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In War on the Rocks, Clements Center assistant professor Iskander Rehman revisits Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus — once the most widely read book in 18th-century France after the Bible, now largely forgotten — and makes the case that it’s still the sharpest manual we have on the pathologies of concentrated power.

Robert D. Kaplan, Clements Center Visiting Faculty Fellow, writes in The New York Times on the long history of American misjudgment about China.

Joseph Ledford, Clements Center Director of Research and Assistant Professor of Security Studies, has published “Americas First, Authoritarians Last: The Trump Corollary as a Great-Power Competition Strategy” in The Future of Conservative Internationalism, Volume VII, the July 2026 essay collection from the Reagan Institute Strategy Group.

Sept. 11 fell right in the middle of Dirk Ringgenberg’s 24-year service with the U.S. Army. 

Jesse C. Johnson, Clements Center Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Government at UT Austin, and Yasuki Kudo, Clements Center Graduate Fellow, published “Foreign policy alignment in asymmetric alliances” in International Interactions, co-authored with Andrew G. Long (Kansas State University).

In UnHerd, Robert D. Kaplan, Clements Center Visiting Faculty Fellow and Distinguished Senior Lecturer in the School of Civic Leadership, argues that 9/11 was “one of the great head fakes of history.” The attacks pulled the United States into a generational struggle in the Middle East during the same decade that China built its navy…

Marking the Atlantic Charter’s 85th anniversary, Charlie Laderman revisits the 1941 Roosevelt–Churchill meeting at Placentia Bay and asks how much charters and declarations really matter in an era of great-power conflict.

The Clements Center’s Defense Technology Fellows Program welcomes its first cohort this fall, connecting students in engineering, science and mathematics to defense companies, military commands and research labs that surround the UT campus. This fall, the Clements Center for National Security welcomes the inaugural class of its Defense Technology Fellows Program, a yearlong undergraduate fellowship…

In this new Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Military History article, Dr. Jennifer Yip (Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore; former Clements Center and Asia Policy Program Postdoctoral Fellow) traces how military supply has evolved from armies living off the land to industrial-era logistics networks spanning the globe.

The University of Texas at Austin has opened applications for the 2027–28 Harrington Faculty Fellows Program and dedicated this year’s competition to national security. The selected fellows will spend the academic year in residence at UT Austin, affiliated with the Clements Center for National Security and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law.  The Harrington Faculty Fellows Program, coordinated by the…

Nine students spent two weeks in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia examining the history, geopolitics, and security challenges of a region at the front edge of NATO’s collective defense. The Clements Center for National Security concluded its Summer Beyond Borders program this June, bringing nine students to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia for two weeks of lectures,…

For four weeks, UT Austin students studied the transatlantic alliance in the lecture halls, the war rooms, and on the beaches of Normandy. From a seminar room at King’s College London to the chalk tunnels beneath Dover Castle and the bluff above Omaha Beach, 20 UT Austin students spent four weeks this spring tracing the…

Robert Kaplan argues that the U.S. Navy’s relative decline threatens the sea lanes that underpin global trade and the rules-based world order America spent a century building. Without significant naval expansion, he warns, the consequences will extend far beyond military affairs.

In a recent Military Review article, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ryan Van Wie argues that a decade of rotating armored brigade combat teams (ABCTs) through Europe has come at a cost that outweighs many of the policy’s claimed benefits.

In Foreign Affairs, Daniel Chardell and Samuel Helfont warn that the current U.S.-Iran truce mirrors the post-Gulf War containment of Iraq, leaving a weakened but intact regime that will inevitably provoke repeated confrontations.

The U.S. military campaign against Iran, launched February 28, may feel unprecedented but its playbook is more than 40 years old. This piece traces how Operation Epic Fury draws on strategies pioneered by every president from Reagan to the Bushes, from airstrikes on Libya to the opening hours of the Iraq War.

What does a war in the Gulf have to do with the Taiwan Strait? More than you might think. In a new analysis, Clements Center postdoctoral fellow Dr. Doron Feldman explores how Taiwan is drawing strategic lessons from Israel, and why aligning with Washington and Jerusalem may be Taipei’s best insurance against Beijing.

Kaplan argues that the United States is most vulnerable in conflicts that fall between quick strikes and total war, where objectives remain unclear and escalation risks spiral. Using Iran as a case study, he warns that these drawn-out, ambiguous wars often trap policymakers in costly, open-ended commitments with no decisive outcome.

