Upcoming Events

Katherine Epstein
Rutgers University

Wednesday, January 14
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract
Analog Superpowers explores the early history of computing, intellectual property law, government secrecy, and Anglo-American relations to draw out surprising connections with today’s world of digital devices and great-power competition. It follows the invention by two British defense contractors, in the decade before World War I, of an analog computer for aiming the big guns of battleships. Rather than pay for the invention, however, both the British navy and the US navy pirated it. Then, when the inventors sued for patent infringement, first the British and then the American government invoked legal privileges to withhold evidence on the grounds of national-security secrecy. In the United States, moreover, the lawsuits became entangled with high-level Anglo-American diplomacy during World War II and with the Manhattan Project.
Analog Superpowers thus provides a new account of the impact of patent laws on defense innovation, the development of nuclear secrecy and the national-security state, and the transition from the Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana. With tensions between the US and China over computing technology all over the news today, it also offers historical perspective on matters of intense contemporary relevance.

Advanced Reading

• The Other Visible Hand: National Security And Intellectual Property In The United States Before World War I by Katherine C. Epstein
• The Conundrum of American Power in the Age of World War I by Katherine C. Epstein

Biography

Katherine C. Epstein is professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden. She is the author of two books: Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State (University of Chicago Press, 2024) and Torpedo: Inventing the Military- Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain (Harvard University Press, 2014). Her research, which has been supported by an ACLS Burkhardt fellowship and membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, examines the intersection of government secrecy, defense contracting, and intellectual property in the United States and Great Britain in the first half of the 20 th century, as well as the transition from the Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana. In addition to numerous scholarly journals, her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Liberties, and American Purpose.

Michaela Dodge
National Institute For Public Policy

Colonel Jeffrey McCausland (ret)
Diamond6 Leadership and Strategy, LLC

John Swegle
National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska

Thursday, January 15
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract

Arms control and nonproliferation have always played an important, if arguably overrated, role in U.S. national security. Yet, the nonproliferation regime is straining in the face of Russia’s nuclear threats and full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China’s unprecedented nuclear build up, and U.S. own inability to flexibly respond to these challenges. As a part of a response to counter these challenges, President Trump recently announced that the United States will restart nuclear weapons testing and the public debate has since reflected much confusion about what that actually means. Join us with our speakers as we examine these challenges and explore the relationship between arms control, politics, and nuclear testing. 

Advanced Reading

• President Trump Is Correct About Adversary Nuclear Testing
• Next Steps in Arms Control? Lessons from Moscow’s New START Violations

Biography

Dr. Michaela Dodge is a Research Scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy. Prior to joining the National Institute, Dr. Dodge worked at The Heritage Foundation from 2010-2019. She left Heritage to serve as Senator Jon Kyl’s Senior Defense Policy Advisor between October to December 2018. Her last position at Heritage was a Research Fellow for Missile Defense and Nuclear Deterrence.
Dr. Dodge’s work focuses on U.S. nuclear weapons and missile defense policy, nuclear forces modernization, deterrence and assurance, and arms control. She is the 2025 recipient of the General Larry D. Welch Deterrence Writing Award.

Dr. Jeff McCausland is a Visiting Professor at Dickinson College and former Minerva Chairholder, US Army War College. He is a retired Colonel, holds a PhD from the Fletcher School, and is a West Point graduate. Military assignments include the Army Staff; battalion command during the Gulf War; Dean of the Army War College; and Director for Arms Control, NSC Staff, the White House. He has served as a Professor of Leadership at the Naval Academy and Visiting Professor at the Penn State Graduate School of International Affairs. He is also a national security consultant for CBS radio/television and published/lectured broadly both in the US and in numerous foreign countries on national security affairs. In 2020 he published a book, Battle Tested! Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders.

