Non-Resident Scholar
Stephan worked as a defense and security analyst at the RAND Corporation for nearly 10 years, culminating in a position as Director for Defense and Security at RAND Europe. His work at RAND was interrupted by 3-year appointments at SWP (Germany) and the Western European Union’s Institute for Security Studies (France). Since 2004 he has been working in research institutes in the Netherlands, first as Director Defense Transformation and currently as the Principal Scientist at the The Hague Center for Strategic Studies. He is also Senior Advisor Defense and Security at TNO and teaches at Webster University and at military academies around the world.
From a start as a Soviet specialist, Stephan has branched out into a number of different research directions – all related to strategic orientation and navigation in international. Stephan’s current main research area is international defense and security planning, with a special focus on security foresight, risk assessment, (comprehensive) capabilities-based planning, and human-centered defense design. He maintains an active research portfolio on post-Soviet developments, especially on Russia and Ukraine.
Recent books and publications include Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Defense: Strategic Implications for a Small Force Provider (2017); Volatility and Friction in the Age of Disintermediation. HCSS Strategic Monitor 2016-2017 (2017); The Wheel of Fortune: Up and Down, Round and Round, Faster and Faster. HCSS Contribution to the 2015-2016 Strategic Monitor (2016); Great Power Assertivitis (2016), Better Together. Towards a Defense and Security Ecosystem (2016), Si Vis Pacem, Para utique Bellum. Individual Empowerment, Societal Resilience and the Armed Forces (2016), From Assertiveness to Aggression. 2014 as a Watershed Year for Russian Foreign and Security Policy (2015); Assessing Assertions of Assertiveness. Are China and Russia Really Becoming More Assertive? (2014).
Education
Stephan holds a BA in Slavic Philology (KU Leuven) and MAs from the Graduate Institute for International Studies (Geneva) and the School for International and Public Affairs of Columbia University, New York. He passed both qualifying exams (International Relations and Comparative Politics) for the Ph.D. program in Political Science at the University of California at Los Angeles with distinction and expects to finish his dissertation in the near future.
