Speaker Biographies

Ali Alfoneh is a researcher in residence at AEI and a doctoral candidate in the department of political science at the University of Copenhagen. His research areas include civil-military relations in the Middle East in general, with a special focus on Iran and the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the politics of the Islamic Republic. Previously, Mr. Alfoneh was a research fellow at the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College and taught political economy at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar in defense and security policy studies at AEI. He is the author of Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq (phases I and II) and No Middle Way: The Challenge of Exit Strategies from Iraq, reports by the Iraq Planning Group at AEI. His most recent book, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (Encounter Books), was published in September 2006. Previously an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Mr. Kagan is the author of The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801–1805 (Da Capo, 2006) and coauthor of While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). A contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, he has also written numerous articles on defense and foreign policy issues for Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Policy Review, Commentary magazine, Parameters, and other periodicals.

Kimberly Kagan is the president of the Institute for the Study of War and a military historian who has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Yale University, Georgetown University, and American University. She is currently an affiliate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. Ms. Kagan previously held an Olin postdoctoral fellowship in Military History at Yale International Security Studies in 2004–2005 and was a National Security Fellow at Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies in 2002–2003. She is the author of The Eye of Command (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and editor of The Imperial Moment (under contract with Harvard University Press).

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq and a project on democracy in the Arab world. She recently served as a member of the congressionally-mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

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