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

The Bulwark headline
Everything is Going to Hell
Eric and Eliot discuss the growing global disorder starting with the potential for a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), the degree to which events in the Caucasus and Central Asia are related to Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, the Iranian angle in the Caucasus and the recent release of unjustly detained Americans by Iran (and whether or not ransom was involved), the Biden Administration’s apparent interest in a sweeping diplomatic deal that would bring normalization between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Israel but would require a mutual security treaty with formal U.S. security guarantees for the KSA, the situation in the Western Hemisphere (including the possible killing of an Sikh separatist in Canada which PM Trudeau has alleged was carried out by the government of India) assassinations in Ecuador, drug and immigration issues and American political dysfunction in the face of all of this.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
Politico headline
‘What’s our objective?': Biden under pressure over Ukraine aid sales job
“He needs to actually talk about the dangers of a world in which aggression is left free to run its course, the connections between this and peace and security for the American people, not just in Europe, but in the Indo Pacific and beyond," said Eric Edelman, a George W. Bush administration defense official.
Eric Edelman Politico
Bulwark Headline
A Trip to Taipei
Eliot returns with a debrief from his trip to Taiwan and Japan. He and Eric discuss the coming Presidential election in Taiwan, the disingenuous nature of much of our discourse about the Taiwan issue that results from our “One China” policy, the reason it is wrong to think of China as a “pacing threat,” the dangers of a blockade rather than an invasion of Taiwan, the things that Taiwan and the US need to do in order to deter China, and how Eliot and Eric grade the Biden team’s approach to China overall.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
The Bulwark headline
The New Useful Idiots
Eric welcomes syndicated columnist, Bulwark Policy Editor, and host of the Beg to Differ Podcast Mona Charen. They discuss Mona’s 2003 book, "Useful Idiots," describing the left’s Cold War and post-Cold War passion for anti-anti Communism and indulging in apologetics for Communist regimes including the Soviet Union, the PRC, Cuba, and others in search of a utopian socialism that never quite met expectations and ended up excusing some of the world’s worst human rights violators.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
The Bulwark headline
Republicans for Ukraine
With Eliot on the road Eric welcomes Bulwark Editor at Large Bill Kristol to the show. They discuss the prospects for a Supplemental Appropriation for Ukraine aid in the Congress, the state of public opinion on the war in Ukraine, the impact of the Republican Presidential debate on support for Ukraine, the effort that Bill and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell have launched to highlight Republicans for Ukraine, the key role of Senator McConnell and other supporters of traditional conservative internationalism in this effort, the seeming cluelessness of some folks in the Biden Administration about the information dimension of the War in Ukraine and the damaging role that “armchair generals” have played in carping about Ukrainian performance in the current counter-offensive.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
The Bulwark Headline
Thanks for Your Service
Eric and Eliot welcome back Peter Feaver, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University, to the show. They discuss Peter’s new book, "Thanks for Your Service: The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the U.S. Military." Along the way they touch on the causes of public confidence in the military, the social desirability bias that makes people feel that it is right to have confidence in the military, politicization of the military, the blame game between civilians and senior military officers who seem to have public immunity from criticism because of high public confidence, whether or not confidence in the military has crested, the role of partisanship in public support, the impact of Republican critiques of “wokeness” in the military on recruiting, the lack of public support for traditional norms of civil-military relations and what it is like to teach at a university in the age of CHATGPT.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark