Barry Scott Zellen, PhD
Day 1 as a Fulbright Scholar in Iceland!
Barry Scott Zellen is an independent scholar specializing in Arctic geopolitics, international relations, and the tribal foundations of world order. Zellen's early research and writing focused on the Western Arctic region, where he lived during the 1990s while managing several northern, Aboriginal language media organizations funded by the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program (NNBAP), and occasionally developing and teaching college courses on Arctic land claims for Arctic College (now Aurora College) in Yellowknife, NWT and the Center for Northern Studies (CNS) in Wolcott, VT.
In more recent years, Zellen's research has shifted from focusing exclusively on the Arctic region to include numerous indigenous peoples of the Pacific for a more global and comparative understanding of the role of tribal polities in international relations, from Oceania to the Arctic. Since 2018, he has served as Research Scholar of polar and tropical geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut (UConn); and since 2012, he has been a nonresident Senior Fellow of the Institute of the North, founded by and dedicated to the preservation of the important historic legacy of Alaska governor (1966-69 and 1990-94) and principled U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1960-70) Wally Hickel, who authored a guest foreword to Zellen's 2009 volume, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic. Zellen also serves as International Arctic Correspondent for Intersec: The Journal of International Security, where he earlier served as its Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Correspondent (2002-09) and as a contributing columnist in the years since (2010-2021).
Zellen has held numerous research and editorial affiliations over the years. In 2020, Zellen served as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Akureyri (UNAK)'s Polar Law Centre, where he designed and taught a graduate course on Arctic security through the lens of IR theory (Spring 2020); in July 2021, he served as guest editor of a special edition of the Nordicum Mediterraneum (NoMe) Journal, published at UNAK, featuring selected student papers, two of his own writings on Arctic geopolitics and a guest foreword from H.E. Fridrik Jonsson, Senior Arctic Official at Iceland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Zellen held the rotating Class of 1965 Arctic chair appointment at the US Coast Guard Academy (2019-22) while concurrently a Research Scholar in polar and tropical geography at UConn; Kone Foundation Postdoctoral Researcher (2016-18); Co-Chair of the Arctic and Northern Section, Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS, 2016-21); Senior Fellow, Center for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies (CANZPS) at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (2012-18); Board Member, Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS, 2012-14); Research Affiliate, Program for Culture and Conflict Studies, Naval Postgraduate School (CCS, 2008-12); Research Affiliate, Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC), Naval Postgraduate School (2004-12); and Editor of Strategic Insights Journal, Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC), Naval Postgraduate School (2004-10).
Zellen is a mid-career returnee to the academic world: in 2015, at the age of 51, he completed and defended his dissertation at the University of Lapland (earning the high honor, eximia cum laude approbatur), and from 2016-18 he conducted a two-year, field-based postdoctoral research project funded by the Kone Foundation in Helsinki on "Tribal Buffer Zones and Regional Stability from the Polar to Oceanic Region: Understanding the Interface between Indigenous Homelands and Modern States, and the Foundations for Stable Borderlands." Its aim was to understand the theoretical contours of, and practical implications of, this oft-overlooked but nonetheless distinct structure in world politics -- what he describes as the long-ignored but none-the-less salient "4th image" in IR that can be pre-, sub-, trans- and/or post-state, and which is contiguous with the historic boundaries of tribal and indigenous homelands which, after state expansion, have become subdivided by recognized international frontiers. He studied several indigenous homelands around the world, from Borneo and Singapore in the Malay Archipelago to Okinawa and Hokkaido in the Japanese Archipelago to Iroquoia in the Great Lakes region of North America.
In addition to the many articles he has written, Zellen has authored or edited a dozen books on Arctic, indigenous and strategic issues published by presses that include: the Routledge Complex Real Property Rights Series; ABC-Clio's Praeger Security International imprint as well as its Praeger Security and the Environment Series; Stanford University Press' Security Studies Series; University of Calgary Press' Northern Lights Series; Bloomsbury Academic; Continuum Books; and Lexington Books:
Arctic Trilogy
Zellen's first book, part of a three volume project, on the polar region was Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic (Lexington Books 2008), with forewords by former Inuvik, NWT mayor Dick Hill and deputy mayor Eddie Kolausok. Now in its second printing, and available in both paperback and hard cover editions, BTI examines the political modernization of the Western Arctic as the region's indigenous people reclaimed much of their traditional sovereignty -- using contemporary constitutional, legal, and political processes, and resulting in the emergence of a neotribal fusion of indigenous and modern political institutions, with overlapping governing structures transforming the relationship of tribe and state from inherent conflict to collaboration and functional integration.