Dr. John Swegle works as an independent consultant through the National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska on a range of issues related to the effects of nuclear weapons and proliferation on US national security. He began his career at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque as a member of the plasma theory group, then moved to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he participated in and managed multidisciplinary analyses of foreign technology and nuclear programs in what was then Z Division. At LLNL, he also worked in a nuclear design division for several years, where he was introduced to the concepts and tools of nuclear design. Just prior to becoming an independent consultant, he was a Senior Advisory Scientist in the National Security Studies Section at the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina.
He graduated from Cornell University with an MS and PhD in applied physics and from the University of Washington in Seattle with BSEE and MSEE degrees.

Ioannis Kotoulas
University of Athens

Thursday, January 22
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract
Since February 2022 Russia has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We examine the macrohistorical and geopolitical background of the Russian invasion and its justification by Russian propaganda. Using a macrohistorical perspective and Classical Geopolitics we approach Russia as an expansive Eurasian land empire; adopting a neoclassical realist approach, we argue that the invasion can be interpreted on the basis of both inherent factors (ideology, distorted perceptions of Ukraine) and security/power concerns (power transition theory). We distinguish Russian war objectives into grand strategy objectives, political, economic and demographic objectives and comment on possible scenarios.

Advanced Reading

• "Geopolitics of the War in Ukraine" by Ioannis E. Kotoulas and Wolfgang Pusztai
• "Russia as a Revisionist State and the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine" 
• "History and Culture in Intelligence Analysis" byIoannis E. Kotoulas

Biography

Ioannis E. Kotoulas (PhD in History, PhD in Geopolitics) is Adjunct Lecturer in Geopolitics at the University of Athens, Guest Lecturer at State Department/National Foreign Affairs Training Center, Hellenic National Defense School and Hellenic Army Law School. He has been Visiting Lecturer at Tbilisi State University, Guest Lecturer at National Intelligence University, Deakin University, Leipzig University, Tsinghua University, Southwest University, Xi’an University, University of Georgia, Marmara University, and National Odesa University. He is Academic Advisor of Foreign Affairs Institute (Athens) and a member of the Council for International Relations- Greece, the Balkan History Association and the Mackinder Forum. He is peer reviewer for Journal of Military Studies, Hiperboreea, and Polish Political Science Yearbook. His analyses have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, China Today, Al-Ahram Weekly, El Dostor, Libya Review, Kyiv Post, Algemeiner. His books include Classical Geopolitics and Modern Greece (2026), [Editor] Greece Reborn: Aspects of Modern Greece, 1821-2021 (2026), Geopolitics of the War against Ukraine (2024), History of Greek Geopolitics (2021), History and Geopolitics of modern Greece (2019).

General (Ret) Ken McKenzie
University of Southern Florida

Wednesday, January 28
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract

Advanced Reading

Biography

General (Ret) Kenneth F. “Frank” McKenzie, Jr. became the Executive Director of the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute in May 2022. In July 2022, he also became the Executive Director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, also known as Cyber Florida.

General McKenzie’s book, titled The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century, was released in 2024 by the U.S. Naval Institute Press and details his three years as commander of United States Central Command (USCENTCOM).

A native of Birmingham, Alabama, upon graduation from The Citadel in 1979, General McKenzie was commissioned into the Marine Corps and trained as an infantry officer.

He has commanded at the platoon, company, battalion, Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), and component levels. As a lieutenant colonel, he commanded First Battalion, Sixth Marines. As the Commanding Officer of the 22d MEU (SOC), he led the MEU on combat deployments to Afghanistan in 2004 and Iraq in 2005-06. In 2006-07 he served as the Military Secretary to the 33rd and 34th Commandants of the Marine Corps.

