The National War College (NWC) of the United States is a school in the National Defense University. It is housed in Roosevelt Hall on Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., the third-oldest Army post still active.
Thomas Sovereign Gates Jr. was an American politician and diplomat who served as Secretary of Defense from 1959 to 1961 and Secretary of the Navy from 1957 to 1959, both under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, he established a task force to set nuclear target priorities. He also authorized U-2 reconnaissance flights, including the flight of Francis Gary Powers.
James Rodney Schlesinger was an American economist and public servant who was best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior to becoming Secretary of Defense, he served as Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from 1971 to 1973, and as CIA Director for a few months in 1973. He became America's first Secretary of Energy under Jimmy Carter in 1977, serving until 1979.
The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) was the United States' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.
Robert L. Gallucci is an American academic and diplomat, who formerly worked as president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He previously served as dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, from 1996 to June 2009. Prior to his appointment in 1996, for over two decades he had served in various governmental and international agencies, including the Department of State and the United Nations.
Ashton Baldwin Carter was an American government official and academic who served as the 25th United States secretary of defense from February 2015 to January 2017. He later served as director of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
Lawrence J. Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information. He was formerly director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Robert G. Joseph is a senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy. He was the United States Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation, with ambassadorial rank. Prior to this post, Joseph was the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, a position he held until January 24, 2007. Joseph is known for being instrumental in creating the Proliferation Security Initiative and as the architect of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. He was also the US chief negotiator to Libya in 2003 who convinced the Libyans to give up their WMD programs. He also recently authored a book describing his experience in negotiating with Libya entitled "Countering WMD."
Andrew Jackson Goodpaster was an American Army General. He served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), from 1 July 1969, and Commander in Chief of the United States European Command (CINCEUR) from 5 May 1969 until his retirement 17 December 1974. As such, he was the commander of all NATO (SACEUR) and United States (CINCEUR) military forces stationed in Europe and the surrounding regions.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, formerly known as the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF), is a part of the National Defense University. It was renamed on September 6, 2012, in honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower who graduated from this school when it was previously known as the Army Industrial College.
Lieutenant General (retd) Abdulla Shamaal MA MSc ndu psc is the former Chief of Defence Force (CDF) of Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF). General Shamaal was appointed to the post of Chief of Defence Force on 11 December 2018 by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and served until 17 November 2023. Shamaal was trained in various military institutions such as the United States Army Infantry School in Fort Benning, the Pakistan Military Academy and the Defence Services Staff College in India. Shamaal was previously discharged from service in November 2013 but was reinstated in December 2018 following High Court verdict that his discharge was unlawful. He has also held various Senior Command, Staff and Instructional appointments during his career.
John Edgar Endicott served as Vice Chancellor of the SolBridge International School of Business and President of Woosong University. Previously, he served as a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech and director of the school's Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy. Endicott has written or co-written five books on foreign policy and security issues and one volume of memoirs.
Richard L. Kugler is an American thinker and writer on U.S. national security policy and defense strategy.
Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) is a form of Professional Military Education (PME) in the United States that emphasizes a multiservice approach. Joint Professional Military Education was established following greater awareness during World War II of a need for effective cooperation between the branches of the United States armed forces. While some institutions had previously served to provide joint training, notably the Army and Navy Staff College that operated in the last years of the War, the first senior school for Joint Professional Military Education was founded in 1946 under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The 1986 passage of the Goldwater–Nichols Act caused increased interest in Joint Professional Military Education and created a standard. As of 2005, JPME contains five levels, successful completion of two of which are among the qualifications for the designation Joint Service Officer. Joint Professional Military Education levels are available at a number of colleges and JPME Institutions.
Robert Orton Work is an American national security professional who served as the 32nd United States Deputy Secretary of Defense for both the Obama and Trump administrations from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, Work was the United States Under Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2013, and before that served as a colonel in the United States Marine Corps; Work retired in 2001 and worked as a civilian at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) and the George Washington University in various positions relating to military and strategic study. From 2013 to 2014, he was the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). After his time as Deputy Secretary of Defense, he went on to serve on the board of Raytheon. As of October 2023, he serves on the Special Competitive Studies Project's board of advisors.
Clarence Steven McGann was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu from 2008 to 2011. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, and assumed his duties at post in October 2008.
Thomas Graham Jr. is a former senior U.S. diplomat. Graham was involved in the negotiation of every single international arms control and non-proliferation agreement from 1970 to 1997. This includes the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, the Anti-ballistic missile (ABM) Treaty, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT), Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). In 1993, Ambassador Graham served as acting director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) from January to November, 1993 and acting deputy director from November, 1993 to July, 1994. From 1994 through 1997, he was president Bill Clinton's special representative for Arms Control, Non-Proliferation, and Disarmament. Graham successfully led the U.S. government efforts to achieve the permanent extension of the NPT in 1995. Graham also served for 15 years as the general counsel of ACDA. Throughout his career, Thomas Graham has worked with six U.S. Presidents including Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Ambassador Graham worked on the negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention and managed the Senate approval of the ratification of the Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical and biological weapons in war, as well as the Biological Weapons Convention.
Paul Joseph Selva is a retired United States Air Force four-star general who served as the tenth vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity, he was the nation's second-highest-ranking military officer, and the highest-ranking officer in the Air Force. He assumed his last assignment on July 31, 2015, and retired on August 1, 2019. Selva is a command pilot with more than 3,100 hours in the C-5, C-17A, C-141B, C-37, KC-10, KC-135A and T-37.
Linton Wells II is an American public servant and educator who served a total of 51 years in government service. He served 26 years in the United States Navy as an officer, and then was appointed by the President of the United States as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, serving through two administrations of both parties, both the Democrat Bill Clinton and the Republican George W. Bush. He wrote many books, articles, and white papers on matters of national security, including important texts related to the use of American military capabilities in global humanitarian operations. His expertise focused on the strategic impacts of technological change and on building resilience to natural and man-made disasters as issues of US national security. He shaped, over five decades of public service, current US Department of Defense directives that link policy and technology with public-private cooperation. His writings significantly altered U.S. and international approaches to civil-military engagement, US policy in global humanitarian assistance, and global public-private partnerships in disaster relief. He has also made fundamental contributions to technical areas that have defined network-enabled military capabilities and cyberspace operations. After retiring from public service, he continued to contribute to the international STAR-TIDES network that he had founded in 2007, a consortium of several thousand global nodes comprising agencies, organizations, institutions and individuals in 40+ countries that promote the free exchange of research results on global issues of human security. As of 2024 he is Executive Advisor to the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) at George Mason University and chairs the Advisory Group of the C4I and Cyber Center there. C-RASC has been working with the People-Centered Internet (PCI) on ways to “put humanity at the center of the Internet” and support a variety of revitalization initiatives. He is on the board of PCI, and also the President and CEO of Global Resilience Strategies and Senior Advisor to Resilient Japan. He was listed by Fortune magazine in 2009 as one of the top 16 "Players of Tech".
