Vanuatu is a country comprised of about 80 islands in the South Pacific. The United States established diplomatic relations with Vanuatu in 1986, with a non-resident US ambassador overseeing diplomatic interests in Vanuatu from the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea. Diplomatic engagement with Vanuatu deepened in 2024, when the United States opened an embassy in Vanuatu’s capital, Port-Vila. Instrumental in this effort was Navy Captain Mark Asuncion, who was the senior U.S. official in Vanuatu during this period. He joins The Debrief to reflect on this experience.

The Honorable Christopher R. Hill had a distinguished career at the U.S. Department of State, serving as a five-time ambassador and diplomat at the center of some of the most consequential challenges in American foreign policy. Over three decades in the Foreign Service, which he joined in 1977, Ambassador Hill's career propelled him into high-stakes negotiations with some of America’s most intractable adversaries, from helping lead negotiations in the 1990s that ended the war in Bosnia to serving as the senior U.S. negotiator to the Six Party Talks, which sought to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in the mid-2000s. In 2009 and 2010, Ambassador Hill led the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as the United States wound down its combat mission in Iraq, and in March 2022, the Senate confirmed Ambassador Hill for a fifth time to a U.S. posting abroad, this time to serve as ambassador to Serbia mere weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This followed a period when he served as Dean of the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, where he wrote The Outpost: A Diplomat at Work. He joins The Debrief to reflect on his distinguished diplomatic career after delivering the 2025 convocation address at the U.S. Naval War College.

Over the last quarter century, digital technologies have transformed the way we ways we communicate, the way we shop, the way we bank, and even the way we socialize and consume information. With these advancements have come a number of vulnerabilities that adversaries and malign actors have sought to exploit in the cyber age.

Joining The Debrief to help weigh the challenges and opportunities posed by cyberspace is Dr. Derek S. Reveron, professor and chair of the National Security Affairs Department and co-author, with John E. Savage, of Security in the Cyber Age: An Introduction to Policy and Technology (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

The Arctic encompasses not only the territory of eight countries, but also vital geological features and strategic waterways that have made the region an area of ecological concern and geopolitical contestation.

To help navigate these waters, The Debrief talks with Dr. Mary Thompson-Jones, a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer and professor and chair of Women in Diplomacy and National Security, who is the author of America in the Arctic: Foreign Policy and Competition in the Melting North (Columbia University Press, 2025).

Today, economics is more a part of the national security equation than it has ever been. Trade, science, technology, innovation, and supply chains – to name a few issues – intersect with national security with more depth, breadth, and frequency every year. As a consequence, U.S. economic agencies are increasingly called to the table to solve national security challenges.

To help understand these many connections and what economic security looks like in practice at the highest levels of decision-making, The Debrief spoke with Don Graves, who served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2021-2025.

Admiral Verma offers an overview of the growing importance of the Indian Ocean basin—stretching from South Africa across the Middle East and South Asia to Southeast Asia—for global security. In particular, how will developments in this region of the world become more important for U.S. national security?

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Guest:

Admiral (Ret) Nirmal Verma served as Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy from 2009-2012 and concurrently held charge as the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee from June 2011. His afloat appointments include commands of a frigate, a destroyer and aircraft carrier INS Viraat. His assignments as Flag Officer include an operational theater command, and policy formulation on budget management, acquisitions and human resources. Post retirement he served as India's High Commissioner (Ambassador) to Canada. The Admiral is currently a U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Distinguished International Fellow at the U.S. Naval War College.

Synopsis:

The Space Force is the United States’s newest military service branch, established in 2019 to secure the nation’s interests in space. Organized within the Department of the Air Force, the Space Force joins a number of organizations within the Department of Defense operating within what is an increasingly contested warfighting domain. Joining The Debrief to help navigate the changes to the United States’s posture toward this new frontier is Dr. David Burbach, associate professor of national security affairs and the inaugural director of the Space Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College.

About the Speaker:

Professor Burbach teaches the politics of U.S. foreign policy, space security and international relations. His scholarly interests include civil-military relations, defense planning and the relationship between international security and technology, particularly space and nuclear

policy. Before joining the Naval War College faculty in 2007, he taught at the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies and also worked for several policy analysis and information technology organizations.

