Guest lecture: Deterring war without threatening war

Students and staff at the Swedish Defence University are welcome to a guest lecture by Professor Antulio Echevarria from the US Army War College.

More information about the lecture:

Deterring war without threatening war

The West failed to deter Russia in February 2022, partly because its approach to deterrence was too risk-averse to succeed against a major power armed with military capabilities comparable to NATO’s own. In truth, Western & Russian deterrence measures each succeeded in achieving their primary objectives: deterring escalation and deterring NATO forces from deploying to Ukraine, respectively. But the West still needs a viable approach to deterrence for situations in which it wishes to deter aggression, but its interests and likely political/public support do not justify risking a major war. This lecture explores what that approach might look like.

More about Antulio J Echevarria

Professor Antulio J. Echevarria had a distinguished career in the US Army and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the US Army War College Press, which includes Parameters. He is a graduate of the US Military Academy, the US Army Command and General Staff College, and the US Army War College.

He holds a doctorate in modern history from Princeton University, and is the author of six books, including After Clausewitz (Kansas 2001), Imagining Future War (2007), Clausewitz and Contemporary War (Oxford 2007), Reconsidering the American Way of War (Georgetown 2014), Military Strategy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2017), and War’s Logic: Strategic Thought and the American Way of War (Cambridge 2021) as well as more than one hundred articles and monographs on strategic thinking, military theory, and military history.

He completed a NATO Fulbright Fellowship in 2000-01, and a Visiting Research Fellowship at Oxford University in 2011-12; he is a Senior Research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Modern War Institute. He formerly held the US Army War College Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies.

In his latest book, War’s Logic: Strategic Though and the American Way of War (Cambridge University Press), he reveals how successive generations of American Strategic theorists have thought about war. Analyzing the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Billy Mitchell, Bernard Brodie, Robert Osgood, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, Henry Eccles, Joseph Wiley, Harry Summers, John Boyd, William Lind, and John Warden, he uncovers the logic that underpinned each theorist’s critical concepts, core principles, and basic assumptions about the nature and character of war.

More information about Antulio J. Echevarria.

The lecture is aimed at students and staff at the Swedish Defence University, No registration is required, first come first served.