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

Shield of the Republic
Neo-Maosim in China
Eliot and Eric host CSIS's Jude Blanchette to discuss Neo-Maosim in China, the impact of Xi Jinping's personalistic authoritarianism on China's domestic and foreign policy, the Xi-Putin joint statement last week, and prospects for Sino-Russian relations, as well as Chinese science fiction and what it might tell us about Chinese society.
Eric Edelman Shield of the Republic Podcast
The Dispatch
Could Saudi Arabia Help Save Biden’s Flailing Presidency?
Conspicuously absent from the administration’s early priority list, however, was expanding the Abraham Accords, the flurry of peace deals that Donald Trump forged between Israel and four Arab states in the final months of his presidency. But with so many of Biden’s first-year initiatives now faltering or—as in Afghanistan—ending in outright debacle, his administration would be wise to turn its attention to the accords as a potential success story in an otherwise bleak foreign policy landscape.
Eric Edelman The Dispatch
Shield of the Republic
Secret origin story
Eliot returns from travels to discuss the secret origin story of the Shield of the Republic podcast, a review of the Biden administration's national security policy in its first year, the difficulties that the President has faced in articulating a foreign policy, the deficiencies of his national security apparatus, the impact of the catastrophic departure from Afghanistan, the AUKUS decision, and the effort to deter Russian President Putin.
Eric Edelman Shield of the Republic Podcast
NATO secretary general shakes hands with Ukraine president
Keep NATO’s door open to Ukraine
One of the few positive outcomes of recent exchanges among U.S., European, and Russian diplomats has been the firm rejection by the Biden administration and its allies of Kremlin demands that NATO “never, never, ever” admit Ukraine as a member. Acquiescing to such a demand would leave Ukraine and Georgia in a dangerous gray zone.
Eric Edelman and David J. Kramer Foreign Affairs
Washington Post
Biden’s first year brought a cascade of foreign policy challenges, undermining his goal of projecting calm competence
“You can’t underestimate the degree to which our democratic crisis is changing the view of the rest of the world,” said Eric Edelman, a career Foreign Service officer who served in senior State and Defense Department positions under both Republican and Democratic administrations. “Dysfunctionality . . . violence . . . the assault on democratic institutions are spilling into the way in which the rest of the world is looking upon us,” Edelman said last week at a forum on Biden’s first-year foreign policy at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Eric Edelman The Washington Post
Shield of the Republic
Heeding the Lessons of the Cold War
Mystery guest host (Bill Kristol) joins Eric for a discussion with Johns Hopkins SAIS Professor Hal Brands about his new book the Twilight Struggle. They discuss the lessons of America's cold war strategic competition with the USSR for today's era of strategic competition with China and Russia—the role of strategy, economic competition, political warfare, and more.
Eric Edelman Shield of the Republic Podcast