In its sequel, available in both hard cover and e-book versions, On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, November 2009), with a foreword by University of Calgary's renown Arctic security expert Dr. Rob Huebert and an afterword by award-winning Arctic author and Edmonton Journal columnist Ed Struzik, Zellen examines the ongoing challenges of asserting sovereignty in the Arctic region, as indigenous sub-state and modern state actors each seek to influence the evolution of diplomatic and strategic policies in the circumpolar region, and to determine Arctic security policies.
Zellen's third book on the polar region, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger, Security and the Environment Series, 2009), with forewords by (former) Governor of Alaska and U.S. Interior Secretary Wally Hickel, and Naval Postgraduate School professor and department chairman Dan Moran, was published in October 2009 nd is available in hard cover as well as e-book formats. It examines the geostrategic impacts of a polar thaw, and questions the overly pessimistic presumptions of climate doom, positing that the post-Arctic world will be a more united, prosperous and peaceful world.
In more recent years, Zellen's research has shifted from focusing exclusively on the Arctic region to include numerous indigenous peoples of the Pacific for a more global and comparative understanding of the role of tribal polities in international relations, from Oceania to the Arctic. Since 2018, he has served as Research Scholar of polar and tropical geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut (UConn); and since 2012, he has been a nonresident Senior Fellow of the Institute of the North, founded by and dedicated to the preservation of the important historic legacy of Alaska governor (1966-69 and 1990-94) and principled U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1960-70) Wally Hickel, who authored a guest foreword to Zellen's 2009 volume, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic. Zellen also serves as International Arctic Correspondent for Intersec: The Journal of International Security, where he earlier served as its Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Correspondent (2002-09) and as a contributing columnist in the years since (2010-2021).
Zellen has held numerous research and editorial affiliations over the years. In 2020, Zellen served as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Akureyri (UNAK)'s Polar Law Centre, where he designed and taught a graduate course on Arctic security through the lens of IR theory (Spring 2020); in July 2021, he served as guest editor of a special edition of the Nordicum Mediterraneum (NoMe) Journal, published at UNAK, featuring selected student papers, two of his own writings on Arctic geopolitics and a guest foreword from H.E. Fridrik Jonsson, Senior Arctic Official at Iceland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Zellen held the rotating Class of 1965 Arctic chair appointment at the US Coast Guard Academy (2019-22) while concurrently a Research Scholar in polar and tropical geography at UConn; Kone Foundation Postdoctoral Researcher (2016-18); Co-Chair of the Arctic and Northern Section, Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS, 2016-21); Senior Fellow, Center for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies (CANZPS) at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (2012-18); Board Member, Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS, 2012-14); Research Affiliate, Program for Culture and Conflict Studies, Naval Postgraduate School (CCS, 2008-12); Research Affiliate, Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC), Naval Postgraduate School (2004-12); and Editor of Strategic Insights Journal, Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC), Naval Postgraduate School (2004-10).
Zellen is a mid-career returnee to the academic world: in 2015, at the age of 51, he completed and defended his dissertation at the University of Lapland (earning the high honor, eximia cum laude approbatur), and from 2016-18 he conducted a two-year, field-based postdoctoral research project funded by the Kone Foundation in Helsinki on "Tribal Buffer Zones and Regional Stability from the Polar to Oceanic Region: Understanding the Interface between Indigenous Homelands and Modern States, and the Foundations for Stable Borderlands." Its aim was to understand the theoretical contours of, and practical implications of, this oft-overlooked but nonetheless distinct structure in world politics -- what he describes as the long-ignored but none-the-less salient "4th image" in IR that can be pre-, sub-, trans- and/or post-state, and which is contiguous with the historic boundaries of tribal and indigenous homelands which, after state expansion, have become subdivided by recognized international frontiers. He studied several indigenous homelands around the world, from Borneo and Singapore in the Malay Archipelago to Okinawa and Hokkaido in the Japanese Archipelago to Iroquoia in the Great Lakes region of North America.
