Isaiah Wilson III

Isaiah ‘Ike’ Wilson, III, Ph.D., is the former Director of the Strategic Studies Institute and USAWC Press, the research and publication arm of the U.S. Army War College. He envisioned an emphasis on external collaboration for the scholarly institute serving as the Army’s think tank and the Army War College’s bridge to the academic, policy, and think tank communities.

A 1989 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Col. Isaiah Wilson III retired from a career as an Army aviator (AH-64 pilot), strategist, and professional military educator. His traditional military assignments included leadership of the US CENTCOM Commander’s Initiative’s Group, Chief of Plans for the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, and leadership in several combat aviation units and critical staff assignments. He applied his practitioner experience across 20 years of teaching, primarily as an Academy Professor at West Point, where he was director of the American Politics, Policy and Strategy Department and founding director of West Point’s Johnson Grand Strategy Program.

An established author, he published Thinking Beyond War: Why America Fails to Win the Peace in 2007 and multiple books, monographs, and articles addressing topics such as civil-military relations, counterinsurgency, the national security enterprise, Operation Iraqi Freedom, grand strategy, land power, officership and the profession, and post-conflict operations.

Wilson has held faculty and teaching appointments at the National War College, George Washington University, Columbia University, and Yale University. Of his numerous professional affiliations, most notably he is a life member and former International Affairs Fellow (IAF) with the Council on Foreign Relations, a resident scholar with West Point’s Modern War Institute (MWI), and an International Affairs Fellow with New America.