Barry Scott Zellen - Bio
The view south of Anchorage
Barry Scott Zellen is a journalist, editor, and author specializing in war and strategy, Arctic geopolitics and cultures, and the tribal dimensions of world politics. Much of Zellen's early work covered the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America, including the NWT, Yukon, and Alaska. In addition to the hundreds of articles he has written, Zellen has authored a dozen books with ten currently in print and two forthcoming later this year - and with several new book projects in his pipeline.
Zellen is presently based in Southeast Asia where he is learning about indigenous rights and self-governance - from the hill tribes of the north down to the Malay archipelago in the south, where he finds many intriguing parallels with Arctic North America.
Arctic Realism
Zellen's first book on the polar region was Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic (Lexington Books 2008). Now in its second printing, it examines the political modernization of the 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, On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, November 2009), 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 Far North was Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger 2009), published in October 2009 as part of Praeger's Security and the Environment Series. 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 work on the Arctic, Zellen has published the first seven volumes of an ongoing multi-year project examining ways constructive realism has provided an enduring bridge linking theory to action for over two millennia, as mankind has struggled to expand the habitable zone of sovereignty from the city-state to the global level.
His first four-volumes were published as a set by Praeger Security International in August 2011 - known collectively as The Realist Tradition in International Relations: Foundations of Western Order - looking at the genesis of constructive realism in the classical era and its evolution and fragmentation across the stage of history. His treatise probes the effort by political thinkers to catalyze action across two millennia of recurrent chaos, in mankind's continuing 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 all variants of international systems is at once a rebuttal of the neorealist paradigm and the more fragmented (and less theoretically elegant) constructivist response to neorealism, while nonetheless recognizing the underlying aspiration of constructivism: the articulation of ideational blueprints for constructing new political orders.
His first four-volumes were published as a set by Praeger Security International in August 2011 - known collectively as The Realist Tradition in International Relations: Foundations of Western Order - looking at the genesis of constructive realism in the classical era and its evolution and fragmentation across the stage of history. His treatise probes the effort by political thinkers to catalyze action across two millennia of recurrent chaos, in mankind's continuing 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 all variants of international systems is at once a rebuttal of the neorealist paradigm and the more fragmented (and less theoretically elegant) constructivist response to neorealism, while nonetheless recognizing the underlying 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
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Zellen's fifth work on constructive realism State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb, and the Birth of the Bipolar World was published in December 2011 (Continuum Books).
It explores one of the greatest strategic minds of the 20th century -- and the chief intellectual architect of the nuclear age and his efforts not only to reintroduce a new generation of students to the classic work of Carl von Clausewitz, but to also modernize Clausewitzian theory for the new, unprecedented dangers of the nuclear era. Brodie, more than any other theorist of his or our time, 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 sixth work on constructive realism, The Art of War in an Asymmetric World: Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era, came to press (Continuum Books).
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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:
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State of Recovery:
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The Fast-Changing Arctic:
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Culture, Conflict and Couterinsurgency
Next up -- and to be published Stanford University Press in 2014 -- is Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency, with Zellen as co-editor (in collaboration with his colleague Thomas H. Johnson, founder and director of the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School.)
The contributing authors examine the nexus of culture, conflict, and strategic intervention, and argue that culture is 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.
Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency contends 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, from a kinetic engagement to a smarter war plan that embraces these cultural dimensions.
Stay tuned for more!
The contributing authors examine the nexus of culture, conflict, and strategic intervention, and argue that culture is 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.
Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency contends 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, from a kinetic engagement to a smarter war plan that embraces these cultural dimensions.
Stay tuned for more!
