Experts

Eric Edelman

Practitioner Senior Fellow

Fast Facts

  • Career minister in the U.S. Foreign Service
  • Undersecretary of defense for policy in the George W. Bush Administration
  • Ambassador to Finland and Turkey
  • Recipient of Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service
  • Expertise on defense policy, nuclear policy and proliferation, diplomacy

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • War and Terrorism

Eric Edelman, practitioner senior fellow, retired as a career minister from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2009, after having served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House. As the undersecretary of defense for policy (2005-2009), he oversaw strategy development as the Defense Department’s senior policy official with global responsibility for bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls. Edelman served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations and was principal deputy assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for national security affairs. Edelman has been awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, and several Department of State Superior Honor Awards. In January of 2011 he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the French government. In 2016, he served as the James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center.

Eric Edelman News Feed

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Is Trump Actually a Fascist?
Eric and Eliot discuss a new play about President Dwight Eisenhower, Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground. They discuss the changing evaluation of Ike's presidency by historians and the pluses and minuses of his 8 years in office.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
eric and eliot speaking
October 7th: One Year Later
Eric and Eliot note the sad commemoration of the Hamas attack on Israel and the consequences that came in its wake. They touch on the shocking nature of the sexual violence, the denial of the attack and the reality of the horrific violence as well as the explosion of anti-semitism internaionally and, in particular, on US college campuses, they discuss the Israeli successes in attacking the Hezbollah leadership and military infrastructure in Lebanon (and the blindspot with regard to Hamas that the successes against Hezbollah represent).
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
eric edelman speaking
An Unlikely Network of Dictatorships
Eric and Eliot welcome back Anne Applebaum, Pultizer and Duff Cooper Prize Winning author of Gulag and Red Famine and currently staff writer with The Atlantic and senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. They discuss Anne's new book, "Autocracy Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World."
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
panel on stage
US Strategy Since Oct. 7: Assessing the Biden Administration’s Middle East Policy One Year On
As President Joe Biden approaches his final months in office, he continues to face one of the most intense and intractable conflicts in the Middle East in decades. To assess the administration’s regional policy over the last year and explore any remaining opportunities for a diplomatic resolution of the war in Gaza and associated conflicts, the Middle East Institute is convening a panel discussion featuring foreign policy experts and former US government officials.
Mara Rudman Middle East Institute
shield of the republic headline
How WWII's Warlords Approached Strategy
Eric and Eliot welcome back Phillips Payson O'Brien to Shield of the Republic. Phil is the author of "The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler - How War Made Them and How They Made War." They discuss Phil's earlier work on World War II that focused on air and seapower and the competition in industrial production between the Allies and the Axis, the formative role of World War I experiences on all of these World War II leaders, the role of will as opposed to a focus on material production as a differentiator between the two sides in World War 2, Hitler's (and others') "magical thinking" about strategy, Churchill's understudied role as Minister of Munitions during World War 1, FDR's role in 1916 Naval Preparedness program, Stalin's (and Putin's) historical mythologizing, the reasons for analytic failure at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine war, and prospects for escalation (and strategy) between Israel and Hezbollah/Iran.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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Election 2024: Foreign policy choices
To launch the Miller Center’s election 2024 programming, experts discuss foreign policy planning for the next administration—whether it's a second term for former President Trump or a first presidential term for Vice President Harris. Topics will include what polling is revealing about voter preferences on foreign policy issues; a discussion of U.S. policy toward Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas conflict; U.S. relations with China, NATO and other key alliances; and the role of U.S. trade in an election season.
Eric Edelman Miller Center Presents