In addition to the many articles he has written, Zellen has authored or edited a dozen books on Arctic, indigenous and strategic issues published by presses that include: the Routledge Complex Real Property Rights Series; ABC-Clio's Praeger Security International imprint as well as its Praeger Security and the Environment Series; Stanford University Press' Security Studies Series; University of Calgary Press' Northern Lights Series; Bloomsbury Academic; Continuum Books; and Lexington Books:
- Zellen's authored monographs include: Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic (Lexington Books, 2008); Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger Security and the Environment Series, ABC-Clio, 2009); On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, 2009); The Realist Tradition in International Relations: The Foundations of Western Order (4 Volumes, including: volume 1, State of Hope: Order in the Age of Classical War; volume 2, State of Fear: Order in the Age of Limited War; volume 3, State of Awe: Order in the Age of Total War; and volume 4, State of Siege: Order in the Age of Insurgency) (Praeger Security International, ABC-Clio, 2011); State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb, and the Birth of the Bipolar World (Continuum Books, 2011); The Art of War in an Asymmetric World: Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era (Continuum Books, 2012); and State of Recovery: The Quest to Restore American Security After 9/11 (Bloomsbury, January 2013).
- Zellen is also editor of The Fast-Changing Arctic: Rethinking Arctic Security for a Warming World (University of Calgary Press, Northern Lights Series, 2013); and co-editor of Culture, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency (Stanford University Press, Stanford Security Studies Series, 2014) and Land, Indigenous People and Conflict (Routledge, Complex Real Property Rights Series, 2015).
- He has recently completed his first 14th book manuscript (and 11th monograph) on the theoretical and historical foundations of Arctic exceptionalism, rooted in his '4th image' in IR theory, which he also dubs 'fourth image theory' which parallels and pays homage to fourth world studies. Zellen is founder of both "constructive realism" and "4th image theory" in the field of international relations theory, the latter a theoretical outgrowth of his research on Arctic indigenous peoples and polities, and the former his critical response to neorealism and a restoration of the perceived saliency of substate actors in international relatiions, inclusive of the individual and tribal actors,
Arctic Trilogy
Zellen's first book, part of a three volume project, on the polar region was Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic (Lexington Books 2008), with forewords by former Inuvik, NWT mayor Dick Hill and deputy mayor Eddie Kolausok. Now in its second printing, and available in both paperback and hard cover editions, BTI examines the political modernization of the Western Arctic as the region's indigenous people reclaimed much of their traditional sovereignty -- using contemporary constitutional, legal, and political processes, and resulting in the emergence of a neotribal fusion of indigenous and modern political institutions, with overlapping governing structures transforming the relationship of tribe and state from inherent conflict to collaboration and functional integration.
In its sequel, available in both hard cover and e-book versions, On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, November 2009), with a foreword by University of Calgary's renown Arctic security expert Dr. Rob Huebert and an afterword by award-winning Arctic author and Edmonton Journal columnist Ed Struzik, Zellen examines the ongoing challenges of asserting sovereignty in the Arctic region, as indigenous sub-state and modern state actors each seek to influence the evolution of diplomatic and strategic policies in the circumpolar region, and to determine Arctic security policies.
Zellen's third book on the polar region, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger, Security and the Environment Series, 2009), with forewords by (former) Governor of Alaska and U.S. Interior Secretary Wally Hickel, and Naval Postgraduate School professor and department chairman Dan Moran, was published in October 2009 nd is available in hard cover as well as e-book formats. It examines the geostrategic impacts of a polar thaw, and questions the overly pessimistic presumptions of climate doom, positing that the post-Arctic world will be a more united, prosperous and peaceful world.
 Breaking the Ice |
 On Thin Ice |
Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom
Constructive Realism: History's Bridge Linking Theory to Action
In addition to his research and writing on the Arctic, Zellen has published several volumes as part of his ongoing States of Mind Project examining the origins and evolution of the modern state, and the important role of realist theory in explaining international behavior. In particular, he explores how "constructive realism" has provided an enduring bridge linking theory to action for over two and a half millennia.
His first four volumes were published as a quadrology by Praeger Security International in August 2011, known collectively as The Realist Tradition in International Relations: The Foundations of Western Order -- it looks at the genesis of constructive realism during classical era, and its evolution and endurance across the stage of human history. With forewords by two of his students from the 1980s -- U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO David T. Killion, and Benedictine University professor Dr. Joel M. Ostrow -- Zellen's treatise probes the effort by political thinkers to catalyze action across over two thousand years of recurring political and military chaos, and mankind's continuing, at times desperate, and always impassioned search for an enduring and pacific political order.
