Faculty Publications

Over the nearly six decades since the People's Republic of China (PRC) was established, the United States and China have followed very different political, military, and economic development paths. Yet, the approach each country is currently pursuing to enhance its military and commercial technology development, particularly in the defense and space areas, is becoming remarkably similar in many respects.

In this conversation, Capt. [Tom] Culora discusses the value of directed student research, how the fleet can leverage hybrid research groups, and how to identify what is most worth studying.

A perception remains that MENA states enjoy a stranglehold on Congress and the White House due to the jobs created by their weapons buys. Yet the data does not support this.

The USS John Paul Jones carried out a freedom of navigation operation off the coast of India on April 7. The Indian government protested the move, saying that it violated India’s interpretation of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Late last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that his country would reach “carbon neutrality” by 2060, meaning that by that time, it would remove every year from the atmosphere as much carbon dioxide as it emitted. China is currently the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for nearly 30 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

In recent months, the world learned that China carried out an indiscriminate hack against Microsoft Exchange, while Russia hacked U.S. information technology firm SolarWinds and used cyber capabilities in an attempt to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

In the waning days of President Donald Trump’s administration, a group of outgoing political appointees unexpectedly pushed through the acting secretary of defense to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a hotly disputed plan to split the U.S. Cyber Command from the National Security Agency (NSA). This idea is a contentious and recurring sparring point, emerging in greater public display with the second Obama term.

Military operations lie at the center of international relations theory and practice. Although security studies scholars have used campaign analysis to study military operations for decades, the method has not been formally defined or standardized, and there is little methodological guidance available for scholars interested in conducting or evaluating it.

Exporting advanced weapons systems to the Middle East will create very few jobs at home. Washington must base its decisions on national security strategy rather than domestic politics.

Editors note: This essay is the third in a series of eight articles, “Maritime Strategy on the Rocks,” that examines different aspects and implications of the recently released tri-service maritime strategy, Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power. Be sure to read the first article and second article. We thank Prof. Jon Caverley of the U.S. Naval War College for his assistance in coordinating this series.

Last month, the unclassified version of the Donald Trump administration’s Maritime Cybersecurity Plan was published to the White House website … and then summarily taken down, apparently relegated to the trash bin marked “last president’s stuff.”

"Introduction: A Bumpy Road to Normalcy" by Jonathan D. Caverley and Peter Dombrowski.

Rebecca Lissner is an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Mira Rapp-Hooper is a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. Together, they are the authors of "An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st-Century Order." It's an ambitious book that looks beyond the liberal world order, arguing that China's rise and America's weakness render the old order obsolete. So, what will replace it?

For the first time since World War II the most likely friction points between a rising, potentially revisionist power and a declining, largely status-quo power are located at sea. This special issue accordingly seeks to set an appropriate agenda for security studies research. It presents six interconnected articles exploring different dimensions of maritime competition, largely between China and the United States.