Upon promotion to Brigadier General in July 2007, he served on the Joint Staff as a Deputy Director of Operations within the National Military Command Center. In June 2008, he was selected by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be the Director of the Chairman’s New Administration Transition Team (CNATT). In this capacity, he coordinated the efforts of the Joint Staff and the combatant commands in preparing for and executing a wartime transition of administrations. (continued)

In June 2009, he reported to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan, to serve as the Deputy to the Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS) for Stability. Upon his return from Afghanistan, in July 2010, he was assigned as the Director, Strategy, Plans, and Policy (J-5) for the U.S. Central Command. In August 2012, he reported to Headquarters Marine Corps to serve as the Marine Corps Representative to the Quadrennial Defense Review. In June 2014, he was promoted to Lieutenant General and assumed command of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command.

In October 2015, he was assigned to the Joint Staff to serve as the Director, J-5,Strategic Plans and Policy, Joint Staff.

In July 2017, he was named the Director, Joint Staff. General McKenzie was promoted to the grade of General and assumed command of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in March 2019. He relinquished command of CENTCOM and retired from the Marine Corps on April 1, 2022, completing over 42 years of service.

General McKenzie is an honors graduate of the Armor Officer Advanced Course, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the School of Advanced Warfighting. He was selected as a CMC Fellow in 1999, and served as a Senior Military Fellow within the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. He has a master’s degree in teaching with a concentration in history. He is currently the President of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Applied Engineering at the University of South Florida, a Distinguished Senior Fellow on National Security at the Middle East Institute, a Member of the International Advisory Committee of the National Council on U.S. Arab relations, and a Member of the National Security Advisory Council, U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. He is the Hertog Distinguished Fellow at the Jewish Institute for the National Security of America (JINSA) Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy.

Michael Kimmage
The Catholic University of America

Wednesday, February 11
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract

This talk will address the contemporary challenges of finding a meaningful end to the war in Ukraine, and it will do so by addressing the place of Ukraine in twentieth-century European history and in U.S. foreign policy, drawing lessons from the failure to resolve underlying problems in 2014-2015, after Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine, when the violence died down but the seeds for a much larger war were planted. This talk will argue that the large scale of the problems at issue will demand large-scale thinking about how to manage them.

Biography

Michael Kimmage is the director of the Kennan Institute, an independent think tank in Washington, DC. He is also a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. His most recent book is Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability, which appeared with Oxford University Press in 2024.

Jacob Sotiriadis
Author, The Revenge of Ideology
Nonresident Senior Fellow 
The Atlantic Council 
Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security 

Tuesday, February 24
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract

Why do smart nations make stupid decisions? Why is Russia destroying its economy for Ukraine? Why did China erase $1 trillion of its own tech wealth? Why did America spend $4 trillion on unwinnable wars? They're not irrational—they're trapped. In this presentation, Jake Sotiriadis introduces the concept of Ideological Power Networks: living systems that hijack how entire nations understand reality, turning self-destruction into strategy. From Beijing's Neo-Confucian Communism to Moscow's Neo-Eurasian Imperialism, these networks are quietly remaking the global order—and recognizing them is essential for anticipating what comes next.

Advanced Reading

• Chapter 1 / Introduction excerpt from The Revenge of Ideology

Biography

Jake Sotiriadis is the author of The Revenge of Ideology: The Hidden Forces Reshaping Global Power, an Amazon #1 bestseller. A former career U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, he founded the Pentagon's Strategic Foresight Office and taught senior military and intelligence leaders at the National Intelligence University. He currently serves as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and advises the U.S. State Department on geopolitical foresight. His book carries endorsements from former NATO SACEUR Admiral (ret.) James Stavridis, who wrote the foreword, former NSA Director General (ret.) Timothy Haugh, and former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

Emma M. Ashford
Stimson Center

Wednesday December 17, 2025
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract

 For the past thirty years, post–Cold War triumphalism and a desire to reshape the world have defined U.S. foreign policy. But the failures of the global war on terror, the return of conflict to Europe, and growing tensions with China all suggest that this approach to the world is flawed. For the United States—the country that has ruled the international system largely alone since 1991—this moment is particularly perilous. If policymakers are to successfully adapt American foreign policy to better fit a newly multipolar world, they will need to re-embrace realism -- pursuing narrower U.S. interests, engaging in extensive burden-shifting, and prioritizing flexible partnerships over rigid alliances.

