Speaker biographies

Lisa Curtis is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where she focuses on America’s economic, security, and political relationships with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Before joining Heritage in August 2006, she worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a professional staff member for three years, handling South Asia issues for then-chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). From 2001 to 2003, Ms. Curtis served as the White House–appointed senior adviser in the State Department’s South Asia Bureau, where she advised the assistant secretary on India-Pakistan relations. She also worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1990s. Ms. Curtis served in the U.S. embassies in Pakistan and India in the mid-1990s.

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI. He is the coeditor, with Gary J. Schmitt, of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), and he is also the author of The Military We Need (AEI Press, 2005), Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004), and several other books. From 1995 to 1999, he was policy group director and a professional staff member for the House Armed Services Committee. Mr. Donnelly also served as a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a former editor of Armed Forces Journal, Army Times, and Defense News.

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), No Middle Way: The Challenge of Exit Strategies from Iraq, and Iraq: The Way Ahead (phase IV), 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 of 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.

The Honorable Joseph Lieberman (I-D-Conn.) was elected to his fourth term in the U.S. Senate, representing Connecticut, on November 7, 2006. He was elected to the Connecticut State Senate in 1970 and served there for ten years, including the last six as majority leader. In 1980, he returned to private legal practice for two years, and from 1983 through 1988, he served as Connecticut’s twenty-first attorney general. Senator Lieberman was first elected to the United States Senate in 1988. He is the chairman and former ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is currently a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, for which he is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection. He is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for which he is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Air-Land Forces and sits on the Personnel and Sea Power Subcommittees and the Small Business Committee.

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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