Dr. Peter G. Thompson

CISA Department Chair, Professor

PETER G. THOMPSON is a Professor in the College of International Security Affairs at the US National Defense University. He has written on the political economy of 19th-century US-European security relations, and the current US-China and US-North Korean economic-security nexus; great power politics; the causes of war; globalization; threat perception; and the role of armed groups in the contemporary security environment. He previously taught a variety of international security, foreign policy, and international political economy courses at the University of California, Los Angeles; Loyola Marymount University; and Michigan State University. He received his BA in government from the University of Texas at Austin and his MA and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. During the 2016–17 academic year he was on sabbatical as a Visiting Fellow at the Changing Character of War Centre at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Armed Groups: The 21st Century Threat (Rowman & Littlefield), in addition to articles in the Annual Review of Political Science, Asian Security, and Security Studies.

Research Interests

  • Geoeconomics
  • Great Power Competition
  • Globalization and International Security
  • International Relations Theory
  • U.S. Foreign Policy
  • Transnational Threats
  • Europe, East and Northeast Asia