Trevor Johnston is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation studying international security and the political economy of conflict. His current work focuses on issues related to deterrence and escalation, joint warfighting and force planning, ally and partner relationships, and conflict dynamics and peacebuilding. From September 2021 to September 2023, Johnston was on a temporary assignment to the Department of Defense (DoD), where he served as a senior strategic advisor in the Office of Strategy and Force Development. During his time at DoD, Johnston was a member of the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) core team and later supported NDS implementation, analytic enterprise reform, and scenario planning.
Before coming to RAND, Johnston studied authoritarian regime dynamics, conflict, and structural reforms in the Middle East. From 2015 to 2017, Johnston was a Middle East Initiative Fellow in the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Ph.D. in political science, University of Michigan; B.A. in political science, UCLA
