About the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies


ESTABLISHMENT:   Effective 9 June 2021 for The Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies.  The Center reached Initial Operating Capacity on 1 July 2022 and officially opened for business on 25 Aug 2022.  The TSC planned to reach full operating capacity on 1 July 2023.  For a list of milestones, please see milestones.

DOD’s Regional Centers.
The Stevens Center proudly joins the five prior established DOD Regional Centers.:

DOD’s Regional Center Mission

Through executive-level (practitioner) education programs and in-region workshops, focused research in support of OSD Policy priorities, and the cultivation of communities of practice, the DOD Regional Centers for Security Studies promote integrated, collaborative responses to transnational threats; foster common perspectives on regional security challenges; and strengthen binational and multinational institutional relationships.

Pentagon, Credit DOD

In so doing, each promotes the intellectual interoperability underpinning full-spectrum security cooperation and build our Nation’s and our partners’ capacity to collaborate against shared threats.  Prioritized areas of focus include territorial security; transnational and asymmetric threats; and defense sector governance.

The Stevens Center is underway in building strong, sustainable, domestic and international networks of security leaders and promote and conduct focused research on Arctic security to advance DOD security priorities in the Arctic region.   

In DOD’s establishment plan to Congress, the Department defined four mission areas for the TSC:

  • Advance Arctic awareness, both among partners and within the increasingly professionalized field of U.S. Arctic service.
  • Advance DOD Arctic priorities.
  • Reinforce the rules-based order in the Arctic; and,
  • In keeping with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s priorities and the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, address the impacts of climate change in the region.
LC-130, Credit DOD

In support of the TSC’s assigned mission, the Center is underway in creating and providing programs for civilian and military security practitioners and associated subject matter experts to promote discussion & understanding that is inclusive of Arctic Indigenous interests and coordinated with the DoD Regional Center enterprise, for Arctic Security Interests of Europe, North America, Asia, and the Indo-Pacific.  The TSC is aligned to United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM).  As such, it will principally align its programs and activities with USNORTHCOM, while coordinating with United States European Command, other stakeholders and the other Regional Centers, as necessary.

Our Namesake

Theodore Fulton Stevens Sr. (November 18, 1923 – August 9, 2010) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1968 to 2009. He was the longest-serving Republican Senator in history at the time he left office.

Stevens served for six decades in the American public sector, beginning with his service as a pilot in World War II. In 1952, his law career took him to Fairbanks, Alaska, where he was appointed U.S. Attorney the following year by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1956, he returned to Washington, D. C., to work in the Eisenhower Interior Department, eventually rising to become Senior Counsel and Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, where he played an important role as an executive official in bringing about and lobbying for statehood for Alaska.

Senator Ted Stevens

For more information on DoD regional centers please see the following link https://www.dsca.mil/dod-regional-centers-rc.