Speaker biographies

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI. He is the author, with Frederick W. Kagan, of the forthcoming book Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (AEI Press, May 2008), the coeditor, with Gary J. Schmitt, of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), and 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.

Michèle Flournoy was appointed president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in January 2007. Prior to co-founding CNAS, she was a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she worked on a broad range of defense policy and international security issues. Previously, she was a distinguished research professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University (NDU), where she founded and led the university’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) working group, which was chartered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop intellectual capital in preparation for the Department of Defense’s 2001 QDR. Prior to joining NDU, she held concurrently the positions of principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction and deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. In those positions, she oversaw three policy offices in the Office of the Secretary of Defense: strategy; requirements, plans, and counterproliferation; and Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasian affairs. She is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the executive board of Women in International Security, and the board of the Institute for Defense Analysis. She is a former member of the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Science Board Task Force on Transformation. In addition to several edited volumes and reports, she has authored dozens of articles on international security issues.

Colonel H. R. McMaster (U.S. Army) is a senior research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (HarperCollins, 1997). Among his many other publications is the monograph Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War (U.S. Army War College, 2003). Colonel McMaster served as an assistant professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1994 to 1996. He is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Colonel McMaster joined U.S. Central Command in May 2003, serving as director of the Commander’s Advisory Group until May 2004. From June 2004 until June 2006, Colonel McMaster served as the 71st colonel of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

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