In a piece for Caracas Chronicles, Golding writes about the potential new future of the Venezuelan oil industry in light of reforms approved last week to open it to private capital and the historical precedent it rests on.

Clements Center alumnus Lt. Col. Max Ferguson reflects on the 10th Mountain Division’s southern border mission in this firsthand account, detailing how the deployment became a valuable opportunity for real-world training and operational readiness.

As the United States has shifted from combat operations to stabilization and reconstruction missions, it has struggled to translate battlefield success into lasting political outcomes. In Forgetting How to Win, Clements Center former Army PhD student Jeremy Kasper examines how the U.S. Army, State Department, and USAID have approached post-combat operations—and why institutional disconnects have…

As economic integration and shared supply chains bind the United States and Mexico closer than ever, a worsening cartel-driven security crisis threatens both nations. In Engelsberg Ideas, Clements Center alumnus Joseph Ledford traces the evolution of U.S.–Mexican interdependence—from trade and energy to counter-narcotics cooperation—and examines how Presidents Donald Trump and Claudia Sheinbaum are navigating a…

The Texas National Security Review is evolving to address the “changing face of war” amid rapid shifts in global power, technology, and security. The Clement Center’s Joseph Maguire shares his expertise as a retired Navy vice admiral and former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, offering a perspective that bridges practical security experience with academic insight.

China is expanding its global security engagement, providing training to police, paramilitary, and security forces in countries around the world. APP’s Sheena Chestnut Greitens documents the scale of this work through her research, mapping nearly 900 Chinese security-training programs conducted across 138 countries.

This feature highlights the Clements Center’s “Beyond The Battlefield” forum, which examined how diplomacy, economic statecraft, intelligence, emerging technologies, and development aid can work together to sustain U.S. leadership without relying primarily on military force.

UT News recently spotlighted the University of Texas at Austin’s leadership in national security research and education — featuring a conversation between UT Executive Vice President and Provost Dr. William Inboden, a member of the Clements Center Board of Advisors, and Dr. Paul Edgar, Associate Director of the Clements Center for National Security.

Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens recently publishes piece in Financial Times titled, “How ‘Safe China’ Sells Its Security Strategy to the World.” In the piece, Dr. Greitens analyzes how China is reshaping the global security order by promoting itself as the world’s safest country and leveraging its surveillance and internal security tools to advance this narrative….

Congratulations to former America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow, Lin Le, on the publication of China’s Conservative Turn: The Origins of Xi Jinping’s New Era.

Former Clements War College Fellow Colonel Neil Hollenbeck writes in Military Review “Why the Army Needs Units Driving Drone Development and How to Do It.” “Instead of the modernization enterprise developing small-drone warfare capabilities with input from the operational Army, it should enable the operational Army to develop its own. The enterprise can do this…

Congratulations to former visiting professor Rosella Cappella Zielinski on publishing her book Wheat at War: Allied Economic Cooperation in the Great War. Order it here!

General Robert B. Neller, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), 37th Commandant of the Marine Corps and former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provides commentary piece for Defense One. In it, Neller argues that the U.S. military must prioritize adaptability, advanced training, and tech integration.

Asia Policy Program (APP) Director Sheena Chestnut Greitens recently did an interview with Seoul Shinmun about the future of Korean Studies in the U.S. and how APP at integrates technology, national security, and public policy to reflect Korea’s evolving global profile. “Most Korean Studies programs are humanities-focused and concentrated on the East/West coasts – but…

The Marine Corps has dedicated a new facility that will serve as the epicenter for next-generation wargaming and analysis: the General Robert B. Neller Center for Wargaming and Analysis. Named in honor of the 37th Commandant of the Marine Corps and Distinguished National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, the center will…

Congratulations to Clements Center Faculty Fellow Jay Sankaran on his latest article in The Nonproliferation Review, titled “The motivations and unintended consequences of US pursuit of missile defense.” In this piece, he explores why U.S. efforts to reassure Russia and China about missile defense have fallen short and argues that the accumulation of U.S. technological capabilities…

Former Clements Center Undergraduate Fellow Julian Alin recently published his capstone paper in the Spring 2025 issue of The Globe, George Washington University’s Undergraduate Research Journal in International Affairs. Read the article here.

UT-Austin McCombs School of Business publishes “Energy Production Drives U.S. Global Strength,” highlighting last month’s panel discussion, “Power & Influence: The Current Geopolitics of Energy & Security,” held during UT Austin’s Energy Week. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Former U.S. Senator; Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO; Founding Member, KBH Energy Center), George Seay (Founder and Chairman,…