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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How John Adams Established Enduring American Customs
Eric and Eliot provide their thumbnail review of the Trump-Harris debate and then welcome their special guest Lindsay Chervinsky, the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon and the author the new book, "Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged a Republic."
Eric Edelman, Lindsay M. Chervinsky The Bulwark
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Why We Should Be Worried About Iranian Nukes
Eric and Eliot discuss the intensifying cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea including the just announced intensified schedule of joint Sino-Russian military exercises and Iran's transfer of medium range Fateh 360 ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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What Would Kamala's Foreign Policy Look Like?
Eric welcomes back Eliot from his trip to the High North in Svalbard, Norway, where he was attending a workshop on Nordic-Baltic views on European security. Eliot discusses the views of the Nordic countries vis a vis Russia, the role of climate change in the Arctic, and great power competition in that region. They also discuss what Kamala Harris might face with regards to foreign policy if she is elected in November notably including: the dangerous world we face, the chronic underfunding of the nation's defense budget, and the priors of the Obama and Biden alumni who will likely populate a Harris administration.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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The Men Who Made a Century
Eric welcomes back Michael Mandelbaum, author and Christian A. Herter Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Michael is the author of the new book, "The Titans of the Twentieth Century: How They Made History and the History they Made." His book is a study of the interaction between individuals and the structural forces of history with essays on Woodrow Wilson, Vladimir Lenin, Adolph Hitler, Winston Churchill, FDR, Mohandas Gandhi, David Ben Gurion, and Mao tse-Tung. They discuss the circumstances that allowed these figures to exercise enormous influence on the course of history in the 20th century, and the role of will and will to power in driving historical change.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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The lessons of '68
Eric and Eliot host historian Luke Nichter in a special convention episode that looks back at the last time the Democrats hosted a national convention in Chicago: 1968. Nichter is the James H. Cavanaugh Chair in Presidential Studies and Professor of History at Chapman University and author of The Year that Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023). The group discusses the dramatic circumstances of the 1968 election and the veracity of conventional wisdom about the consequential year. Additionally they cover the pall that the Vietnam War cast over the election and dissect the personal relationships between Johnson and Kennedy, Johnson and Eugene McCarthy, Johnson and his Vice President Hubert Humphrey and the wary, but respectful relationship between Nixon and Johnson. They cover the unique relationship that Billy Graham had with LBJ, Nixon, and Humphrey and probe the nuances of the Wallace phenomenon. They further discuss the difficulties that Humphrey had running as a sitting Vice President taking credit for the achievements of the Johnson Administration while at the same time distancing himself from an unpopular incumbent.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
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How to Kill a Democracy
Eric welcomes historian Timothy Ryback, the Co-Founder and Director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in the Hague. He has been Director and Vice President of the Salzburg Seminar and a lecturer in History at Harvard University and is the author of Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). They discuss why Tim wrote this book and why it seems especially timely now, the political and historical contingency of Hitler's ability to seize power and why it resulted not just from large historical forces but by a series of decisions by individual players in the drama.
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