Pat Paterson | U.S. Naval Institute

Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy (Retired), is a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, a 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and a former instructor in the Naval Academy History Department. He has published a number of studies calling attention to the urgency of climate change.

Articles by Pat Paterson

Aerial view of the U.S. Naval Academy looking southeast towards the Chesapeake Bay

Climate Change is Coming for Annapolis

By Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy (Retired)

October 2019

Surrounded by water on three sides, the U.S. Naval Academy is especially vulnerable to sea level rise.

Our Waning Influence to the South

By Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy

May 2009

The checkered past of U.S. intervention in Latin America is coming back to bite us, and we need to do something about it.

U.S. Navy (Greg Frazho)

SOUTHCOM Turns to Soft Power

By Lieutenant Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy

July 2008

Southern Command is shifting more toward humanitarian relief efforts and cooperative military engagement.

Oil painting by Cmdr. E.J. Fitzgerald depicts the engagement between Maddox and three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats on 2 August 1964

The Truth About Tonkin

By Lieutenant Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy

February 2008

What really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin on the night of 4 August 1964? Documents released over the past several years have cleared up the picture.

U.S. MARINE CORPS (MARK E. BRADLEY)

Into Africa: A New Frontier in the War on Terror

By Lieutenant Commander Pat Paterson, USN

May 2006

Poverty, disease, and political instability are turning the continent of Africa into a fertile breeding ground for future terrorism.