Foreign Policy and Defense Expert

Eric Edelman

8 articles 2014–2018

Eric Edelman is a former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who served in the George W. Bush administration and previously held ambassadorships to Turkey and Finland. He contributed articles to The Weekly Standard focusing on foreign policy and national security, with particular attention to Russia, Turkey, and NATO. His writing drew on decades of diplomatic and defense experience to analyze geopolitical challenges and U.S. strategic interests.

Erdogan's Rising Islamist Militarism

March 6, 2018 · Erdogan, Coup, Turkey

The 6-year-old child who cried in front of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a global sensation. Erdogan spotted the weeping girl wearing a military uniform during an address at his party’s congress last week, brought her onto the stage, and told her that if she died as a martyr,…

Cheney Was Right

October 1, 2017 · Features, Robert Joseph, North Korea

Since Donald Trump took office, the growth of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and the increasing capability and diversity of its ballistic missile force have made that country the most urgent threat to U.S. national security. Observers as diverse as Mark Bowden in the Atlantic, Michael Auslin of the…

Cheney Was Right

September 29, 2017 · Eric Edelman, nuclear weapons, Features

Since Donald Trump took office, the growth of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and the increasing capability and diversity of its ballistic missile force have made that country the most urgent threat to U.S. national security. Observers as diverse as Mark Bowden in the Atlantic, Michael Auslin of the…

The Worst U.S.-Russia Summit Since 1961?

July 14, 2017 · magazine_repost, Russia, Eric Edelman

The president-elect’s narrow victory at the end of a volatile campaign quickly led to efforts at planning a meeting of the American and Russian leaders. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated badly, not to say spectacularly, in the last year of the previous administration, amidst…

What Happened in Hamburg

July 14, 2017 · Russia, Eric Edelman, Vladimir Putin

The president-elect’s narrow victory at the end of a volatile campaign quickly led to efforts at planning a meeting of the American and Russian leaders. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated badly, not to say spectacularly, in the last year of the previous administration, amidst…

It's Time for NATO to Call Turkey's Bluff

May 25, 2017 · Russia, Erdogan, Syria

Thursday's NATO Summit provides an opportunity for the alliance to get tough on its putative Turkish ally. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's destabilizing policies in Europe and the Middle East have made it appear less an ally and more a Russian Trojan horse. To keep Turkey on track,…

Erdogan's Counter-Revolution

April 21, 2017 · Eric Edelman, Features, Turkey

The history of the twentieth century is littered with the carcasses of failed revolutions. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, and Hitler all tried to master modernity—to curb or accelerate it—and all failed. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, it appeared the most consequential revolutionary of…

Confronting Putin’s Invasion

March 17, 2014 · Russia, Eric Edelman, Crimea

On the last day of February and first day of March, Russia’s mendacious foreign and defense ministers told their credulous U.S. counterparts that Russia had every intention of respecting Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. Of course, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is virtually the…