Érico Esteves Duarte

I am a professor of Strategic Studies and International Relations at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and at the Graduate Program in Security, Defense and Development of the Superior School of Defense (ESD), and currently a visiting scholar at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI-NOVA). My work asks how states convert political purpose into military means — and why that translation so often breaks down between the cabinet, the staff, and the field.

Three lines of research organize my current agenda.

The first concerns grand strategy and the conduct of war. I am completing a book on the Korean War between October 1950 and July 1951 — from the first Sino-American clash to the opening of negotiations at Kaesong — built around a five-level analytical model running from grand strategy down to logistics, and around the limited-war theory of Clausewitz and Corbett. The case reveals how strategic decisions travel across levels, and what is lost, distorted, or invented along the way.

The second concerns maritime security and sea power. I have worked for a decade on the South Atlantic — the blue economy, illicit maritime economies, and the divergent security perspectives Brazil, the United States, and Europe bring to the same ocean. My current project, based at IPRI-NOVA, examines how Brexit and the Russo-Ukrainian war have reconfigured European maritime policy: the loss of British naval capability, the securitization of critical undersea infrastructure, and the widening gap between the ambitions declared in the EU Maritime Security Strategy and the operational means available to realize them. The comparative question interests me most: two regions heavily dependent on the sea, both claiming strategic autonomy, both discovering that a maritime space one cannot continuously observe is a maritime space one does not fully govern.

The third concerns civil-military relations and professional military education. Democratic control of the armed forces is not secured by constitutional text alone; it is reproduced — or eroded — in the classrooms where officers are formed. I study military education as the institutional mechanism through which strategic thought, professional norms, and the boundaries of political authority pass from one generation of commanders to the next.

Trajectory. I hold a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in Production Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Brasília (UnB) — a background that leaves a visible mark on how I approach defense problems, with an emphasis on systems, organizational design, and the material constraints under which strategy is actually executed.

I was a Ridgway Scholar at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, and have held visiting research and teaching positions at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies (University of Denver), the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies (King's College London), the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), the Faculty of Military Science of Stellenbosch University, the Rui Barbosa Chair at Leiden University, and Joaquim Chissano University in Mozambique.

In Brazil, I have worked as a contracted researcher at the Army Strategic Studies Center (CEEEx) and as principal investigator on research programs with the Army Artillery Command, alongside collaborations with the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), the Air Force University (UNIFA), the Army Command and General Staff College (ECEME), and the Navy General Staff. I am the author or editor of six books. In 2010, my doctoral dissertation received the Best Dissertation in National Defense award from the Brazilian Ministry of Defense.

This site gathers my publications, courses, and ongoing projects. Inquiries from students, colleagues, and practitioners are welcome.