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
Ukraine Doesn’t Need Armchair Generals
Anonymous Biden administration officials have been talking down the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces. The judgments of these unspecified senior officials have been, in some cases, supported on the record by a bevy of nongovernmental experts whose own predictions in this war have been, simply put, wrong.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
The Bulwark Headline
Israel’s Divisions and the Challenges Ahead
Eric and Eliot are joined by Isabel Kershner, the New York Times Jerusalem correspondent and author of "The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for Its Inner Soul." They discuss the division and polarization in Israeli society and the cleavages between the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi populationns, as well as between secular and Haredi Jews, the emergence of identity politics and populism in Israel and, of course, the current struggle over judicial reform.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
Real Clear Defense Headline
We Must Return to and Maintain the Two Theater Defense Planning Construct
Supporting the security guarantees provided to American allies and partners is essential as long as U.S. political leaders and the public understand how these ties provide major defense and economic benefits to the United States.
Eric Edelman RealClearDefense
The Bulwark Headline
What’s Happening on the Battlefield?
Eric and Eliot discuss the project that Eliot and Phillips O’Brien have undertaken to analyze the failures of Russia experts to correctly assess the run up to and the course of the war in Ukraine, the ongoing state of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the lingering political repercussions in Russia of the Prigozhin mutiny and how it might affect the battlespace, the Biden Administration’s nomination of Derek Chollet as Under Secretary of Defense for policy, and the current hold that Sen. Tommy Tuberville has placed on the confirmation of senior military and civilian defense officials, as well as the troubling state of Israeli democracy.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune Headline
Biden at the NATO Summit in Vilnius: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Vilnius NATO Summit held on July 11-12, 2023 offered an enormous opportunity for Joe Biden to make good on his pledges to renew US leadership of its premier multilateral military alliance. How does one assess his performance?
Eric Edelman The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune
The Bulwark Headline
Don’t Give the Bastards Any Sanctuary
Eliot and Eric welcome Michael Vickers, the author of By "All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations and Strategy." They discuss his role in overseeing the CIA’s covert assistance program to the Afghan resistance in the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark