Mackenzie Eaglen @MEaglen
Senior Fellow
Bio
Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security.
While working at AEI, Ms. Eaglen served as a staff member on the National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally mandated bipartisan review group whose final report in November 2018, “Providing for the Common Defense,” included assessments and recommendations for the administration. Earlier, Ms. Eaglen served as a staff member on the 2014 congressionally mandated National Defense Panel, established to assess US defense interests and strategic objectives, and in 2010 on the congressionally mandated bipartisan Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, which evaluated the Pentagon’s defense strategy. She is also one of the 12-member US Army War College Board of Visitors, which offers advice about program objectives and effectiveness.
Before joining AEI, Ms. Eaglen worked on defense issues in the House of Representatives, in the US Senate, and at the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on the Joint Staff.
A prolific writer on defense-related issues, Ms. Eaglen has been published in the popular press, including in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and War on the Rocks. She has also testified before Congress.
Ms. Eaglen has an MA from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a BA from Mercer University.
Experience
- National Defense Strategy Commission: Staff Member, 2018
- National Defense Panel: Staff Member, 2014
- Heritage Foundation: Research Fellow for National Security Studies, 2006–12
- Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel: Staff Member, 2010
- Office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): Principal Defense Adviser, 2004–06
- Office of Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY): Legislative Assistant, 2003–04
- US Department of Defense: Presidential Management Fellow, 2001–03
Education
MA, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
BA, Mercer University
Highlighted Work
The 2020s tri-service modernization crunch
Congress, the White House, and the armed forces should take swift and bold action to address the modernization crunch to avoid overtaxing the existing force and its combat power.
Putting combatant commanders on a demand signal diet
In a series of articles on combatant commands, the Washington Post came to a sobering conclusion about the outsized power wielded by these globe-spanning military bureaucracies: They had “evolved into the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Empire’s proconsuls — well-funded, semi-autonomous, unconventional centers of U.S. foreign policy.” Their leaders “travel nonstop, oversee multimillion-dollar foreign study institutes and […]
Defense strategy and priorities: Topline or transformation?
While the 2018 National Defense Strategy charts a more honest and realistic priority set of threats and challenges for the U.S. military, it is still purely additive. Like every post-Cold War strategy before it, the document simply piles on newer and harder missions without meaningfully reducing or shedding others deemed less important. Pentagon leaders should […]
How to trim the defense budget without harming US security
This op-ed was co-authored with Elbridge Colby and Roger Zakheim As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on and its economic toll grows, politicians and observers on both sides of the U.S. political divide have called for cuts to the national security budget in order to free up funds for more pressing items. According to this logic, […]
Events Featuring Mackenzie Eaglen
