Speaker biographies
Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. Mr. Aron was born in Moscow and came to the United States as a refugee from the Soviet Union in June 1978. He has taught at Georgetown University and has contributed numerous articles on Russian affairs to newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. Mr. Aron also writes Russian Outlook, AEI’s quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition. He is a frequent guest of television and radio talk shows and has been interviewed on Sixty Minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, among others. Mr. Aron is the author of the first full-length scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), and Russia’s Revolution: Essays 1989–2006 (AEI Press, 2007). He is at work on a book about the ideas and ideals that inspired and shaped the latest Russian revolution (1987–91), to be published by Yale University Press.
Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI. He is the author, with Frederick W. Kagan, of 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.
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 Press, 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.
Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (U.S. Army, retired) is a writer, strategist, and commentator. He is the author of 23 books and more than six hundred columns, articles, and essays. He served in the U.S. Army for twenty-two years, first as an enlisted man, then as an officer, retiring shortly after his promotion to lieutenant colonel in order to write with greater freedom. As a soldier, Lt. Col. Peters served in infantry and military intelligence units before becoming a foreign area officer specializing in Russia and its surrounding states. Special assignments took him to Southeast and Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Kremlin, the Andean Ridge, and the southwest border of the United States. In addition to active-duty assignments in the Pentagon and the Executive Office of the President, Lt. Col. Peters served and lived in Europe for a total of ten years. He has published a number of books on strategy and military affairs, including Wars Of Blood And Faith (Stackpole, 2007), Never Quit The Fight (Stackpole, 2006), New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy (Sentinel, 2005), Beyond Terror (Stackpole, 2004), Beyond Baghdad (Stackpole, 2003), and Fighting for the Future (Stackpole, 2002). Lt. Col. Peters’s latest book, Looking For Trouble (Stackpole, 2008), is a memoir.
The War in the Caucasus: An Initial Assessment