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The views presented by the faculty or other guest speakers do not reflect official positions of the Naval War College, DON or DOD.

Synopsis:

How have new technologies, such as autonomous drones and applying artificial intelligence, changed how strategists and policymakers view conflict in the 21st century? While they have had clear impacts in the tactical and operational levels of war, how game-changing are they when it comes to strategic objectives? Are we in thrall to "strategic myths" arising from technological determinism? Join us for this important conversation.

About the Speaker:

LTC Paul Lushenko is an Assistant Professor and Director of Special Operations at the U.S. Army War College. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in International Relations from Cornell University. He also holds an M.A. in Defense and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, an M.A. in International Relations and a Master of Diplomacy from The Australian National University, and a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy. Paul has deployed continuously, directing intelligence operations at the Battalion, Combined Task Force, and Joint Task Force levels. In his most recent operational assignment, Paul served as the Senior Intelligence Officer for the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan and was also responsible for shaping the coalition’s strategy to defeat the Islamic State and helping to regionalize U.S. counterterrorism policy and strategy. Paul is a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, Adjunct Research Lecturer at Charles Sturt University, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute. He is the co-editor of Drones and Global Order: Implications of Remote Warfare for International Society (2022), which is the first book to systematically study the implications of drone warfare on global politics. He also has a book forthcoming on the public’s perceptions of legitimate drone strikes, entitled The Legitimacy of Drone Warfare: Evaluating Public Perceptions (2024).

The views presented by the faculty or other guest speakers do not reflect official positions of the Naval War College, DON or DOD.

Synopsis:

The 2022 National Security Strategy identifies the People’s Republic of China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” What is the nature of the threat China poses, and how is the United States adapting to meet it? To address these questions, The Debrief draws on the expertise of Kathleen Walsh, Associate Professor of National Security Affairs and Director of the Asia Pacific Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College, and Brian Chao, Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and associate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China.

About the Speakers:

Kathleen (Kate) Walsh is associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College where she has taught policy analysis since 2006. Walsh is a member of the Faculty Advisory Council, the NWC’s Asia Pacific Studies Group (APSG) director and the founder/director of the Oceanography & Maritime Security Group (OMSG). She was a senior consultant to Washington, D.C.-area think tanks including senior associate at the Stimson Center and senior associate at a D.C.-area defense consulting firm, among other past positions there. Her research focuses on China and the Asia-Pacific region, particularly issues of security, technology, innovation and ocean or "blue" economy issues.

Prof. Brian C. Chao researches great-power relations, naval power and geostrategy, and US Indo-Asia-Pacific defense and foreign policies. His work appears in “Navies in Multipolar Worlds: From the Age of Sail to the Present" (Routledge), “Security, Development and Sustainability in Asia: A World Scientific Reference on Major Policy and Development Issues of 21st Century Asia” (World Scientific), International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and Territory, Politics, Governance, among others. He teaches theater and national-security decision-making, as well as an elective course on Taiwan. He is also an associate of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Contemporary China.

The views presented by the faculty or other guest speakers do not reflect official positions of the Naval War College, DON or DOD.

Synopsis:

The interagency process coordinates the development and implementation of national security policies across executive departments at all levels of the federal government. How does the Defense Department translate policy guidance into operational-level planning, and how do national security professionals in regional theaters coordinate with their interagency counterparts to implement these policies? Capt. Jeff W. Benson, USN, joins The Debrief to address these questions, drawing on his experience in contributing to the interagency process on U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific region. Capt. Benson will be the first Commanding Officer of the new Flight III guided missile destroyer, USS LOUIS H. WILSON, JR (DDG 126), being built in Bath, ME. He is a graduate of the Naval War College and previously served as the Division Chief for China and Taiwan on the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J5).

About the Speaker:

Capt. Benson will be the first Commanding Officer of the new Flight III guided missile destroyer, USS LOUIS H. WILSON, JR (DDG 126), being built in Bath, ME. He is a graduate of the Naval War College and previously served as the Division Chief for China and Taiwan on the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J5).

The views presented by the faculty or other guest speakers do not reflect official positions of the Naval War College, DON or DOD.