Annual Events

AWC Civil-Military Relations Conference

During the spring, the Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy and a co-sponsoring academic program, in collaboration with the AWC, host a conference on Civil-Military Relations.

The conference aims to link past, current, and future civilian and military leaders to discuss challenges and concepts for building sustainable trust in American civil-military relations. The panels and discussions seek to establish a common understanding of what this trust looks like in American civil-military relations; develop and foster relationships between past, current, and future civilian and military leaders; and highlight the voices of students.

Past themes include:

  • The American Public and Its Military
  • Politicization of the Military
  • Civil-Military Relations at the Senior Level
  • A New Dimension in Civil-Military Relations: Military, Civilian Government, and the Private Sector in Cyberspace
  • Who Commands and who serves?

In 2023, the AWC at Duke partnered with Georgetown's Center for Security Studies to present, "The All-Volunteer Force at 50: Civil-Military Challenges and Opportunities."

Young Scholars Conference

The AWC invites Ph.D. students, early scholars, and early policy practitioners to submit proposals for a one-day conference on great power competition in a rapidly changing security landscape.

The 2023 conference featured scholarship addressing three broad areas shaping the curators of great power competition:

  1. Security: Defending the First and Second Island Chains, Conventional and Nuclear Deterrence, Escalation Management
  2. New Domains: Cyber, Space, AI, Information Warfare, and Economic Statecraft & Security
  3. International Order: Europe, the Global South (i.e., Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands), and Human Rights

AWC Policy Workshop

The AWC hosts an annual 2-day policy workshop to tackle issues related to American internationalism. Its aim is to bring together the best “thinkers” from both academia and policy in a venue free of distractions for serious, off-the-record discussions.  

Past themes have included:

  • Ukraine and Its Global Implications
  • Domestic Politics and National Security
  • The Pivot to China
  • Organizing for Long Term Strategic Competition