Thomas F. Lynch III

Areas of Expertise: Asia and the Indo-Pacific (South and Central Asia); Great Power Competition (GPC); Middle East and North Africa (Gulf Arab States); Counter-terrorism

Dr. Thomas F. Lynch III is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University. Dr. Lynch researches, writes, lectures, teaches, and provides in-person expertise during the development and execution of high-level Joint warfighting exercises and simulations. His work for senior Department of Defense, Joint Staff and Combatant Command leaders focuses on the topics of Great Power Competition (GPC) & geopolitics, India’s strategic rise, Afghanistan-Pakistan & wider South Asia, the Gulf Arab States, and the past & future trajectory of radical Islam. His primary ongoing research is focused on GPC and on India’s strategic rise and implications for Indo-Pacific security and stability. Dr. Lynch has published four books including as editor of the forthcoming Strategic Assessment 2025: Great Power Competition at Mid-Decade (NDU Press, 2025). He also has published over twenty book chapters and more than forty feature monographs and journal articles.

Dr. Lynch joined INSS after a 28-year career in the active duty U.S. Army, serving in a variety of command and staff positions as an armor/cavalry officer and as a senior level politico-military analyst including as a Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff & Deputy Director of the Chairman’s Advisory & Initiatives Group; Commander of the U.S. Army War Theater Support Group in Doha, Qatar; Director of the Advisory Group for the Commander, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM); and Military Special Assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.

Dr. Lynch provides expert commentary on an array of public-facing media including as a feature analyst on national and international podcasts, webinars, videos, and television and radio appearances. He is a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a Master’s in Public Administration (M.P.A.) and a Masters (M.A.), and Ph.D. in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

Selected Warfighter Support Activities & Publications

Warfighter Support Simulations and Exercises

• EXERCISE ELITE CONSTELLATION 2025 - THE ROAD TO WAR (2025)
• EXERCISE ELITE CONSTELLATION 2025 - SETTING THE GLOBE (2024-2025)
• EXERCISE CYBER SHIELD 2022
• RCNSC WARFIGHTING SIMULATION - SINO-INDIAN CONFLICT (2016-2019)
• USSTRATCOM TTX 15-1 - THE ROAD TO WAR (2014-2015)
• EXERCISE INTRINSIC ACTION 2014
• EXERCISE INTRINSIC ACTION 2013
• EXERCISE INTRINSIC ACTION 2012

   

Books

• Strategic Assessment 2025: Great Power Competition at Mid-Decade. Thomas F. Lynch III ed. (Washington, D.C.: NDU-Press, 2025)
• Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition. Thomas F. Lynch III ed. (Washington, D.C.: NDU-Press, 2020)
• Military Factors and Conventional Arms Control: The Impact of Technology and Doctrine Upon Conventional Military Offensiveness and Arms Control. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press Dissertation Service, 1995).
• Understanding International Relations: The Value of Alternative Lenses. Thomas F. Lynch III, Asa Clark & Ricky Waddell eds. (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1993)

Book Chapters

• "Chapter 2: United States"; in Brian C.H. Fong editor, The Palgrave Geopolitical Atlas: State and Quasi-State Actors in Great Power Competition; London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025; pp. 19-43.
• "Chapter 24 - The Future of Great Power Competition," in The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition, eds. Brian H.C. Fong and Ian Chong (Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2025), 303-326.
• “Past Eras of Great Power Competition: Historical Insights and Implications,” with Frank Hoffman in Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition, Thomas F. Lynch III ed. (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 2020) 17-43.
• “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” with Phillip C. Saunders in Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition, Thomas F. Lynch III ed. (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 2020) 45-72.
• “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics” Competitive Elements and Tool Sets,” with Phillip C. Saunders in Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition, Thomas F. Lynch III ed. (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 2020) 73-104.
• “The Indo-Pacific Competitive Space: China’s Vision and the Post-World War II American Order,” with James Przystup and Phillip C. Saunders in Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition, Thomas F. Lynch III ed. (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 2020) 185-218.
• “Conclusion: Realities, Imperatives, and Principles in a New Era of Great Power Competition,” in Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition, Thomas F. Lynch III ed. (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 2020) 309-333.
• “Afghanistan in the Regional Security Interplay Context,” with Andrey Kazantsev in Terrorism in Afghanistan: A Joint Threat Assessment (New York: East West Institute, 2020) 41-66.
• "South Asia," in R.D. Hooker, Jr. ed. Charting a Course: Strategic Choices for a New Administration (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, December 2016), 267-296. 
• “New Caliphate in West Asia: Impact on al Qaeda’s Core, Global Jihad and Jihad in South Asia,” in Dhruv C. Katoch and Shakti Sinha eds. Terrorism Today: Aspects, Challenges and Responses (New Delhi: Pentagon Press, 2016), pp.104-119.
• "The 80 Percent Solution: The Strategic Defeat of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and Implications for South Asian Security," in Peter Bergen ed. Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics and Religion (London: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 388-430.

