The NESA Center leverages the collaborative interests and knowledge of U.S. military organizations including U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), U.S Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), U.S European Command (EUCOM), U.S. Army Central (ARCENT), and the Joint Staff to render a specialized set of programs addressing specific regionally sensitive security and defense issues. The flagship of the NESA Center’s annual programming is the Foundation Seminar series, consisting of the recurring Executive Seminar (ES) and Combating Transnational Threats Seminar (CT-SES).
NESA Center programs provide a collaborative space for policymakers to rigorously discuss key issues impacting the NESA region, ranging from counterterrorism and countering violent extremism to the perceived return of great power competition. NESA Center programs employ the Chatham House Rule of non-attribution to facilitate free discussion of sensitive topics.
As an element of its core mission, the NESA Center strives to maintain meaningful contact and build its community of interest through NESA Center courses and workshops, as well as its constant outreach efforts on NESA social media platforms, and through e-mail campaigns, newsletters, and regular surveys. Alumni have exclusive access via the GlobalNET platform, where they can explore enriching program course pages, engage in alumni discussion group forums, research through the extensive library, and participate in on-demand courses spanning a diverse array of security topics. The NESA Center also maintains an active series of Washington, D.C.-based programs to build and reinforce strong bonds with local embassies and regularly hosts in-country alumni gatherings to stay connected with its vast alumni network.
The various recommendations that the NESA Center regularly receives from course participants provide useful context within which to interpret foreign government views, shape the curriculum of future NESA events, and prioritize its efforts based upon National, DOD, Department of State, and COCOM priorities and lines of effort. This ensures maximum program relevancy to policymakers and customers in developing future policy direction.
The constructive and honest feedback regularly received from participants also ensures that NESA Center courses maintain a high standard, while providing a rich cross-fertilization of insights and lessons learned from different countries and regions. Through this process, participants are constantly challenged by other ways of thinking and research, while our Washington, D.C.-resident events and foundation seminars expose participants to American culture and democracy to positively influence their attitudes about the United States and its people. NESA Center forums also allow for Israeli-Arab, Indian-Pakistani, intra-Maghreb, intra-GCC, and other intra-regional interactions that many other forums and venues do not easily permit.
Foundational Seminar Series:
Executive Seminar (ES)
Conducted four times a year , the NESA Center’s ES programs are geared towards mid- to senior-level military and government officials from U.S. partner countries in the NESA region and beyond.
Representative themes of previous ES programs include:
- “Changing Security Landscape in South and Central Asia”
- “WMD in Theory, Policy, and Practice”
- “Conflict Resolution, Cooperation, and Challenges in the MENA Region”
- “Lessons from the Maritime Domain in the NESA Region and Beyond”
- “Strategic Power Competition in a Multi-Polar World”
- “New and Emerging Security Challenges: Employing Whole of Society Solutions”
- “Managing New Technology and Security”
- “Conflicts Evolving Beyond Warfare”
Combating Transnational Threats Senior Executive Seminar (CT-SES)
With coursework, case studies, and exercises designed specifically for professionals in the counterterror (CT) space, the NESA Center’s biannual CT-SES programs seek to encourage international security cooperation and empower NESA region allies to better synchronize whole-of-government efforts in countering violent extremism and transnational terrorism.
CT-SES programs address crucial themes including:
- “Maritime Security and Cooperative Focal Points”
- “Countering Narratives of Extremist Organizations: Managing Disinformation”
- “Technological Innovation and Security Challenges in the NESA Region”
- “Information Warfare”
Academic Programming and Engagements:
Transnational and Asymmetric Threats
The NESA AOR faces a variety of transnational and asymmetric threats. Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) remain an ongoing threat throughout the Levant, North Africa, Central Asia, Afghanistan/Pakistan, and South Asia. VEOs threaten the stability and growth of nations from Morocco to Bangladesh. In the Levant, the lasting defeat of ISIS requires a wide range of partners and efforts to ensure ISIS cannot exploit sectarian and other demographic tensions, leverage social control, or regain territory. Connected to efforts to defeat VEOs, other transnational threats, such as transnational criminal networks, are another complexity of the NESA AOR requiring specific efforts to address. Narcotraffickers and human smugglers, particularly in North Africa, the Levant, and South Asia, are the most pressing issues for regional police and border security forces, but other forms of criminality are also present and mount a growing challenge. The NESA Center operates with the understanding that transnational criminality is tied to the VEO challenge in the NESA AOR. Thus, programming that looks at criminal networks has diversified and matured. NESA places priority on outreach and engagement efforts aimed at countering extremism through the promotion of dialogue and cooperation among regional partners.
Territorial and Maritime Security
The NESA Center advances programs that seek to strengthen partnerships that subscribe to the rules-based international order to enhance territorial and maritime security. Maritime criminality remains a continual struggle for coast guard and naval forces operating in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean regions. Instability in several coastal zones provides a platform for maritime criminality, yet those tasked with countering these criminals are often stretched thin. Arms smuggling between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula remains a problem, along with the lingering challenge of piracy.
NESA Center programmatic efforts bring together civilian and defense partners to enhance appreciation for increased information-sharing, domain awareness, and collective responses that leverage all partner instruments of national power. Virtually all NESA Center programs encourage countries to communicate, share information, and strengthen cooperation to stimulate coordination on multilateral whole-of-government responses to shared challenges at both the territorial and maritime levels.
Defense Sector Governance, Including Professional Military Education & Global Power Competition
As an important element of its curricula, NESA Center programs seek to advance partner understanding of the security integrator role as a counter to the “U.S. abandonment” narrative. In support of this priority, the NESA Center strives to increase awareness and advance partner understanding of integrated deterrence concepts in order to deter adversaries and realize collective security benefits.