Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

He was the Editor of The National Interest magazine and a Senior Fellow of Strategic Studies at The Nixon Center in Washington, DC. He is currently a senior editor at The National Interest.

Dr. Gvosdev is a frequent commentator on U.S. foreign policy and international relations, Russian and Eurasian affairs, developments in the Middle East, and the role of religion in politics. He received his doctorate from St Antony's College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. He was also associate director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University.

Dr. Gvosdev is the author or editor of a number of books, including the co-author of The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Political Islam.

He has published more than 50 articles, columns and essays on the following topics: democratization and human rights; general foreign policy; energy policy; foreign policy of Russia and the Eurasian states; U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East; politics and culture of the Eurasian states; and religion and politics. His work has appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, National Review, Religion State and Society, The National Interest, Orbis, The Washington Quarterly, Problems of Post-Communism, and World Policy Journal. He has been quoted or cited as an expert in articles appearing in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, United Press International, Wall Street Journal Europe, Business Week, Newsday, National Post (Canada), Vedomosti (Russia), and El Mercurio (Chile).

He has appeared as a commentator and analyst on television and radio including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, BBC, C-SPAN's
Washington Journal, CBC, and Voice of America.

If terrorism recedes as the central defining question of contemporary international relations, will "natural security" rise to take its place? This was the subject not only of today's column at World Politics Review, but a topic extensively discussed yesterday at a panel at the Carnegie...

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Most of the coverage has focused on what happens in U.S. foreign policy after the demise of Osama bin Laden. How are other major powers of the world affected, however? Writing in Foreign Policy, John Lee notes why Beijing may be concerned about what lies...

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Who will take over for Osama bin Laden as the head of Al-Qaeda? And will he be able to hold together the organization? My colleague John Schindler gives his evaluations (in the New York Daily News): Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief ideologist of the Salafi jihad...

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What impact will the combination of the death of Osama bin Laden and the nomination of Leon Panetta with a mandate to cut defense budgets have on U.S. national security policy? This is a question I tackled today at World Politics Review. If we were...

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Some of the questions to ponder now that Osama bin Laden has been located and killed: 1) Does Al-Qaeda disintegrate, having lost its effective founder and guide? Or does Al-Qaeda now devolve into smaller, nationally-based franchises (in Yemen, North Africa, Palestine)--with no central command or...

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