Changing Character of War Workshop

Overview

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 2027 will take place May 31 - June 4, 2027 at the Basin Harbor Club in Vergennes, Vermont. More details will follow in fall 2026.

CCWW 2026 - Net assessment: past, present, and future

The distinctive American approach to net assessment began in the Eisenhower National Security Council, and then was given its lasting form through the work of Andrew W. Marshall, founder of the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) and its director for more than three decades. Even as net assessment organizations proliferate internationally, and as unclassified data becomes ever more abundant, net assessment functions — for both analytical and organizational reasons — face challenges.

CCWW 2025 - Surprise in a transparent world

Despite extraordinary advances in technology and information processing, the problem of surprise will remain and, in some ways, may even worsen over time. A keynote presentation of three different Israeli interpretations on the October 7 surprise launched the discussion on historical cases, various typologies of failures, and adversary thinking on surprise. The workshop concluded with a historical exercise on the Pearl Harbor attack.

CCWW 2024 - Changing character 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.

CCWW 2023

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.