Ambassador Eric S. Edelman retired as a Career Minister from the U.S. Foreign Service on May 1, 2009. He is currently Counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He was the Miller Center for Public Policy’s James R. Schlesinger Professor for 2016 at the University of Virginia and is currently a non-resident fellow there.  He is also Distinguished Scholar in the Gemunder Center of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.  From 2009-2013 he was a senior associate of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace 2011-2022. In 2010 he served on the Congress’s Independent Panel to review the Quadrennial Defense Review and in 2013-2014 he served on the National Defense Panel.  From 2017-2018 he Chaired the National Defense Strategy Commission appointed by the Congress to review the new National Defense Strategy.  He was vice chair of the Congressional commission to review the 2022 National Defense Strategy that issued its report in July 2024. 

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Ambassador Edelman has published opinion essays in The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, World Affairs, The American Interest, The Weekly Standard, American Purpose, Politico, The Hill, The Bulwark and The Dispatch.  He is the co-host of the Bulwark’s Shield of the Republic podcast and the author of the essay “Nuclear Strategy in Theory and Practice,” in The New Makers of Modern Strategy, (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2023). 

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Ambassador Edelman has served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House where he led organizations providing analysis, strategy, policy development, security services, trade advocacy, public outreach, citizen services and congressional relations. As the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (August 2005-January 2009) he oversaw strategy development as DoD’s senior policy official with global responsibility for bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls.

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He served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and Bush Administrations and was Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. In other assignment he has been Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of State, special assistant to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Robert Kimmitt and special assistant to Secretary of State George Shultz. He also had assignments in the State Department Operations Center, Prague, Moscow, and Tel Aviv, where he was a member of the U.S. Middle East Delegation to the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy Talks.

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He is a recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award and several Department of State Superior Honor Awards. He has been awarded the Order of the White Rose by the government of Finland and the Legion d’Honneur by the French government.

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He received a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University (1972) and a Ph.D. in U.S. Diplomatic History from Yale University (1981).

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