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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Trump’s National Security Strategy: Atlas Shrugs
Filled with chest-thumping pomposity, shrill rhetoric (and more than a whiff of white nationalist/supremacist idiom), President Trump's new national security strategy marks a sharp break not only with the post–Cold War trajectory of American strategy, but more broadly with the direction of U.S. national security strategy since 1941. With 27 instances of Trump’s name in a mere 29 pages of text, it is a strategy document worthy of North Korea.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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When Power Stops Caring About the Law
Eric and Eliot dissect the revelations from the Washington Post about the double-tap strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat in September. They discuss whether the strike was a war crime, the resignation of SOUTHCOM Commander Admiral Alvin Holsey, and the administration's larger objectives in Venezuela. They also address the Department of Defense IG report on Signalgate, and explain why it does not constitute a 'complete exoneration'. They conclude with a discussion of the Witkoff-Kushner "mission to Moscow", the corruption crisis in Ukraine that ousted Presidential Chief of Staff Yermak, and the Wall Street Journal's coverage of the Trump cronies lining up to do business deals in Russia once the Ukrainians can be forced into submission.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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The Pentagon's Confederate Cover-Up
Eric and Eliot discuss the Commission created by Congress in 2020 to replace Confederate commemorations with tributes that better reflect American values, the pushback it faced, and why renaming military bases does not “change history.” The conversation also explores the post-Reconstruction myths behind these commemorations, the enduring appeal of the Confederate battle flag in certain right-wing circles, and the current controversy over reverting base names following efforts by Trump and Hegseth to overturn the Commission’s work.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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Can Taiwan Trust the United States?
Eric welcomes Michael Hunzeker, associate director of the Center for Security Policy Studies at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, to discuss his new book, "America’s Taiwan Dilemma," co-authored with Mark Christopher. They explore why a nation’s reputation for credibility matters for deterrence and alliance management, and whether U.S. treaty allies in East Asia truly want Washington to defend Taiwan at all costs. The conversation also examines Taiwan’s globally essential semiconductor industry, the fate of Hong Kong following its integration into China, and how the Trump Administration is reshaping America’s East Asian system of bilateral alliances.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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The MAGA Clown Car Reshaping America on Their Terms
Eric and Eliot pay their respects to the late Vice President Dick Cheney before welcoming their guest Laura Field to discuss her book, "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right." They explore the origins of the effort to create an intellectual ecosystem for Trumpism, as well as the emergence of post-liberalism and techno-monarchists. Finally, they touch on the openly theocratic efforts of Christian nationalists to fit into the Trumpist universe, and the overlaps and contradictions among these various Trumpist movements.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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Dick Cheney: Statesman, Patriot, Principled Conservative
"History will judge in due time his role in the post-9/11 global war on terror and, in particular, the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Much of the current conventional wisdom on those subjects seems to me divorced from the urgency of the moment after the horrific attacks on New York and Washington a quarter of a century ago and tinged with partisan rancor and lack of appreciation for what French historians call la longue durée (the long run). What is incontestable is that al-Qaeda, despite its determination to strike the homeland again and again, has been unable to replicate the disastrous mass-casualty attacks it launched in 2001, which resulted in the greatest single-day loss of life on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Many deserve credit for that, but chief among them is Dick Cheney."
Eric Edelman The Dispatch