Faculty Publications

Though coup contagion is an alluring theory, its real value is in forcing policymakers to think about the underlying factors and proximate causes leading to coups. These factors may be better categorized as endemic, particularly in the Sahel and Central Africa. Policymakers need to consider ways to address the underlying conditions of coups like economic insecurity and consistently condemn efforts aimed at eroding democracy.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household word. Applications like ChatGPT can be used to develop plans to learn a language, offer cooking ideas based on what’s in the pantry, and even write this article about the promises and pitfalls of AI – though we wrote this the old-fashioned way.

Contrary to common perception, the presence of private military and security companies holds a substantial historical background, particularly within Africa. In this article, Christopher M. Faulkner, Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, delves into the history of mercenarism across the African continent.

It’s been just over five months since the Wagner Group’s insurrection against the Russian government and three months since the group’s leader was killed in a plane crash, almost certainly orchestrated by the Kremlin. But the Wagner Group has not faded away. Colin Clarke, Christopher Faulkner, and Raphael Parens join to discuss what the Wagner Group is up to now, who is leading it, and how the Kremlin will use it going forward.

The war in Ukraine has been simultaneously described as the first networked war and a “return of industrial warfare.” Lockheed Martin repurposed a diaper factory to make HIMARS launchers, the Ukrainian prime minister claims his country buys 60 percent of DJI’s Mavic drone production, and the conflict has introduced the term “FrankenSAM” for the cobbled together systems defending Ukrainian air space.

The United States poured vast military resources into Afghanistan and Iraq. We made a rookie mistake. We imagined that the American way of war is universal. After two decades of such naïveté, let’s not make the same mistake in Ukraine. It is more productive to assist Ukrainians to fight the war they have, not the war we might want or hope they’ll have at a later time.

I think Theodore Roosevelt would be dismayed at the state of global order today. It seems to be in retreat, or rather under concerted assault, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to East Asia.

Joe Stieb of the National Security Affairs Department argues explores the history of the phrase "moral clarity" regarding terrorism and its relevance to the current crisis in the Middle East.

Dr. Jonathan Caverley joins the program to discuss AUKUS and what happens when naval procurement drives grand strategy.

A friend serving in the U.S. Army asks: how can army leaders get their message about the army’s role in Pacific strategy to “resonate” with their sea-service counterparts?

If the allies entrench themselves on prime real estate within the anti-access zone, they could defy the PLA to come and take the ground while operating on tactically exterior lines. They could flip the script on China, making use of interior lines.

Want to win in the Western Pacific? Tend to your alliances, fashion solid ideas about warfare, and apply yourself to make sure the executors of those ideas are in fighting trim.

This paper offers a constructivist critique of Frank Harvey’s ‘Gore-War’ counterfactual, in which he argues that the hypothetical President Al Gore also would have gone to war with Iraq. Harvey overlooks how the George W. Bush administration shaped the structural context in which it acted in ways that made war increasingly likely.

On 19 September, Azerbaijan launched an “anti-terror” operation into Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that Armenia has occupied directly and by proxy since 1994 and in which 120,000 ethnic Armenians live. Azerbaijani forces quickly gained the upper hand. By the next day, a ceasefire had been negotiated with Russian “peacekeepers” acting as the intermediary.