Articles

• "To Prevent a Great Power War: Conflict Prevention Efforts and Possibilities by the U.S. and China," Journal of Chinese Political Science (2026).
• "Cyberspace: Great Power Competition in a Fragmenting Domain," Orbis, Volume 68, Issue 4, 607-623 (Fall 2024). 
• “America’s Great Power Challenge: Managing Russia’s Decline and China’s Rise,” Foreign Policy Research Institute [FPRI] – Feature Analysis, December 5, 2022.
• “Book Review - A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times,” Joint Force Quarterly 107, October 2022.
• “Can the West Manage Russia’s Decline?” The National Interest (October 2022)
• “Deconstructing the Collapse of Afghanistan National Security and Defense Forces,” Parameters 52, No. 3 (Fall 2022)
• “The New Era of Great Power Competition and the Biden Administration: Emerging Patterns and Principles,” Joint Force Quarterly 103 (October 2021)
• “The Growing Entente between India and Japan,” The National Interest (March/April 2019)
• “The Decades-Long ‘Double-Double Game’: Pakistan, the United States, and the Taliban,” Military Review (July/August 2018)
• “Balancing China & Transcending Pax-Americana: India and Japan as Emerging Strategic Bookends,” The ASAN Forum (July 2018)
• “The U.S. Military and Countering ISIS,” Middle East Institute – Policy Memo, October 1, 2015.
• “The Impact of ISIS on Global Salafism and South Asian Jihad,” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Volume 19, The Hudson Institute, August 2015.
• “After ISIS: Fully Reappraising U.S. Policy in Afghanistan,” The Washington Quarterly, 38:2, 119-144 (July 2015).
• "Post-2014 Afghanistan & the Looming Consequences of Strategic Misappreciation," Orbis, Vol. 59, No 2 (Spring 2015)
• “Transnational Movements and Terrorism,” with Mark Stout and T.X. Hammes, Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue 54 (April 2009).
• “Afghan Dilemmas: Staying Power,” The American Interest, Vol. III, No. 5, (May/June 2008).
• “NATO Unbound: Out-of-Area Operations in the Greater Middle East,” Orbis, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Winter 2005).

Monographs

• The Inevitable U.S. Return and the Future of Great Power Competition in South Asia, National Defense University-Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives 42, December 2022
• Russia and Saudi Arabia: Old Disenchantments, New Challenges with John W. Parker, National Defense University-Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives 35, June 2021.
• India-Japan Strategic Cooperation and Implications for U.S. Strategy in the Indo-Asia-Pacific Region, National Defense University-Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives 24, March 2017. 
• India’s Naxalite Insurgency: History, Trajectory and Implications for U.S.-India Security Cooperation on Domestic Counterinsurgency, National Defense University-Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives 22, October 2016.
• The Return of Foreign Fighters to Central Asia, National Defense University-Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives 21, October 2016.
• The Islamic State as Icarus: A Critical Assessment of an Untenable Threat, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS), October 2015.    
• Sources of Terrorism and Rational Counters, Trends Research and Advisory Papers (UAE), (January 2015).  
• Crisis Stability and Nuclear Exchange Risks on the Subcontinent: Major Trends and the Iran Factor, National Defense University-Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives 14, November 2013.
• The 80 Percent Solution: The Strategic Defeat of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and Implications for South Asian Security, National Security Studies Program Policy Paper, New America Foundation, February 2012.
• Sunni and Shia Terrorism – Differences that Matter. Occasional Paper Series- Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), West Point, New York, December 2008.

Op-Eds & Podcasts:

• “Great power competition in the 21st century: More than a buzzword?” Finnish Institute of International Affairs [webinar], December 11, 2024
• “Great Power Competition and the War in Ukraine: Putin’s Possible Objectives and Potential Next Moves,” Capitol Report [podcast], February 20, 2023.
• “Great Power rivalry context of the Chinese spy balloon,” Capitol Report [podcast], February 17, 2023.
• “The Future US-Russia Relations After the Ukraine War,” Capitol Report on Gettr [podcast], January 10, 2023.
• “Assessing the World’s Dominant Superpowers,” Capitol Report [podcast], January 5, 2023.
• “Deconstructing the Collapse of Afghanistan National Security and Defense Forces,” US Army War College - Conversations on Strategy [podcast], September 12, 2022.
• “Great Power Competition and Beijing’s Olympic Moment,” Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) - Asia Analysis, January 25, 2022.
• "The Status of China-India Relations one Year After Doklam," ChinaFile (June14, 2018). 
• "U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis: A Visit to India," South Asia Monitor (October 4, 2017). 
• “A Failure of Strategic Vision: U.S. Policy and the Doklam Border Dispute” Strategic Insights (September 6, 2017).
• "U.S. Policy and the Doklam Border Dispute: A Missed Opportunity," South Asia Monitor (September 4, 2017).
• "What bin Laden Taught Us About Jihad in Pakistan," War on the Rocks (June 4, 2015)
• "Advice for France in its 'War on Terror'" with Cindy Storer, Mark Stout, Stephen Tankel & Clint Watts (January 27, 2015)