ISSP Leadership Forum
THE INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM (ISSP) LEADERSHIP FORUM
The ISSP leadership forum is a unique and impactful opportunity for Fletcher students to engage in sequential, small group dialogue with senior civilian policy and military leaders operating at the highest levels of command and decision making. ISSP will host 20 graduate students, military fellows, and senior leaders in an intimate “fire-side chat” format in which students are encouraged to dialogue and learn from these senior leaders’ experiences and personal stories about leadership in military command, embassies, intelligence agencies, and the defense industry.
In our fifth year of the ISSP Senior Leadership Forum (2025), we invited four retired senior leaders from the U.S. military to discuss the ethical dimensions of military service and leadership. The four leaders that joined us this spring were: General (retired) David Perkins, Vice Admiral (retired) Collin Green, Lieutenant General (retired) H.R. McMaster, and Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Alex Vindman. Each of the retired officers interviewed had one or more combat tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan and had dealt with ethical challenges during those deployments and other command situations. Ethics have historically been a cornerstone of U.S. military service during war and peace; and civilian policymakers depend on military leaders to carry out the execution of their duties with integrity and adherence to the rules of engagement and laws of war. Unethical behavior and sometimes even the appearance of unethical actions can damage public trust in U.S. military institutions and their reputation at home and internationally. Professors Linnington and Shultz facilitated a discussion where each invitee shared their experiences across four broad topics of discussion: ethical values within the profession of arms; education and leadership training related to ethics and the laws of war; experiences with the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the conduct of war; and politics and ethics in the modern-day military.
The International Security Studies Program will convene its sixth ISSP Senior Leadership Forum by focusing on US-China peer competition in the Asia Pacific theater which first intensified and became particularly pronounced in the decade of the 2010s. China’s military power was rapidly increasing, as Beijing sought to expand its sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific region. During the 2010s, the Asia-Pacific region experienced increased tensions and even clashes between the Chinese, US, and other allies’ naval vessels and aircraft due to territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Consequently, the United States began to explicitly view its relationship with the PRC as fundamentally competitive, identifying China as a revisionist power. This view of China was officially confirmed in the 2017 National Security Strategy. The new policy focused on peer competition had significant implications for U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), which in 2018 was renamed U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). The command’s senior leadership faced major challenges developing a new theater strategy, bolstering military power by exploiting emerging technologies, and strengthening alliances with countries like South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. This year’s Senior Leadership Forum will focus on how four senior military and policy leaders, who were at the apex of the DoD and INDOPACOM’s strategic reorientation to address China’s growing power, approached developing the architecture for a new theater strategy.