Its four volumes include: State of Hope, State of Fear, State of Awe, and State of Siege. This celebration and revival of the oft-overlooked first "Waltzian image" as the fundamental building block of world order and the ultimate driver of international order is at once a rebuttal of the overly structuralized neorealist paradigm and the more fragmented constructivist response to neorealism, while nonetheless recognizing the underlying (and earnest) aspiration of constructivism: the articulation of ideational blueprints for constructing new political orders.
His first four volumes were published as a quadrology by Praeger Security International in August 2011, known collectively as The Realist Tradition in International Relations: The Foundations of Western Order -- it looks at the genesis of constructive realism during classical era, and its evolution and endurance across the stage of human history. With forewords by two of his students from the 1980s -- U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO David T. Killion, and Benedictine University professor Dr. Joel M. Ostrow -- Zellen's treatise probes the effort by political thinkers to catalyze action across over two thousand years of recurring political and military chaos, and mankind's continuing, at times desperate, and always impassioned search for an enduring and pacific political order.
Its four volumes include: State of Hope, State of Fear, State of Awe, and State of Siege. This celebration and revival of the oft-overlooked first "Waltzian image" as the fundamental building block of world order and the ultimate driver of international order is at once a rebuttal of the overly structuralized neorealist paradigm and the more fragmented constructivist response to neorealism, while nonetheless recognizing the underlying (and earnest) aspiration of constructivism: the articulation of ideational blueprints for constructing new political orders.
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State of Doom:
Bernard Brodie, the Bomb and the Birth of the Bipolar World
With a Foreword by Dr. Peter R. Lavoy, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs
(APSA).
(APSA).
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Zellen's eighth monograph to press is State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb, and the Birth of the Bipolar World. It was published in December 2011 by Continuum Books (now Bloomsbury Academic) in both paperback and hard cover formats.
State of Doom explores one of the greatest strategic minds of the 20th century -- Bernard Brodie -- a chief intellectual architect of the nuclear age who endeavored to not only reintroduce a new generation of students to the classic works of Carl von Clausewitz in English, but to modernize Clausewitzian theory for the new and unprecedented dangers of the nuclear era. Brodie, more than any other theorist of his time -- with perhaps the exception of neorealist theorist Kenneth Waltz, whose theory of international politics echoed Brodie's strategic-theoretical map -- recognized the subtleties and complexities of realist thinking and successfully adapted realism to the unprecedented risks of the nuclear age. |
The Art of War in an Asymmetric World:
Strategy for the Post-Cold War World
In July 2012, Zellen's ninth monograph, The Art of War in an Asymmetric World: Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era, came to press with Continuum Books (now Bloomsbury Academic) in hard cover format, with a paperback edition released on January 16, 2014.
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With a foreword Dr. David A. Anderson, Professor of Strategic Studies and Odom Chair of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, it explores the efforts by contemporary strategic thinkers and planners to tackle the challenges of international terrorism and insurgency after the Cold War.
And to construct actionable strategic responses to the enigmatic challenges of asymmetry, particularly in the post-9/11 years -- presenting a strategic-intellectual mosaic of our own time, and of our (often) innovative adaptations to a new array of asymmetrical and unanticipated threats. This volume examines the ideas of key theorists of asymmetry who populate the contemporary stage of constructive realism, including such thinkers as: John Arquilla; Thomas P.M. Barnett; Arthur K. Cebrowski; Jim Gant; Samuel P. Huntington; Robert D. Kaplan; David J. Kilcullen; William H. McRaven; and David Ronfeldt. |
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State of Recovery:
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The Fast-Changing Arctic:
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Culture, Conflict and Couterinsurgency
Zellen's 12th book, second edited volume (and first co-edited volume) -- a collaboration Naval Postgraduate School research professor and world renowned Afghanistan expert, Thomas H. Johnson released by Stanford University Press' prestigious Stanford Security Studies series in January 2014 -- is Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency.
