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

podcast description
A Depressing Trip Across The Pond
Eric Edelman and Eliot Cohen discuss Eliot's recent visit to Ukraine.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
pbs news
How will Israel respond to Iran’s drone attack? Middle East experts offer views
For decades, Israel and Iran have fought one another in the shadows and through proxies. That all changed this past weekend with Iran's direct attack on Israel. Israeli officials said they will retaliate but world leaders are urging restraint. Nick Schifrin has two views on the options for Israel and Iran and the risks with Eric Edelman and Vali Nasr.
Eric Edelman PBS NewsHour
the bulwark headline
Ukraine Can’t Win If It Can’t Shoot Back
The policy of prohibiting Ukraine from doing what it needs to win for fear of Russian escalation is tactically unsound, strategically bankrupt, legally dubious, and morally squalid.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
the bulwark headline
The New Fractured World (with Hal Brands)
Eric welcomes friend of Shield of the Republic Hal Brands back to the show. Hal is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the editor of a new book, War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy and the Return of A Fractured World (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), a weekly columnist at Bloomberg.com and also has a recent article on the Foreign Affairs website. They discuss the origins of the new book and 6 overarching themes that emerged from the essays by the distinguished contributors to the volume. They also discuss why America's unique system of alliances may obscure for Americans the potential for disruption that tightening relations among authoritarian regimes presents to the global order and the rise and future of isolationism in the Republican party.
Eric Edelman The Bulwark
national defense strategy
National defense strategy: Asking what you can do for your country
Congress established the Commission on the National Defense Strategy by statute to examine and make recommendations about national defense strategy. The Commission will issue a report to Congress, the president, and the American public in the summer of 2024 to describe the U.S. strategic threat environment and to inform future budget requests, legislation, appropriations, and Department of Defense operations and planning.

To prepare recommendations for this report, the Commission is holding public conversations and meeting with senior national security leaders, business leaders, members of Congress, and foreign allies and partners. We invite you to join Commission Chair Jane Harman and Vice Chair Eric Edelman, along with commissioners Tom Mahnken, General Jack Keane, Mara Rudman, and Alissa Starzak, for a public conversation moderated by Miller Center Director and CEO William Antholis.
Eric Edelman, Mara Rudman, and William Antholis Miller Center Presents
the bulwark headline
What’s Going on in Afghanistan?
Eric welcomes Will Selber, Military Affairs Fellow with the Bulwark and a 20 year veteran of U.S. military intelligence with multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. They discuss the recent IS-KP attack on the Crocus City Theater in Moscow, the terrorist threat from both IS-KP and al Qaeda operating from Afghanistan, the difficulties of establishing an over-the-horizon counter-terrorist capability for CENTCOM, the Trump and Biden decisions to withdraw from Afghanistan, the failure to hold the Taliban to the terms of the Doha agreement, the repetition of US failures in VIetnam in training the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), a post-mortem on the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the reputational damage to the U.S. for abandoning its Afghan allies, the importance of military introspection and accountability for some of the failures in Afghanistan, and the ongoing impact of the Afghanistan debacle on military recruiting for the all volunteer force (AVF).
Eric Edelman The Bulwark