America’s Forgotten War & Confronting China Today
Study the Korean War and the lessons it offers for U.S.-China competition.
July 24–August 11, 2023
Washington, DC
Security Studies offer fellows an intensive learning experience focused on the most difficult national security challenges the United States faces today. Each seminar will provide a practitioner’s view of national security, led by faculty who have direct experience forming and advising American policy.
The first seminar will bring together two experts who have served their country in the military and in Congress. Mike Gallagher, the House’s China specialist, and Aaron MacLean, former top advisor to Senator Tom Cotton, will take a case study approach, focusing on T.R. Fehrenbach’s classic history of the Korean War. As the last time American and Chinese troops met on the battlefield, this war has much to teach aspiring policymakers about Sino-American great-power competition.
The second course will build on this foundation, examining the past and future of Chinese warfare. Led by China expert and former Defense official, Dan Blumenthal, the seminar will explore how China builds military power and assess its strategy of coercive campaigns in the Indo-Pacific and against Taiwan.
The final course will study the trajectory of U.S. policy towards Russia—from the Soviet collapse in 1991 to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Vance Serchuk, an advisor to Gen. David Petraeus, will help fellows understand what went wrong as Moscow reverted to authoritarian rule and now poses one of the most consequential tests of American power and leadership.
Mike Gallagher on the Future of US National Security Policy
Who Should Apply? Advanced undergraduates, recent graduates, and young professionals are all eligible to apply. Fellows may apply for, and participate in, multiple seminars.
Dates & Times: Seminars meet in-person over Summer 2023. See the individual course pages for full details.
Commitment: Seminars meet for morning seminars, with afternoon guest speakers and some evening activities. Fellows are expected to attend all sessions and activities.
Housing, Stipend, & Course Materials: Residential hotel accommodations will be provided, as will all course materials. Fellows will receive a stipend contingent upon full participation in the course and completion of a Strategic Options Memo.
Deadline: Applicants who apply by the early application deadline of February 15, 2023 will hear back by March. The final deadline is March 1, 2023.
Describe, in 1,000 words, or less the political questions you find most interesting, your future ambitions, and how these relate to your preferred program(s).
Unofficial; required only for currently enrolled students & recent graduates.
10 pages maximum; double-spaced. Please send academic writing that best showcases your ability to invent and sustain a persuasive argument, no matter the subject-matter.
Provide the name and contact information of a professor, mentor, or supervisor. (Letter not required for nominated applicants.)
Senior Research Specialist, Gartner | M.A. Candidate in Security Studies, Georgetown University
Data Manager, Chicago Project on Security and Threats
University of Chicago, 2019
Jakob Urda is an alum of the War Studies Program, and has since returned for subsequent Hertog programs as a young professional. After a course with Dan Blumenthal, he and Dan worked together to research and write an essay on China’s economic and military power. Jakob is a senior research specialist at Gartner, a consultancy which studies emerging technologies. He is also an M.A. candidate in Security Studies at Georgetown University.
One of my professors at the University of Chicago, Robert Pape, recommended I apply to the War Studies program. The University of Chicago Scholarship Office said that based on my interests in great power politics and political thought that the War Studies program would be a strong fit.
Subsequently, I participated in the Hertog Seminar on “Nixon in China” and the Security and Strategy Seminar Series on China. I have also attended War Studies Advanced Courses such as “Civil Military Relations” and “Russian Hybrid Warfare.” I could not have asked for a better experience in these programs. They pushed me to develop the rigor of my ideas and built my personal network of like-minded young professionals.
I studied political science at the University of Chicago with a special focus on the foreign policy strategy of the late Hapsburg monarchy. One of my most formative experiences was being sent to the NATO Center of Excellence Defense Against Terrorism as an instructor for a weeklong program to bring social science research into the discussion with security practitioners. It convinced me that I want to continue to operate at the nexus of research and security.
Hertog programs have been instrumental in my professional development. The War Studies and China programs sharpened my ambitions and gave me analytical tools to succeed in my work and school environments.
The War Studies Program took me beyond being a foreign policy hobbyist. The War Studies Program conducts a holistic discussion of the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. From close readings of theory of war to simulated debates over post-war doctrinal evolution, students leave with a deeper understanding of the concepts at work.
What most stood out to me was the War Studies instructors’ uncompromising approach to intellectual honesty. Every idea would be subject to intense scrutiny and every theory would be applied to unusual and difficult test cases. We discussed what Clausewitz would say about the Gulf War air campaign or the Russian Deep Battle doctrine. In subsequent experiences in school and work, I have had to work with similar frameworks and I always go back to the approaches taught in the War Studies Program.
The Hertog programs have helped more than anything else to keep me sharp and critical. It is all too easy to slip into comfortable opinions and routines, but the Hertog classes consistently force me to engage with new and diverging viewpoints and push me out of my comfort zone. The ability to engage with such an intelligent student body on such important issues is unparalleled.
