Jasen Castillo

Jasen J. Castillo is an Associate Professor and the Evelyn and Ed F. Kruse ’49 Faculty Fellow in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He is the Co-Director of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy. Prior to joining the Bush School, Dr. Castillo worked in the Department of Defense’s Strategy and Plans Office. Before working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he was an analyst at the RAND Corporation, where his research focused on military strategy, nuclear deterrence, and WMD terrorism. Prior to RAND, he was a consultant for the Institute for Defense Analyses. Dr. Castillo earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, where he received research support from the National Science Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation. His research interests include U.S. defense policy, military history, and nuclear deterrence. His publications include Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014); “Loyalty, Hedging, or Exit: How Weaker Alliance Partners Respond to the Rise of New Threats,” Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming; “Don’t Leave Grand Strategy to the Generals,” The National Interest, October 2019; “Passing the Torch: Criteria for Implementing a Grand Strategy of Offshore Balancing,” in New Voices in Grand Strategy (Washington, DC: Center for New American Security, 2019); Understanding Russian Nuclear Strategy and Assessing Escalation in Conventional Conflicts, PR-3039-OSD (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, October 2017); National Will to Fight: Why Some States Keep Fighting and Others Don’t, PR-3191-A (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, October 2017); Will to Fight: Defining, Modeling, and Simulating the Will to Fight of Tactical and Operational Military Units, PR-3149-A (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, October 2017); Flexible Response Revisited: Assessing Pakistan’s Potential Nuclear Strategies, PM-2383 (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, October 2007); Striking First: Preemptive and Preventive Attack in U.S. National Security Policy (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, October 2004); “Nuclear Terrorism: Why Deterrence Still Matters,” Current History, Vol. 2, No. 668 (December 2003); and Economic Growth and Military Expenditures, MR-112-A, (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, October 2002). Currently, he is working on a book project exploring the military requirements of deterrence and U.S. nuclear weapons policy.
See Journal of Military History’s review of Dr. Jasen Castillo’s new book, Endurance and War