Press | National Security

Applications are now open for our eighth annual seminar! The 2023 Summer Seminar will be held from Monday, July 17 – Saturday, July 22 at the Pines Resort in Beaver Creek, Colorado. 

The Clements Center mourns the death of Secretary Ash Carter. He was a valued member of our Statecraft Board of Reference, and mentor and leader for many of our students and affiliates. As a policymaker, scholar, and thinker he was without peer. Combining a singular background in both science and the humanities, he served with distinction at all levels of American defense policy, culminating in his consequential leadership of the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense. We recall with great fondness hosting his visit to UT-Austin in that role in 2016. Between his stints in government, Secretary Carter could be found at Harvard as a beloved teacher, researcher, and leader of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He leaves a tremendous legacy of service to our nation and our world.

We have updated the list of Spring 2023 courses that will apply for the Undergraduate Certificate in Security Studies and the Graduate Portfolio in Security Studies

Read Martha Bayles review of Clements Center Senior National Security Fellow Mark Pomar’s recent release Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in “‘Cold War Radio’ Review: Listen and You Shall Hear,” published in the Wall Street Journal.

Take a look at the Clements Center’s summer programming and what we have in store for the fall!

The Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin is seeking applications from recent PhD recipients for its Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and from current PhD candidates for its Predoctoral Fellowship Program. Applications are due January 27, 2023.

Clements Center Executive Director Will Inboden and Faculty Fellow Jeremi Suri recently published “A generation of the world’s best leaders has died. Now we must look forward.” for CNN, in which they explore what lessons history can provide and what traits should be considered when electing leadership today.

In Asia Policy Program Director Sheena Chesnut Greitens’ new article in Foreign Affairs, she argues that with much of the West focused on Russia and Ukraine, Xi Jinping’s April 2022 speech on his Quanqiu Anquan Changyi (Global Security Initiative), didn’t receive the attention it should have from Western governments.

Strauss Center Director Adam Klein testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, on Protecting Americans’ Personal Data from Hostile Foreign Powers on September 14. 

In this week’s episode of Horns of a Dilemma, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy Daniel Fata discusses the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Fata explains how decades of U.S. policy under  administrations of both parties was based on what he describes as wishful thinking. 

In this week’s episode of Horns of a Dilemma,  Charles Edel, the inaugural Australia chair at CSIS in Washington, DC, discusses Australia’s “strategic revolution,” which focuses on building diplomatic, economic, and military capacity to resist coercion by China.

Artificial intelligence is making its way into more defense technology. Clements National Security Fellow Mark Jbeily and Christian Heller write in U.S. Naval Institute‘s Proceedings magazine that the human-machine aviation relationship must be developed for the next generation of warfare in order for it to be successful. 

In “Beyond the Wire: US Military Deployments and Host Country Public Opinion” Clements National Security Fellow Andrew Stravers and his co-authors show how US service members can either build the necessary support to sustain their presence or create added animosity towards the military presence. This project started with a trial study funded by the Clements…

In a recent publication in Foreign Affairs magazine, Daniel Twining and Senator Dan Sullivan argue that for the first time in more than half a century, the United States has both the need and the ability to build a bipartisan foreign policy consensus around the imperative of countering authoritarian aggression.

UT News published a profile on Clements Undergraduate Fellow and “renaissance woman” Soren Ettinger DeCou! Soren is a senior and we can’t wait to see what she does after graduation!

Recently spotted on LinkedIn: Former Clements Center Doctoral Fellow Ben Griffin teaching at The United States Military Academy at West Point where he is an Assistant Professor and Chief of the Military History Division in the Department of History. We love seeing our alums at work! 

Following President Biden’s signing of the CHIPs for America Act, Congressman Michael McCaul and U.S. Senator John Cornyn toured Austin Community College’s advanced manufacturing academy, where newly-hired technicians for Austin semiconductor companies are trained. Clements Center Executive Director attended and noted the importance of breaking America’s dependence on foreign semiconductors: “If America can regain our edge…

This August, the Clements Center took our 2022-2023 Undergraduate Fellows to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. to learn how history can be a tool for contemporary decision-making and to introduce them to the institutional structure of national security in the United States. 

In this week’s episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Charles Edel discusses the big questions in U.S.-Chinese relations.

Each academic year, the Clements Center hosts several advanced PhD students and recent PhD graduates in foreign and defense policy, international security or related fields. Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows spend time working on their own research and writing projects, while taking advantage of the many academic resources available here at the University of Texas-Austin.

Laura Quaglia is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at the University of Texas Austin, specializing in Public Policy and Comparative Politics.

Clements Executive Director Will Inboden will be moderating a panel at The Texas Tribune Festival! “A New World Disorder” will feature Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Representative Michael McCaul, and Governor Bill Richardson – September 24 at 10:45 a.m.

“Civil-military relations” is a term that covers a multitude of sins. Scholars of civil-military relations write on topics ranging from recruiting and retention to military coups to norms of professional military behavior. This week’s Horns of a Dilemma speaker, Dr. Kori Schake, argues that civil-military relations in the United States have historically been strong and stable. So why are U.S. civil-military relations an important topic of study and debate?

Amy H. Liu (PhD Emory University; BA Smith College) is an Associate Professor in the Government Department, Co-Director of the Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Faculty Fellow at the Clements Center.

This July, the Clements Center hosted its eighth annual Summer Seminar in History and Statecraft in scenic Beaver Creek, Colorado.

This episode is the second part of a conversation between four people who knew the late Robert Jervis well:

“As the National Security Act of 1947 enjoys its 75th anniversary, it has in a way come full circle back to its founding purposes.” – Clements Director Will Inboden reflects on the remarkable first 75 years of the National Security Act and what the future might hold.

Nick Romanow was a Clements Center Undergraduate Fellow from 2019 until he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2021 with a Bachelor’s in International Relations and Global Studies.

The Clements Center’s Coffee Hours program was featured in UT News article “A Matter of National Security” written by Avrel Seale. Coffee Hours are popular biweekly meetings open to all UT students to discuss topics in national security, and are led by the Clements Center Undergraduate Fellows. 

Many of those who follow War on the Rocks and the Texas National Security Review mourned the passing of Robert Jervis, the towering scholar of international relations who defined a field and mentored generations of scholars and policymakers. Four of his close friends, colleagues, and protégés sat down to remember his legacy, his intellectual contributions, and his kindness.

Launched in 2021, the Texas Podcast Network features podcasts produced by faculty members and staffers at the University of Texas at Austin, including Horns of a Dilemma. These shows bring you into conversations about research and campus culture, covering topics from policy to science to student life.

The New York Times quoted Danielle Gilbert and Gaëlle Rivard Piché in their recent article about Brittney Griner, the WNBA player who has been detained in Russia since February.