Absolutely. My impression is that while many people are nominally interested in foreign policy and security studies issues, they are limited by resources which only scrape the surface. Hertog programs are unique in their ability to drive students deeper into these important topics.
The “Nixon and China” class I took under Dan Blumenthal is a great example of Hertog’s value. Instead of laying out a single viewpoint about a difficult issue, the class used a primary-source focus which forced students to develop their own opinions. Reading documents such as Kissinger’s transcripts and Nixon’s op-eds makes clear the enormous complexity of the decisions involved. For a generation of young people interested in participating in similarly momentous challenges, this is an invaluable experience.
I want blend my security studies and technology policy backgrounds to work on America’s technology competition with China. One lesson that Hertog teaches you is that competition has many faces and changes form throughout history. Today, it seems that technology competition will be a key foreign policy issue which spans political, economic, and military domains. I would like to work for a US government body such as CFIUS, BIS, or OSTP to help America design a technology strategy which protects our core national interests.
Jakob Urda is an alum of the War Studies Program, and has since returned for subsequent Hertog programs as a young professional. After a course with Dan Blumenthal, he and Dan worked together to research and write an essay on China’s economic and military power. Jakob is a senior research specialist at Gartner, a consultancy which studies emerging technologies. He is also an M.A. candidate in Security Studies at Georgetown University.
The “Nixon and China” class I took under Dan Blumenthal is a great example of Hertog’s value. Instead of laying out a single viewpoint about a difficult issue, the class used a primary-source focus which forced students to develop their own opinions. Reading documents such as Kissinger’s transcripts and Nixon’s op-eds makes clear the enormous complexity of the decisions involved. For a generation of young people interested in participating in similarly momentous challenges, this is an invaluable experience.
Mike Gallagher
Congressman Mike Gallagher served seven years on active duty as a Human Intelligence/Counterintelligence Officer and Regional Affairs Officer for the Middle East and North Africa, earning the rank of Captain. He was recently selected to serve as Chairman of the Select Committee on China.
Aaron MacLean
Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Previously, he was senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Aaron served on active duty as a U.S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–2010.
Dan Blumenthal
Daniel Blumenthal is the Director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade.
Vance Serchuk
Vance Serchuk is Executive Director of the KKR Global Institute and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Serchuk served for six years as the senior national security advisor to Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut).
Daniel Blumenthal
Daniel Blumenthal is the Director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade.
Christian Brose
Christian Brose is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Head of Strategy at Anduril Industries, prior to which he served as staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was also responsible for leading the production, negotiation, and passage of four National Defense Authorization Acts, which set policy and authorized spending for all U.S. national defense activities.
Matthew Kroenig
Matthew Kroenig is a Professor in the Department of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. A 2019 study in Perspectives on Politics ranked him as one of the top 25 most-cited political scientists of his generation. He has served in several positions in the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community in the Bush and Obama administrations.
H.R. McMaster
H. R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Previously, he served as the 26th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for 34 years before retiring as a Lieutenant General. He is author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.
Michael Doran
Michael Doran, an expert in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, radical Islam, and the Arab- Israeli conflict, is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He has also held a number of senior U.S. government posts related to Middle East policy and strategic communication.
Eric S. Edelman
Eric S. Edelman is a Counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and the Roger Hertog Distinguished Practitioner-in-Residence at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins. He has served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey.
Elbridge Colby
Elbridge Colby is co-founder and principal of The Marathon Initiative, a policy initiative focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. He is the author of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (Yale University Press, 2021). Previously, Colby was from 2018-2019 the Director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, where he led the Center’s work on defense issues.
Lewis Libby
Lewis Libby is Senior Vice President of Hudson Institute. Before joining Hudson, Libby held several high level positions in the federal government related to his current work on national security and homeland security affairs.
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Wolfowitz is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He spent more than three decades in public service and higher education. Most recently, he served as president of the World Bank and deputy secretary of defense.
William Inboden
William Inboden is Executive Director and William Powers, Jr. Chair at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas-Austin. Previously he served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council at the White House.
Diana Schaub
Diana J. Schaub is Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland and a member of the Hoover Institution’s task force on The Virtues of a Free Society. From 2004 to 2009 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Flagg Taylor
Flagg Taylor is an Associate Professor of Government at Skidmore College, and serves on the Academic Council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He is editor most recently of The Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Václav Benda, 1977–1989. He is currently writing a book on Czech dissent in the 1970s and 1980s.
James M. Dubik
LTG James M. Dubik (U.S. Army, Ret.) is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and a Professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. General Dubik has extensive operational experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, and in many NATO countries.
Frederick W. Kagan
Frederick W. Kagan is a Senior Instructor with the Hertog War Studies Program at the Institute for the Study of War. The author of the 2007 report “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq,” he is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq. He is the Director of AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
Kimberly Kagan
Kimberly Kagan is a Senior Instructor with the Hertog War Studies Program and founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. She is a military historian who has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Yale, Georgetown, and American University.