Professional development & events
Strategic Cultures
Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University | June 20–24, 2026
Facilitators: Christopher McKnight Nichols (The Ohio State University) & Andrew Preston (University of Virginia)
About the 2026 Summer Institute
Historically, international relations has fluctuated between periods of crisis and periods of relative stability. Some refer to our current age as one of sustained “polycrisis,” unleashed by what Chinese President Xi Jinping calls the “great changes unseen in a century.” Of course there has hardly been much peace or stability in the past 150 years, but the last time the world was in such a state of multipolar instability and insecurity was probably the 1930s. We are now at another threshold moment in which America’s place in the world may well be in the process of being transformed as well as reimagined. If history is any guide, some of this new thinking will endure; most of it will become obsolete.
The 2026 SHAFR Summer Institute will focus on the variety of U.S. strategic cultures that emerged in response to previous moments of international crisis. At its most fundamental level, strategy applies all available means to achieve a desired end. Compared to most other states in the international system, the modern United States has possessed a much deeper pool of means in pursuit of far more expansive ends. The capaciousness of both means and ends has provided for a richly diverse array of American strategic cultures, some of which were lasting.
Key Questions and Objectives
Summer Institute participants will explore the ways in which previous generations of diplomats, strategists, economists, military planners, missionaries, activists, intellectuals, and others reconceived America’s place in the world and proposed to secure and bolster it.
- How can we incorporate a vast range of chronological and diverse perspectives, from the colonial era to the present, into the historical narrative?
- How did the diplomatic, economic, military, demographic, technological, humanitarian, legal, ideological, and environmental challenges of the past shape U.S. strategic culture regarding world order as well as the future of the world itself?
- How do strategic cultures broadly, including history, political and social structures, and scores of other factors, influence worldviews and the strategy-making processes of individuals, groups, and states?
- What are the key issues related to grand strategy and their impact on U.S. foreign relations?
Ultimately, we also hope to offer some perspective on our current international condition and possible ways forward for the U.S. and the world.
Participants
Introducing the 2026 Cohort
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Cody J. Billock, University of Florida's Hamilton School, Cold War Citadel: Huế & the Global Vietnamese Civil War, 1945-1986
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Sean Case, Independent Scholar, Within the Balance: The Birth of American International Relations and the “Defense” of the Free World
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Emilie Cunning, Emory University
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Robert Diaz, University of Michigan
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Holly Harris, Southern Methodist University
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Charlie Heffernan-Brown, University of Virginia, Sailors, Sex, and San Diego: The Making of a Gay Military World, 1898-Present
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Layton Ho, University of Melbourne, The Unipolar Hubris: America's Unipolar Moment, Neoliberalism, and the Rise of China, 1989-2000
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Christopher Hulshof, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Joseph Edward Johnson, Temple University, Moving Mountains: Peaceful Nuclear Explosions, Project Plowshare, and US Foreign Policy, 1952-1977
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Shelby Jones, Purdue University, From Ben-Hur to Istanbul: General Lew Wallace and American Diplomacy in the Late Ottoman Empire
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Faith Lazar, Yale University
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Emily Needham, University of Virginia
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Marc A. Reyes, University of Connecticut, In the Circle of Great Powers: India and the Postcolonial Atomic State, 1947–1974
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Zachary Tayler, Ohio University, The Lost Peace: Normalization of Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 1975-1995
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Pasuth Thothaveesansuk, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Bohan Zhang, Rice University, The Pan-Pacific Territory: Hawai‘i at the Border of China and the U.S. Empire, 1900s to 1950s
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