| CHRISTOPHER BASSFORD |
CONTACT INFO BassfordC or use the Clausewitz.com contact form. |
Chris Bassford graduated with Honors from the College
of William and Mary for a dissertation on tactical nuclear weapons. He obtained an MA in American diplomatic history from
the Ohio University before serving five years on active duty as a U.S. Army
field artillery officer, with tours in Korea and Germany. He then completed
a Ph.D. in modern European history at Purdue University before accepting
an Olin postdoctoral fellowship in national security studies at the Ohio
State University. Subsequently, he was director of studies in the theory
and nature of war at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, then associate professor of National Policy
Issues at the U.S. Army War College. He is presently Professor of Strategy
at the
,
in Washington, DC. As an independent consultant, writer, and lecturer, he
has spoken at schools as varied as UVA's Darden School of Business and the
George C. Marshall Center for European Security Studies, in Garmisch, Germany.
Dr. Bassford has written scholarly studies, military doctrine, and articles for the popular press. He is the author of several books, including Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1994) and The Spit-Shine Syndrome: Organizational Irrationality in the American Field Army (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988). He is one of the editors of the Boston Consulting Group's business-oriented Clausewitz On Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist (New York: Wiley, 2001), and also edited Carl von Clausewitz and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington, and the Campaign of 1815 (Clausewitz.com, 2010). From 1995 to 1999 he was involved in the writing of USMC doctrine, authoring MCDP 1-1, Strategy; MCDP 1-2, Campaigning; and MCWP 5-1, Marine Corps Planning (Draft), as well as participating in the writing of several other USMC and Joint concepts and doctrinal publications. Bassford is the internet editor of The Clausewitz Homepage, a large educational website that focuses on the German military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz. His own work on Clausewitz concentrates on the evolution of Clausewitz's reception, reputation, and impact in the English-speaking world. He is particularly interested in the relationship between Clausewitzian theory and concepts from the field of nonlinear science, a field which is having a great impact on modern thinkers in areas ranging from subatomic physics to economics, archaeology, and evolutionary biology. (The latter field is the subject of his current research.) |