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.

What constitutes war? Andrew Stigler and I point out some of the difficulties in coming up with standards: Should a 40-minute raid conducted by several dozen commandos be regarded as "hostilities" commensurate with an act of war? After all, force was projected across borders and...

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Excerpted from a post for The Atlantic Council While the United States and its North Atlantic partners have reaffirmed their commitment to Afghanistan through to 2014, the Western alliance has also clearly signaled it is not willing to offer an unlimited "blank check" to Kabul....

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(Cross-posted from the Atlantic Council's New Atlanticist blog) The "farewell address" delivered by outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the North Atlantic Alliance last Friday was a stark warning that "business as usual" cannot continue much longer. Jorge Benitez argued earlier this week that...

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Outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has spent much of his tenure at the Pentagon trying to broker a deal between the United States and Russia that would permit the deployment of a limited missile-defense system in Europe but bring Russia into the process as...

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The Naval War College is hosting its annual Current Strategy Forum, with the topic this year focusing on "Energy and U.S. National Security." So far, an interesting mix of presentations: what can be achieved through greater efficiency; how have changes in military operations (dispersed operations--small...

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