From 1-5 November 2021, the NESA Center hosted foreign military officers assigned to U.S. Central Command in Tampa in Washington D.C. for an International Military Officers’ Forum titled “World Power Competition and Middle East Turmoil.” NESA Center experts, including Professor Dr. Richard Russell, Deputy Director COL David Lamm, Academic Dean Dr. Roger Kangas, and Professor Brianne Todd, as well as several external experts, were invited to discuss a wide variety of issues with considerable attention to global and regional power competition.
The seminar consisted of 13 sessions that explored topics including (1) World power’s competition and turmoil in U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility (AOR), U.S. national security strategy, and defense policy, (2) Russia’s political warfare, the European Union’s political and security strains, and NATO’s political-military uncertainties, (3) Reflections on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, (4) China’s foreign policy and terrorism’s persistence despite great power competition, (5) Russian-Chinese-American competition in South and Central Asia, and (6) The Middle East and South Asia fading from U.S. security interests. The forum offered a unique opportunity to discuss strategic issues directly with counterparts from the NESA region, U.S. government officials, subject-matter experts, scholars, advisors, and other seminar participants.
Speakers from top left: COL David Lamm (Deputy Director, NESA Center for Strategic Studies), Dr. Daniel Byman (Professor, Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown University), Dr. James Lindsay (Senior Vice President, Director of Studies and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair, Council on Foreign Relations), Dr. Jorge Benitez (Assistant Professor of International Relations Command and Staff College, U.S. Marine Corps University Non-resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council), Dr. Nora Bensahel (Visiting Professor of Strategic Studies and Senior Fellow of the Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies), Dr. Roger Kangas (Academic Dean, NESA Center for Strategic Studies), Dr. Steven Cook (Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow, for Middle East and Africa Studies and Director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars Council on Foreign Relations), LTG (RET.) David Barno (Senior Fellow, Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, Visiting Professor of Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies), Mr. Abraham Denmark (Vice President of Programs and Director of Studies; Senior Advisor to the Asia Program; Senior Fellow in the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, Wilson Center), Mr. Elbridge Colby (Co-Founder and Principal, The Marathon Initiative), Mr. Michael Singh (Lane-Swig Senior Fellow, Managing Director, The Washington Institute), Ms. Brianne Todd (Assistant Professor, NESA Center for Strategic Studies), Dr. Richard Russell (Professor, NESA Center for Strategic Studies), The Honorable Dov Zakheim (Senior Fellow, CAN, Former Comptroller, U.S. Department of Defense)
The views presented in this article are those of the speaker or author and do not necessarily represent the views of DoD or its components.