Advanced Reading

• Making Multipolarity Work: How America Should Navigate a New Global Order" by Emma Ashford

Biography

Emma Ashford is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, where her work focuses on questions of grand strategy, international security, and the future of US foreign policy. She was previously a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute.

Her writing has been featured in publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Texas National Security Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and War on the Rocks, among others. She writes a biweekly column, It’s Debatable, for Foreign Policy. Her first book, Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates, was published by Georgetown University Press in June 2022. Ashford was previously a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and is an adjunct assistant professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her new book, First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy for a Multipolar World, was published by Yale University Press in 2025.

Peter Turchin
University of Connecticut

Wednesday December 10, 2025
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract

Complexity Science Hub Vienna

China, Russia, and Iran—what is the common denominator? Most obviously, they are the main geopolitical rivals of the United States today. As Ross Douthat recently wrote in an NYT opinion, Who Is Winning the World War?, “it’s useful for Americans to think about our situation in global terms, with Russia and Iran and China as a revisionist alliance putting our imperial power to the test.”

In my talk I will address a much less appreciated similarity, having to do with deep history of these Eurasian empires.

Advanced Reading

• The Deep Roots of Today's Geopolitics by Peter Turchin

Biography

Peter Turchin is Project Leader at the Complexity Science Hub–Vienna, Research Associate at University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Connecticut. He is a Founding Director of Seshat: Global History Databank. Currently he investigates a set of broad and interrelated questions: How do human societies evolve? In particular, what processes explain the evolution of ultrasociality—our capacity to cooperate in huge anonymous societies of millions? What processes are responsible for the resilience of complex societies to external and internal shocks? What causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart? His books include Ultrasociety (2015), End Times (2023), and The Great Holocene Transformation (2025).

Michael Desch
The Notre Dame International Security Center

Wednesday December 3, 2025
12:00pm Eastern US Time

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Abstract

We believe that while there may not be one canonical realist grand strategy for all times, places, and circumstances for the United States, there is nonetheless an “elective affinity” in the current strategic environment between the hard core propositions of realism and a more restrained U.S. grand strategy.  In general, the core propositions of realism -- particularly the tendency of states to push-back against over-weaning power --point toward less ambitious grand strategies like restraint and offshore balancing than more deeply engaged approaches like collective security and especially primacy. The link here is consistency between the core propositions of realism and various realist theories that might shape a state’s grand strategy.

Advanced Reading

• Real Restrained: The Prudence at the Core of Realpolitik

Biography

Michael C. Desch is the Packey J. Dee Professor of International Relations at the University of Notre Dame and founding Brian and Jeannelle Brady Family Director of the Notre Dame International Security Center.

He served two terms as chair of the Department of Political Science. He was also the founding Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs and the first holder of the Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University from 2004 through 2008. 

From 1993 through 1998, he was Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the Olin Institute. He spent two years (1988-90) as a John M. Olin Post-doctoral Fellow in National Security at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, among other positions. He received his B.A. (With honors) in Political Science (1982) from Marquette University and his A.M. in International Relations (1984) and Ph.D. in Political Science (1988) from the University of Chicago.

Desch has published numerous scholarly and broader interest articles and he is the author of four books:

• When the Third World Matters: Latin America and U.S. Grand Strategy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
• Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
• Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)
• Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018)

He is also a co-author of Privileged and Confidential: The Secret History of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), co-editor of From Pirates to Drug Lords: The Post-Cold War Caribbean Security Environment (Albany: State University Press, 1998), and editor of Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016) and Soldiers in Cities: Military Operations on Urban Terrain (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2001).

Desch has worked on the staff of a U.S. Senator, in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State, and in the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service.