Speaker biographies
Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar in defense and security policy studies at AEI. His most recent book is, Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (AEI Press, May 2008), coauthored with Thomas Donnelly. Previously an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he is the author of Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (Encounter, 2006) and 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, 2000). A contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, Mr. Kagan 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, 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 International Security Studies at Yale 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 Surge: A Military History (Encounter, forthcoming in 2008) and The Eye of Command (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and the editor of The Imperial Moment (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).
General Jack Keane (U.S. Army, retired) is senior managing director and cofounder of Keane Advisors, LLC, a private equity and consulting firm. He serves as a national security analyst for ABC News and speaks throughout the nation on national security and leadership. Still active in national security, General Keane has conducted a personal assessment of the security situation in Iraq for senior defense officials on numerous trips since 2004. He is a board member of MetLife, General Dynamics, and Allied Barton Security. He is a senior adviser to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and an adviser to the chairman and CEO of URS Corporation. A four-star general, he completed thirty-seven years in public service in December 2003, culminating as acting chief of staff and vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army. As the chief operating officer of the Army for four-and-a-half years, he directed 1.5 million soldiers and civilians in 120 countries with an annual operating budget of $110 billion. General Keane was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and provided oversight and support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a career paratrooper and a combat veteran of Vietnam who was decorated for valor and who has spent much of his military life in operational commands in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He commanded the famed 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the legendary 18th Airborne Corps, the Army’s largest war-fighting organization.
Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), south Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. 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. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington, D.C., and the Middle East.
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