The Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy leads the Changing Character of War Workshop. The annual workshop gathers a diverse group of mid-career professionals to explore the nature of contemporary war and its future.
For a brief period of time after the end of the Cold War and following the defeat of Iraq in 1991 there were those who asserted that war was, if not finished, on a steep decline as a phenomenon in international affairs. The Yugoslav wars and the Rwandan genocide shook that belief; the post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq undermined it further. With the Russia-Ukraine War, Israel-Hamas War, and the Red Sea crisis this optimistic view has become impossible to sustain.
War is back, in many forms, from terrorism to all out conventional warfare, from hybrid warfare in the information and cyber space to selective, quasi-covert uses of techniques like assassination and sabotage. And war is seen increasingly as a possibility not just by authoritarian regimes like those in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – some of which are indeed at war already – but by democratic states like Japan and Australia whose sense of security from serious conflict has been shaken by continued aggressive Chinese behavior.
The nature of war, as a political contest among peoples, organizations and states characterized by the use of force, has not changed. But its character most definitely does change, and it is imperative that we understand that even as it unfolds.
The Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy leads the Changing Character of War Workshop (CCWW). The annual workshop gathers a diverse group of mid-career professionals to explore the nature of contemporary war and its future.
CCWW 2025 will take place June 9 - 13, 2025 at the Basin Harbor Club in Vergennes, Vermont under the theme "surprise in a transparent world." Applications for CCWW 2025 is now open until January 10, 2025.
The 2024 cohort focused on the changing nature of maritime war. Panel discussions included the relevance of classics of naval strategy, national interests in the maritime commons, emerging technology and naval warfare, and the maritime balance in the Indo-Pacific.
Photo: CSIS
As an agenda-setting workshop, the 2023 cohort examined a wide array of topics, including the rebirth of nuclear strategy, unlearned lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, and Chinese military modernization.
Photo: CSIS