4:00 pm  

Ted Daigle Auditorium – Edmund Casey Hall  

Join us for this year's annual Political Science Lecture, to be delivered by Dr. Jack MacLennan, Park University.

The war in Ukraine has not gone according to visions of future wars. Cyberattacks have been of little importance and diffused forms of hybrid warfare have not formed. Instead, the battlefield looks like the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. This has meant that lethal aid from Western states, ranging from artillery pieces to F-16s, has been effective in helping bolster Ukrainian resistance. But this aid has come with specific expectations about how the Ukrainian forces should use it. These expectations are actually mis-matched to both the nature of the war and plays to the strengths of Russian military doctrine.  

In his talk, MacLennan will unpack how a commitment to seeing Ukraine engage in maneuver warfare has shaped the war, defined the geopolitics around its conduct, and ultimately produced the stagnation we see today. 

MacLennan is an Associate Professor of International Relations and National Security Studies and the Graduate Program Director for National Security Studies at Park University in Parkville, Missouri.  He is an International Relations theorist who is interested in the ways that technology and material things influence security politics, what comes to be seen as a threat in our world,  and the practices that become associated with managing these threats.  

He holds a BA from St. Thomas University, MA from Windsor, a Master's in Public Policy from Michigan-Dearborn, and a PhD in Political Science from Carleton.