Speaker biographies

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar in defense and security policy studies 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, he 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, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Policy Review, Commentary, Parameters, and other periodicals.

General Jack Keane is senior managing director and co-founder 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 conducted a personal assessment of the security situation in Iraq for senior defense officials in 2004 and 2005, and will conduct another assessment in 2006. He has been elected to the board of directors of MetLife, General Dynamics, and Allied Barton Security. He is a senior advisor to Kholberg, Kravis and Roberts, one of the nation’s largest private equity firms. He is also an advisor to the chairman & CEO of URS Corporation. He is a member of the Secretary of Defense’s Policy Board, a commissioner for one year on the Congressional Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the George C. Marshall Foundation, director of the Knollwood Foundation, a member of the Executive Committee of the Pentagon Memorial Fund, chairman of the Terry Maude Foundation, and chairman of Senior Executive Committee of the Army Aviation Association of America. General Keane, a four-star general, 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 4 1/2 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. General Keane is a career paratrooper and a combat veteran of Vietnam who was decorated for valor and spent much of his military life in operational commands employed in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He commanded the famed 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the legendary Eighteenth Airborne Corps, the Army’s largest war fighting organization.

James Miller is senior vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security. He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and an advisor to the Defense Science Board and to the Combating WMD Panel of the Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Advisory Committee. From 2000 through 2003 he was vice president and from 2003 through 2007 he was senior vice president at Hicks and Associates, Inc., where his work focused on national security strategy and planning, military transformation, counterproliferation, combating terrorism, homeland security, and intelligence analysis. From 1997 until 2000, Miller was deputy assistant secretary of defense for requirements, plans, and counterproliferation policy, where his office led the planning phase of the Defense Department’s planning, programming, and budgeting systems; reviewed war plans for the secretary of defense; and oversaw efforts to improve U.S. and coalition defenses against chemical and biological weapons. For his contributions, Miller received the Department of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. From 1992 to 1997, he was assistant professor of public policy at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. During part of this period, he was a visiting research fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. After selection as an Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy, he spent 1995 and 1996 as a senior associate member at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. From 1998 to 1992, Miller was a senior professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee, where he developed committee positions and led oversight of advanced conventional weapons, space systems, nuclear weapons, missile defenses, arms control, nonproliferation, and cooperative threat reduction with the former Soviet Union.

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, Ms. 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 and the Middle East.

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