Dr. Phillip A. Petersen serves as the President of the New Generation Warfare Centre. From October 1991 through the December 2017, he served in a series of roles at The Potomac Foundation.  Having predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, he came to Potomac in anticipation of conducting a three-year interview project on Security Policy in the Post-Soviet Republics.  Visiting all fifteen of the former Soviet republics, fifteen of the regions of the Russian Federation, and interviewing over 400 senior officials, Dr. Petersen’s research was published in the Journal of European Security. Subsequently, as part of Potomac’s NATO Enlargement Initiative, Dr. Petersen conducted multiple tours for U.S. Congressional Staff Delegations to Eastern Europe to promote an increase in NATO membership.

Dr. Petersen previously collaborated on investigative reports on the subject of nuclear materials smuggling with Time, Newsweek, “60 Minutes” of CBS, and Channel One Network. In this area, he served as Senior Consultant to the President of the US Industry Coalition for the Department of Energy’s Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention Program and was a Founding Director of the not-for-profit Institute for Applied Science. The Institute was dedicated to providing transparent and commercially self-sustaining employment to engineers and technicians formerly engaged in nuclear weapons work in the former Soviet Union. In 2015 he began his role as The Potomac Foundation’s Vice President of Studies.  In this capacity, he co-authored the Baltic Security Net Assessment for the Baltic Defense College in Tartu, Estonia.

The Baltic Security Net Assessment marked a culmination of Dr. Petersen’s unique educational and career experience along with a determination to provide operational-strategic war-fighters with an operational-tactical guide on necessary demands to make from military intelligence resources. Having worked with Andrew Marshall during his time at the Defense Intelligence Agency and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and having been taught the importance of terrain by German General and former Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe Franz-Joseph Schulze, Dr. Petersen was able to fuse terrain analysis of the Baltic States with the revolutionary wargaming work of Mr. Edmund Bitinas.  The result produced a Baltic Security Net Assessment that focused on questions relevant to practical problem solving within NATO’s contemporary military infrastructure.

Dr. Petersen’s received his Masters at Western Michigan University with his thesis on Systemic Adaptation: Can The Soviet System Accommodate The "Democratic Movement"? He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois with his dissertation on Images As Defense Policy Determinants In The Soviet-American Military Relationship Since 1945. Dr. Petersen served for fifteen years as a United States Army officer, as an intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and as a policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and at the National Defense University. He has authored some eighty publications on international security issues, believing that it is the responsibility of each generation to insure that the next generation is sufficiently educated on the errors of the past to make its own, original mistakes.