Author Biographies

Seukhoon Paul Choi is a principal at StratWays Group, a geopolitical risk advisory in Seoul. He specialises in political-military affairs, international security and strategy design. Until 2018, he worked as a strategist and international relations specialist at the United Nations Command, ROK–US Combined Forces Command and US Forces Korea, in both the Commander’s Strategic Initiatives Group and the Directorate for Strategy, Policy, Plans and Strategic Communications. Previously, he worked as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a visiting scholar at Fudan University, a faculty lecturer at the Korea Military Academy and an officer in the Republic of Korea Army.

Elbridge Colby is a principal at the Marathon Initiative. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development in 2017–18, during which he led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. He is the author of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).

Andrew Davies is a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He holds a PhD in physics and worked as a research scientist in the Department of Defence before moving into capability analysis and signals intelligence. He has lectured in intelligence and defence force structuring at The Australian National University.

Stephan Frühling is Associate Dean, Partnerships and Engagement in the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University, where he researches and teaches in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. He was the Fulbright professional fellow in Australia–US Alliance Studies at Georgetown University, Washington, in 2017. He worked as a ‘Partner across the Globe’ research fellow in the research division of the NATO Defense College in Rome in 2015, and was a member of the Australian Government’s external panel of experts on the development of the 2016 Defence White Paper.

Łukasz Kulesa is Deputy Head of Research at the Warsaw-based Polish Institute of International Affairs. His research interests include deterrence, arms control, NATO, Russian security policy and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. His recent publications include ‘Operationalizing the “Polish Fangs”: Poland and Long-Range Precision Strike’, The Nonproliferation Review, 2020; Dilemmas of Arms Control: Meeting the Interests of NATO’s North-Eastern Flank (ICDS, 2020); and ‘The Future of Conventional Arms Control in Europe’, Survival, 2018. Between 2014 and 2019, Łukasz was research director at the European Leadership Network. From 2010 to 2012, he worked at the National Security Bureau.

Jeffrey A. Larsen is a research professor in the Department of National Security Affairs, US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, and President of Larsen Consulting Group in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A retired US Air Force pilot, he was director of the research division at the NATO Defense College, Rome, from 2013 to 2018. He holds a PhD in politics from Princeton University. He is co-editor of On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).

Oriana Skylar Mastro is a centre fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination and coercive diplomacy. She is also a senior non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and serves as an officer in the US Air Force Reserve. For her contributions to US strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016. She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, Washington Quarterly and Survival. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a BA in East Asian studies from Stanford University and an MA and PhD in politics from Princeton University.

Alexander Mattelaer is Vice Dean for Research and an Associate Professor in International Security at the VUB Brussels School of Governance. He is also a senior research fellow at Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations, and a member of the scientific committee of the Belgian Royal Higher Institute for Defence. As a Fulbright Schuman fellow, he visited Harvard University and the National Defense University. His research interests include deterrence and defence planning, transatlantic relations and NATO, and the politics of European integration.

Masashi Murano is Japan Chair Fellow at the Hudson Institute. His research areas include US–Japan defence cooperation and nuclear/conventional deterrence analysis. Prior to joining Hudson, he was a research fellow at the Okazaki Institute (a Tokyo-based think tank). In addition to these experiences, he has been involved in research, analysis, tabletop exercises and facilitation of numerous classified products related to strategic intelligence assessment and policy planning for the Japanese Government. His recent publications include ‘The Modality of Japan’s Long-Range Strike Options’, Texas National Security Review, 1 October 2020.

Andrew O’Neil is Acting Dean of the Graduate Research School and Professor of Political Science at Griffith University. Prior to entering academia full-time, and after completing his PhD, he worked as a Commonwealth public servant with Australia’s Department of Defence. He is a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts and is a former member of the National Consultative Committee on National Security Issues.

Brad Roberts has served as Director of the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since September 2015. From 2009 to 2013, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy. In this role, he served as policy director of the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review and led their implementation. Roberts also serves as a member of US Strategic Command’s Strategic Advisory Group. Prior to entering government service, he was a research fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, editor of the Washington Quarterly and an adjunct professor at George Washington University. Between leaving the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2013 and assuming his current responsibilities, he was a consulting professor at Stanford University and William Perry fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. While there, he authored The Case for US Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, which won the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title in 2016.

Michael Rühle is head of the Hybrid Challenges and Energy Security Section in NATO’s Emerging Security Challenges Division. Previously he was head of speechwriting in the NATO Political Affairs Division, and senior political adviser in NATO’s Secretary General’s Policy Planning Unit. Before joining NATO’s International Staff in 1991, Rühle was a Volkswagen fellow at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington. He has published widely on international security issues.

Sten Rynning is Professor and Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, the University of Southern Denmark, where he founded the Center for War Studies in 2011 and headed it until 2019. He is a non-resident fellow of the NATO Defense College and a senior fellow of the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies. He is the author of numerous books and articles on NATO and modern war.

Brendan Sargeant is Professor of Practice in Defence and Strategic Studies and head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University. From September 2013 to October 2017, he was the associate secretary of the Australian Department of Defence. Prior to that appointment, he was the Deputy Secretary Strategy. As associate secretary, he was responsible for oversight of the implementation of the First Principles Review, a major reform of defence organisation and enterprise governance, planning, performance and risk management. He was principal author of the 2013 Defence White Paper.

Tomohiko Satake is a senior fellow in the Defence Policy Division at the National Institute for Defence Studies, Tokyo. His research interests include alliance studies, Indo-Pacific security and Japanese security policy. Between 2013 and 2014, he served as a deputy director for international security at the International Policy Division of Japan’s Ministry of Defense. His publications include ‘Japan–Australia Security Cooperation in the Bilateral and Multilateral Contexts’ (co-authored with John Hemmings), International Affairs, 2018. He earned a BA and MA from Keio University, and a PhD in international relations from The Australian National University.

Michito Tsuruoka is an Associate Professor at Keio University, Japan. Until 2017, he was a senior research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies. Tsuruoka served as a visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (2013–14), deputy director of the International Policy Division, Ministry of Defense (2012–13), and adviser for NATO at the Embassy of Japan in Belgium (2005–08). He studied politics and international relations at Keio University and Georgetown University and received a PhD from King’s College London. He has published on international security, contemporary European politics and Japan’s foreign and security policy.

Heather Williams is a senior lecturer at King’s College London in the Centre for Science and Security Studies and in the Defence Studies Department. During the 2020–21 academic year, she will be a visiting fellow at the Managing the Atom Project in the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, and from 2020–21 she was a Stanton Nuclear Security fellow in the Security Studies Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She currently leads projects on emerging technology, the future of arms control and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. She is a non-resident senior associate with the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a senior associate fellow with the European Leadership Network. She previously worked at Chatham House and was a specialist adviser to an inquiry by the House of Lords into nuclear disarmament. Williams completed her PhD in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, has a BA in international relations and Russian studies from Boston University and an MA in security policy studies from George Washington University.

Tanya Ogilvie-White is Research Adviser to the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network; Director of the Global Security Programme at the New Zealand Centre for Global Studies; and a senior fellow at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University. Previously, she was research director of the Centre for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Crawford School of Public Policy; senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra; Stanton Nuclear Security fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, UK; and senior lecturer in international relations, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.