Week 1: Tuesday 16 January 

The Role of Deterrence in Managing Great Power Competition

Michael Kofman (CNA Corporation/Woodrow Wilson Center)

Seminars at 1.00pm, Seminar Room G, Manor Road Building, Oxford A light sandwich lunch is served at 12.50pm. All are welcome. 

In the United States national security and policy discourse has notably shifted away from low intensity conflict and back to the threat from peer and near-peer competitors. With great power competition and confrontation back at the center of policy discussions, there is a revived interest in the subject of conventional and nuclear deterrence, along with managing alliance politics. While interest in the subject of deterrence and compellence has risen sharply, after decades of counter insurgency and stability operations against adversaries with no escalation dynamics, knowledge of the subject is at an all time institutional low in modern day military establishments. This seminar will not only offer a core foundation in the concept of deterrence, from a practitioner's perspective, but explore its utility and application to present day conflict scenarios in Europe, in particular the case of Russia and NATO.  

Mr. Michael Kofman is a Senior Research Scientist at CNA Corporation and a Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C. Mr. Kofman directs the Russia Studies Program at CNA, where he specializes in the Russian armed forces and security issues in the former Soviet Union. Mr. Kofman's other affiliations include a fellowship at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and as a Senior Editor on War on the Rocks.