switching over to WordPress in 2007, I have published over 25,000 posts.

What does that add up to? More than ten million words — the size of an encyclopedia!

Every so often I get a message addressed to the “folks” at War in Context, or someone makes reference to my “team.” No doubt there’s plenty of work goes into keeping this going, but there’s only one worker.

War in Context, from its inception, has been an effort to apply critical intelligence in an arena where political judgment gets repeatedly twisted by blind emotions and ideological inflexibility. It presupposes that a world out of balance will inevitably be a world in conflict.

If you value what I’m doing here, please help sustain this operation by becoming a subscriber or making a donation of any size. Just click either the “subscribe” or “donate” button below. This will take you to Paypal where you can make a secure payment.

 
If you’d prefer to make a donation by check, please email me: editor[at]warincontext.org

Thank you for your support! Paul Woodward