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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What’s Going on in Afghanistan?
Eric welcomes Will Selber, Military Affairs Fellow with the Bulwark and a 20 year veteran of U.S. military intelligence with multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. They discuss the recent IS-KP attack on the Crocus City Theater in Moscow, the terrorist threat from both IS-KP and al Qaeda operating from Afghanistan, the difficulties of establishing an over-the-horizon counter-terrorist capability for CENTCOM, the Trump and Biden decisions to withdraw from Afghanistan, the failure to hold the Taliban to the terms of the Doha agreement, the repetition of US failures in VIetnam in training the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), a post-mortem on the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the reputational damage to the U.S. for abandoning its Afghan allies, the importance of military introspection and accountability for some of the failures in Afghanistan, and the ongoing impact of the Afghanistan debacle on military recruiting for the all volunteer force (AVF).
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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The National Security Beat with Jim Sciutto
Eliot and Eric welcome CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto to the show. They discuss why as a journalist he writes books, how the shooting war in Ukraine changed the perspective of both journalists and government officials about the danger of great power competition, and the threat of disruption and damage to US alliances in a second Trump Presidency.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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Nuclear Iran, NATO’s Future, and America First Isolationism
Eliot grills Eric on three recent articles identifying some big problems in U.S. foreign policy. What will happen once Iran is nuclear armed?
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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The Art of Propaganda with Peter Pomerantsev
Eric and Eliot welcome Peter Pomerantsev, British journalist, senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, television producer and author of 'Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible, This is Not Propaganda,' and his most recent book, 'How to Win An Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler.' They discuss the story of Sefton Delmer, the bilingual British journalist who headed up covert propaganda operations for the Political Warfare Executive during World War II.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
school of war podcast
Eric Edelman on the Foundations of Nuclear Strategy
The Miller Center’s Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey and Finland, discusses how nuclear strategic thinking began and how those debates resonate today.
Eric Edelman School of War
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When Iran Goes Nuclear
“To have clout in the Middle East now, Washington needs to duel, to escalate whenever and wherever necessary for as long as necessary until its enemies are either defeated or deterred.”
Eric Edelman The Dispatch