Coker died on 5 September 2023, at the age of 70.[8][9] Studying in Oxford and Cambridge, his supervisor was Michael Howard. Other influences on him were Hedley Bull and Philip Windsor.[10] Obituaries highlighted Christopher Coker's commitment to mentoring students.[10]
Scholarship
Coker believed that war is a feature of ‘human nature’ or ‘humanity’ in general.[1] 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.[11]
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."[13]
The annual Christopher Coker Prize recognizes the best paper in strategic studies published in the journal International Politics in the previous year.[14]
The Collision of Modern and Post-Modern War. In Yves Boyer & Julian Lindley-French (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of War (2012).
Rebooting the West: Can the Western Alliance Still Engage in War? In Christopher Browning & Marko Lehti (eds.) The Struggle for the West (Routledge, 2009).
NATO as a Post Modern Alliance. In Sabrina Petra Ramet & Christine Ingebritsen (eds.) Coming in From the Cold War: Us-European Interactions Since 1980. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)
Outsourcing War. In Daphné Josselin & William Wallace (eds.) Non-State Actors in World Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).
