The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University is pleased to announce the establishment of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy (CGS). CGS will serve as an intellectual hub for the critical examination of American grand strategy. Specifically, it will support research that takes a fresh look at America’s grand strategic choices; foster dialogue between scholars and practitioners; and help train a new generation of public servants who will be grand strategic innovators.
CGS’s academic directors are associate professors Jasen Castillo and John Schuessler.
With questions regarding CGS, please contact Kelley Robbins at bushschoolcgs@tamu.edu.
The Albritton Center for Grand Strategy and the Texas A&M University Libraries present a symposium commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. Join us at Evans Library for discussion panels examining the dramatic events of the airlift, the division of Germany in the late 1940s, and the legacies of the airlift and early Cold War, followed by a reception and exhibit honoring “Aggies in the Airlift” in Cushing Library. Register for the event here.
Jasen Castillo, Academic Director of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy, was quoted in an article titled “Trump’s Decision to Nuke a Key US-Russia Treaty Fuels a Simmering Global Arms Race,” published in Mother Jones Magazine on February 5, 2019. You can find the article online here.
Dr. Elizabeth Saunders, Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, spoke to a full house at the Bush Library on Wednesday evening, January 30, 2019. Saunders’ lecture, based on her article “The Unconstrained Presidency,” published in the October/November 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs, discussed the gradual erosion of the limitations on US executive power in the decades since World War II and how that relatively unchecked power has become more visible in the actions of recent administrations. Saunders also talked about the significance of the 2018 midterm elections and resulting changes in Congress and identified some legislative measures that could help restrain the growing footprint of presidential power. However, Saunders noted, even the increasing public pushback against the current administration serves as a warning sign that the traditional constraint system remains broken, and any significant solution to the problem will be difficult to secure in today’s polarized political climate. The Bryan-College Station Eagle article on the event can be found here.
On January 29, 2019, the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy hosted a roundtable discussion with Andrew Roberts, British historian and acclaimed biographer of Winston Churchill, and several Bush School students. The group discussed lessons learned from Churchill’s experience as a wartime leader. Topics ranged from the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I to Churchill’s approach to alliances.
An essay by Dr. John Schuessler, CGS Academic Director, titled “Democracy, War, and American Grand Strategy” was published in the Texas National Security Review on January 29, 2019. The essay, originally published as part of a roundtable in Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and Decline of Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018) by Sarah Kreps, can be read online here.
Dr. Jasen Castillo addressed questions pertaining to conditions that might facilitate nuclear escalation in a conventional conflict between the U.S. and Russia and how Russian nuclear strategy might affect its pursuit of foreign policy objectives. More information and video from the talk can be found online here.
Dr. Jasen Castillo, CGS Academic Director, published a chapter titled “Deliberate Escalation: Nuclear Strategies to Deter or to Stop Convenitional Attacks” in Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2018) edited by Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause.
The Center for Grand Strategy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, is inviting applications to its residential fellowship program for the 2019-2020 academic year. The program will support one pre-doctoral and one post-doctoral fellow. The Center for Grand Strategy is particularly interested in scholars that are engaging with the fundamental questions surrounding grand strategy: How should the national interest be defined? What are the threats to the national interest? How should the United States use its power in response? Applications are invited from scholars of political science, history, and other relevant disciplines.
Download the Pre- and Post-Doctoral Fellowships PDF for more information.
Retired four-star Navy admiral and former NATO commander James Stavridis spoke Wednesday night of the possibilities of global unrest, terrorism, global warming and potential international pandemics to underscore the importance of the Bush School's creation of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy.
One the Center for Grand Strategy's directors, Jasen Castillo, co-authored two RAND studies that have been published in recent months, National Will to Fight: Why Some States Keep Fighting and Others Don't and Will to Fight: Analyzing, Modeling, and Simulating the Will to Fight of Military Units.
The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents recently approved the naming of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy (CGS) at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
Please join us for the kick-off event launching the new Bush School Center for Grand Strategy. The event will feature a talk by Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s 16th Supreme Allied Commander Europe and 15th Commander of the U.S. European Command (2009-2013), Head of U.S. Southern Command (2006-2009), Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Chief International Security Analyst for NBC News, Operating Executive Consultant.
Bush School Professors F. Gregory Gause, III, and John Schuessler have chapters in a recently published book, Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First.
Chapter 21, written by Professor F. Gregory Gause, III, dives into "Donald Trump and the Middle East."
Chapter 29, written by Professor John Schuessler, is titled, "Why Does Donald Trump Have So Much Trouble with the Truth?"
Dr. Matthew Fuhrmann, a Center for Grand Strategy Faculty Affiliate, was one of 21 Texas A&M scholars named as a 2018 Presidential Impact Fellow by TAMU President Michael K. Young and Provost and Executive Vice President Carol Fierke. Dr. Fuhrmann is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Foote is the author of four books, including The Yankee Plague: Escaped Union Prisoners of War (2016), which was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Manhood, Honor, and Violence in the Union Army (2010), which was a finalist and honorable mention for the 2011 Lincoln Prize, and Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform (2003). She is the creator and principal investigator of the Digital Humanities Project “Fugitive Federals,” which visualizes the escape and movement of 3000 Federal prisoners of war during the American Civil War.
Multimillion-dollar gifts from the Charles Koch Foundation and Texas A&M University System Regent Robert Albritton have established the new Center for Grand Strategy at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service.
Join us on September 27, 2018, for a discussion with Professor John Mearsheimer about his book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.
