The Alabama World Affairs Council (ALWAC) is a nonprofit organization that sponsors lectures and programs on current and recent events of national and international interest. Through these programs, which take place in Montgomery, ALWAC aims to promote public awareness and understanding of international affairs as they relate to U.S. interests in the context of political, economic, cultural, historical, and military issues. ALWAC works to foster a civil society through civic knowledge of world affairs.
The Council is governed by a President, an Executive Director, an Executive Committee, and a Board of Trustees.
Maj. Gen. Walter D. Givhan, USAF, Retd, PresidentMaj. Gen. Walter D. Givhan, USAF, Retired, President of ALWAC, is the Senior Vice Chancellor for Advancement for Troy University. A native of Safford, AL, Maj. Gen. Givhan graduated in History from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, has several Master’s degrees including strategy and international relations, and was a Military Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the USAF liaison officer to the French ground forces for operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and he led the effort to rebuild the Afghan air force. He also has commanded a combat training squadron, an operations group, an air base wing, an air expeditionary wing, and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Maj. Gen. Givhan's staff assignments include the offices of the Secretary of the Air Force; Legislative Liaison; Chief, Combat Forces Division, Directorate of Programs; and Director, Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff Executive Action Group, HQ USAF. He also served in the US Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. He is a command pilot with more than 2,500 flying hours in aircraft including the F-15 and A-10. |
Dr. Margaret Sankey is Air University's research coordinator in the Office of Sponsored Programs (“The Hub”), matching and supporting Air University assets with DAF research problems.
Sankey earned a PhD at Auburn University in European military history, and taught military history, security studies and political science at Minnesota State Moorhead before joining the staff at the USAF Air War College as the director of research and electives.
She is the author, most recently, of Blood Money: How Criminals, Militias, Rebels, and Warlords Finance Violence (Transforming War) (USNI Press, 15 Oct 2022).
Sankey finds that the violent non-state actors (VNSAs) of the world are hiding in plain sight, fundraising through banal businesses and scams, taking advantage of globalization and diasporas. On a grand scale, their behavior erodes the rule of law, creates moral injuries from corruption, and emboldens bad actors to steal and back violent tactics with impunity.
While reforms attempt to curtail these options, VNSAs' defiance of rules and their capable adaptation and innovation make them extremely difficult to pin down or prosecute. Blood Money also suggests both consumer and government-wide approaches to attacking illicit financing channels.
Sankey's previous publications include Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanoverian Britain; Women and War in the 21st Century; and the NACBS Love Prize-winning article, co-written with Dr. Daniel Szechi, "Elite Culture and the Decline of Scottish Jacobitism, 1715-1745,” in Past and Present.
Dr. Mark Conversino, Past Executive DirectorDr. Mark J. Conversino was the Chief Academic Officer of the Air University (2019-24). He previously served as Dean of the Air War College (2008-16); and Deputy Commandant and Professor of Strategy and Security Studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS, 2016-19), Air University (AU), Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB), Alabama. As an award-winning professor, he was responsible for creating warrior-scholars of airpower. Dr. Conversino joined the faculty of the Air War College (AWC) as a civilian following his retirement from the Air Force and subsequently joined the faculty of SAASS in 2015. He specializes in military and airpower history and theory, Russian history and the politics of the former Soviet Union. He holds the PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington. His book, chronicling the challenges and costs of the US operation to fly bombing missions from Soviet Ukraine, is Fighting With the Soviets: The Failure of Operation FRANTIC, 1944-1945, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997. |