He received his diploma from the Loomis-Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut in 1978, and his A-levels in English Literature and German from Cheltenham College, in England, the following year.
His dissertation, entitled "The Austro-Prussian War: Politics, Strategy and War in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1859-1866" (1992), supervised by Paul Kennedy, argued that the battle of Königgrätz (1866) was not so much won by the brilliance of the Prussian commander Helmuth von Moltke the Elder as it was lost by the incompetence of the Austrian commander Ludwig von Benedek.
His guests have included Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Jack Welch, Robert Rubin, Caspar Weinberger, Warren Christopher, Niall Ferguson, Richard Overy, Stephen Ambrose, Michael Howard, Robert Dallek, Paul Theroux and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Wawro, an expert on military innovation and international security in Europe, the U.S., and Canada, was also (before his move to Texas) Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S.
Naval War College as well as the Naval War College Review's "special correspondent," a designation that took him to "places or events of strategic or technological interest," including Iran, Brazil and the Paris Air Show.
[3] He has also served on the editorial teams for over twenty volumes, including The Cambridge Military Histories, which he co-edits with Oxford's Hew Strachan.