The contributing authors -- a dynamic mix of active duty and retired uniformed officers as well as civilian scholars and analysts -- examine the nexus of culture, conflict, and strategic intervention, and argue that culture is vitally important in a national security and foreign policy context. They explore how cultural phenomena and information can best be used by the military. And they address just how intimate cultural knowledge needs to be to counter an insurgency effectively. Finally, they assess how we've done at building and utilizing cultural understanding in Afghanistan, what the operational impact of that understanding has been, and where we must improve to maximize our use of cultural knowledge in preparing for and engaging in future conflicts.
The authors contend that an enduring victory may still be achieved in Afghanistan -- but to be victorious, we must better understand the cultural foundations of the continuing conflicts that rage across Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, and shift our strategy accordingly.
According to David Isby -- author of Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires -- the book’s "cogent and insightful essays by a multi-disciplinary group comprised of both scholars and combat soldiers shows how culture shapes insurgencies, especially in Afghanistan. Years of experience gained among Afghanistan's diverse peoples and unforgiving mountains, as well as through stateside analysis, infuse these essays, valuable reading for anyone concerned with Afghanistan's future."
Michael Semple, a visiting professor at the Centre for Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University in Belfast, comments that Culture, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency "illustrates how much wiser parts of the U.S. security establishment are in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Technological prowess and military fire-power cannot insulate the U.S. from the need for profound cultural knowledge of contexts where its military operates. This volume lays out how to acquire, structure, and apply that knowledge."
The contributing authors -- a dynamic mix of active duty and retired uniformed officers as well as civilian scholars and analysts -- examine the nexus of culture, conflict, and strategic intervention, and argue that culture is vitally important in a national security and foreign policy context. They explore how cultural phenomena and information can best be used by the military. And they address just how intimate cultural knowledge needs to be to counter an insurgency effectively. Finally, they assess how we've done at building and utilizing cultural understanding in Afghanistan, what the operational impact of that understanding has been, and where we must improve to maximize our use of cultural knowledge in preparing for and engaging in future conflicts.
The authors contend that an enduring victory may still be achieved in Afghanistan -- but to be victorious, we must better understand the cultural foundations of the continuing conflicts that rage across Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, and shift our strategy accordingly.
According to David Isby -- author of Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires -- the book’s "cogent and insightful essays by a multi-disciplinary group comprised of both scholars and combat soldiers shows how culture shapes insurgencies, especially in Afghanistan. Years of experience gained among Afghanistan's diverse peoples and unforgiving mountains, as well as through stateside analysis, infuse these essays, valuable reading for anyone concerned with Afghanistan's future."
Michael Semple, a visiting professor at the Centre for Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University in Belfast, comments that Culture, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency "illustrates how much wiser parts of the U.S. security establishment are in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Technological prowess and military fire-power cannot insulate the U.S. from the need for profound cultural knowledge of contexts where its military operates. This volume lays out how to acquire, structure, and apply that knowledge."
Land, Indigenous Peoples, and Conflict
Zellen's 13th published book, third edited volume (and second co-edited volume), a collaboration with professor Alan Tidwell, director of Georgetown University's Center for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, was accepted for publication in Routledge's Complex Real Property Rights Series in August 2014, and came to press on October 12, 2015 -- 523 years to the day that Columbus famously (and for America's first peoples, tragically) made landfall in the Americas.
The work is called Land, Indigenous Peoples and Conflict, a comparative look at the relationship between indigenous peoples and the state around the world, from the Arctic to the tropics -- and the diverse solutions to the many land conflicts between the first peoples for whom these lands are traditional homeland, and the modern states that assert sovereignty over those lands.
It presents chapters from experts on the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and Europe, as well as reflections and observations by the editors on both the striking similarities that bind far-flung regions together through a unified colonial experience and parallel history of reconciliation between settler states and indigenous peoples, and the many fascinating, subtle differences that distinguish each region for its cultural, geographical, and economic distinctiveness.
The work is called Land, Indigenous Peoples and Conflict, a comparative look at the relationship between indigenous peoples and the state around the world, from the Arctic to the tropics -- and the diverse solutions to the many land conflicts between the first peoples for whom these lands are traditional homeland, and the modern states that assert sovereignty over those lands.
It presents chapters from experts on the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and Europe, as well as reflections and observations by the editors on both the striking similarities that bind far-flung regions together through a unified colonial experience and parallel history of reconciliation between settler states and indigenous peoples, and the many fascinating, subtle differences that distinguish each region for its cultural, geographical, and economic distinctiveness.
