Colonel Nathan M. Colvin is a U.S. Army strategist and Military Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He most recently completed a one-year public policy fellowship at the College of William & Mary, while also serving as a lecturer of international studies in the government department. Colvin is a PhD candidate (all but dissertation) in the international studies graduate program at Old Dominion University, with concentrations in conflict and cooperation and modeling and simulation. He is also an adjunct instructor of political science. Colvin’s regional focuses are Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus; his dissertation focuses on the role of stability policing in multi-domain operations.

From 2021 to 2022, he led Training and Doctrine Command’s Strategic Plans and Policy Office in their coordination of the army people strategy and army talent management. From 2018, he served as the chief of experimentation branch of the Joint and Army Experimentation Division and later the chief of wargaming at the Joint and Multinational Wargaming Division of Futures and Concepts Center, Army Futures Command. As a CH-47 aviator, Colvin served in a Multifunctional Aviation Task Force with responsibilities in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and northern Poland as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve in 2017. In 2014, he deployed to Afghanistan as the maneuver planner for NATO Regional Command – East. In 2011, he planned much of the rapid retrograde in Mosul, Irbil, and Kirkuk in Iraq. In 2010, he served as the liaison to Pakistan Army Aviation during aerial flood-relief missions. His first deployment in 2005–06 included platoon leader and flight operations officer roles in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. Colvin’s previous research at the School of Advanced Military Studies in 2013–14 used a complex adaptive systems approach to understand how exponential technological growth contributes to the expansion of transnational technocracies while simultaneously contributing to cultural balkanization. His research combined individual psychological factors, dynamics of group formation, and the relationship between groups—demonstrating how exponential connectedness could act as a catalyst for societal differentiation.

In addition to his master’s degree in military art and sciences from the Command and General Staff College, Colvin also holds a master’s of aeronautical science in aeronautics and space studies from Embry-Riddle University, a master’s of administrative science in administration from Central Michigan University, and a graduate certificate in modeling and simulation from Old Dominion University. He studied strategic policy at the United Kingdom’s Defense Academy and Russian language and culture at Ohio State University.