Foreign Policy Priorities for the New Congress

Speaker biographies

Thomas M. Donnelly, a defense and security policy analyst, is the director of the Center for Defense Studies. He is the coauthor with Frederick W. Kagan of Lessons for a Long War: How America Can Win on New Battlefields (AEI Press, 2010). Among his recent books are Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (AEI Press, 2008), coauthored with Frederick W. Kagan; Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), coedited with Gary J. Schmitt; The Military We Need (AEI Press, 2005); and Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004). Mr. Donnelly was policy-group director and a professional staff member for the House Committee on Armed Services from 1995 to 1999, and he 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.

William Kristol is editor of the Weekly Standard, which he cofounded in 1995. One of the nation’s leading political analysts and commentators, Mr. Kristol regularly appears on Fox News Sunday and the Fox News Channel. Before starting the Weekly Standard, he led the Project for the Republican Future. He was also chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the Bush administration and to Secretary of Education William Bennett during the Reagan administration. Before coming to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. She served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. She writes frequently on national security matters with a focus on domestic politics in the Middle East and South Asia, U.S. national security, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, directed a project on democracy in the Arab world, and designed a project to track global business in Iran. She recently edited a publication on dissent and reform in the Arab world and coauthored a report on Iranian influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which she is in the process of updating. Ms. Pletka comments regularly on foreign and defense policy issues and has testified several times before the Senate on confronting Iran’s threat to the United States and terrorist activities in the Middle East.

Jim Talent is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he specializes in military readiness and welfare reform issues. Mr. Talent’s political career began in 1984, when, at age twenty-eight, he was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. He later became the minority leader in 1988. In 1992, he was elected to Congress representing Missouri’s second district. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. Talent was in the thick of the debate over strengthening the armed forces and took a firm stance to protect America’s military from cuts in size and funding. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002 and served until 2006, focusing on defense issues. He was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and chaired the Sea Power Subcommittee for four years.