Oakridge Middle School Wins
Fast-Paced 2026 Competition
A team from Oakridge Middle School won the Middle School competition March 1. From left are Mark Schwab, NCWA president; first place winners Joseph “Nolen” Walter, John “JT” Haney, Santiago Grana, Jordan Rodriguez; Gunther Winkler, NCWA president-elect, and Michael Finkel, AWQ chair. Photo by Martha Williams
For details on the competition, please click here.
NCWA Book Club
Explores Foreign Policy
April 7: For our final book of the year, we’ll read the highly acclaimed The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History by Odd Arne Westad. Foreign Policy magazine called it the "most anticipated book of the year” and "from a renowned Yale historian comes a chilling look at the looming threat of the next Great Power war and the urgent interventions necessary to avoid it in the twenty-first century.” Professor Westad, who is from Norway, has held major academic posts at the London School of Economics, Harvard (S.T. Lee Professor of US–Asia Relations), and is now Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale, teaching in both the History Department and the Jackson School of Global Affairs.
The club meets via Zoom, usually from 12:00 to 1:30 pm, on first Tuesdays of the month during the season. To get on the mailing list, click here. For Zoom link and more information, contact Bill Korstad at bkorstad@mac.com or go to our Book Club page.
Past Book Club topics:
November 4: ZBIG: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet by Edward Luce
December 2: The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman by Karen Elliot House.
January 6: 2025 National Security Strategy. The recent update to U.S. security strategy is a dramatic departure from the liberal internationalist foreign policy in place the last 80 years. Perhaps it's time for a change. The Book Club will discuss the side of the story that is not being widely told.
February 3: Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis by Robert D. Kaplan, an urgent exploration of a world in constant crisis, where every regional disaster threatens to become a global conflict, with lessons from history that can stop the spiral.
March 3: Michael O’Hanlon’s recently released To Dare Mighty Things: U.S. Defense Strategy Since the Revolution. O’Hanlon argues that much, but not all, of the history of U.S. defense over the course of 250 years has been a story of success. Insulated by two oceans and mostly friendly neighbors, but constantly ambitious and more assertive abroad, America has dared mighty things and often achieved them. He spoke to the NCWA membership February 9.
