Description
TLC Zoom
Wednesday 1st April 2026 at 18:00 BST
Deterrence is not enough: Legitimacy, Power, and the Future of Transatlantic Security
Dr Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III
There is nothing like a great recommendation from a member and I need to thank Jason Poole and Andrew Firth for introducing me to the remarkable polymath Dr ‘Ike’ Wilson III back in late August. Following a Zoom call in early September I could see so many good reasons for inviting Ike to join TLC (which he did immediately). He had and continues to have a most prestigious career both militarily and academically and brings a very interesting, educated commentary on so many issues from a US perspective from his base in Tampa Florida. A prolific writer his views are both thought provoking and provocative.
This is why, I am certain that you will enjoy his presentation on the key matter he has chosen. To give you a flavour of what he will be saying, I asked him to elaborate:
For this session, I propose to offer a transatlantic net assessment framed around the implications of the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy, not as a policy briefing but as a lens into how power, competition, and risk are now being understood—and misunderstood—across the Atlantic space. My intent is to help the group step back from individual events or domains and instead examine the compound character of today’s security environment, where deterrence, legitimacy, technology, and governance increasingly converge.
 The central argument I hope to explore is that in this emerging era, legitimacy has become a hard strategic variable. Military capability, technological advantage, and alliance structures remain necessary, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. Across the United States, the United Kingdom, and other advanced democracies, internal legitimacy stress is now interacting with external competition in ways that create new forms of brittleness and risk. Understanding that interaction—and identifying where relatively modest, coordinated action could yield disproportionate stabilizing effect—will be the focus of the conversation.
 Biography
Dr. Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III is a former senior U.S. defense official, retired U.S. Army Colonel, and widely recognized strategic thinker specializing in national security, legitimacy, and democratic governance under stress. He served over three decades in uniform, including senior by-name roles at U.S. Central Command (2013–2017) as Deputy Chief of the Commander’s Action Group and Chief of the Commander’s Initiatives Group under then-Commander, U.S. Central Command, General Lloyd J. Austin III (former U.S. Secretary of Defense), advising on theater-level strategy across the ‘greater’ Middle East.
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Dr. Wilson later served as Director of the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute and as Professor and President of the Joint Special Operations University, concurrently advising the Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, on global SOF education and leader development. He is now Professor of Practice at Arizona State University (ASU) and is Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist at Wilson WiSE Consulting LLC, advising governments and international partners on strategy, legitimacy risk, and compound security. He holds a PhD from Cornell University and remains deeply engaged in transatlantic security debates.
