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Jonathan D T Ward

Research Associate with the Centre for the Changing Character of War, University of Oxford

Jonathan D T Ward is the author of two books on Chinese grand strategy and US-China global competition: China's Vision of Victory and The Decisive Decade. He has been studying China, Russia, and India for nearly twenty years, from travels with truck caravans in Tibet and across the South China Sea by cargo ship in his early twenties, to accessing Chinese Communist Party archives that have now been closed to the world while a PhD candidate at Oxford, to consulting for the U.S. Department of Defense and Fortune 500 companies on China risk and global markets strategy.

Dr. Ward is a research associate with the University of Oxford's Centre for the Changing Character of War. He earned his PhD at the University of Oxford, specializing in the history of modern China at Oxford's Faculty of Oriental Studies, and his M.St. in Global and Imperial History at Oxford's Faculty of History. He studied philosophy, Russian, and Chinese language at Columbia University as an undergraduate, and completed further language study in Russian and Chinese at St. Petersburg State University and Beijing University. Dr. Ward's think tanks affiliations include the Stephen M. Kellen Term Member Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Shawn Brimley Next Generation National Security Leaders Program at the Center for a New American Security, and the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

Dr. Ward has brought the experience of a traveller, the discipline of a scholar, and the insight of a strategy consultant to one of the toughest, biggest challenges of our time: what does China want, how will it try to get it, and what should America do? Dr. Ward is the Founder of Atlas Organization, a Washington DC based consultancy focused on US-China global competition. He speaks Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic.

A path-breaking work on Chinese global strategy, China’s Vision of Victory brings the reader to a new understanding of China’s grand-scale planning and ambitions. From seabed to space, from Africa to the Antarctic, from subsurface warfare to the rise of China’s global corporations, this book illuminates the greatest challenge of our lifetimes – the Chinese Communist Party’s ambition to end the American-led world and to bring about a century defined by Chinese power. Following on this work, Dr. Ward's second book, The Decisive Decade lays out a US and Allied grand strategy to win the long-term contest with the People's Republic of China presenting strategies that span the economic, diplomatic, military, and ideological arenas.

Experience

  • –present
    Research Associate with the Centre for the Changing Character of War, University of Oxford