Fred M. Kaplan | |
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 Kaplan in 2016 | |
| Born | July 4, 1954 Hutchinson, Kansas |
| Occupation | Author, journalist |
| Alma mater | Oberlin College Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Spouse | Brooke Gladstone (m. 1983) |
| Children | 2 |
Fred M. Kaplan (born July 4, 1954) is an American author and journalist. His weekly "War Stories" column for Slate magazine covers international relations and U.S. foreign policy.
Kaplan was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, to Julius E. and Ruth (Gottfried) Kaplan. [1] He received a bachelor's degree (1976) from Oberlin College and a Master of Science (1978) and Ph.D. (1983) in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [1] From 1978 to 1980, he was a foreign and defense policy adviser to U.S. Congressman Les Aspin (D, Wisconsin).
Before writing for Slate, Kaplan was a correspondent at the Boston Globe , reporting from Washington, D.C.; Moscow; and New York City. In 1982, he contributed to "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age," a Sunday Boston Globe Magazine special report on the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race that received the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1983. He has also written for other publications, including The New York Times , The Atlantic , The New Yorker , and Scientific American .
Kaplan has authored several books on military strategy. His 1983 book on the individuals who created American nuclear strategy in the late 1940s and '50s, The Wizards of Armageddon, won the Washington Monthly Political Book of the Year award. He published Daydream Believers in 2008, [2] a work which analyzes the George W. Bush administration's use of Cold War tactics in post-9/11 military activities. He criticizes the administration for pursuing policies he believes to be unilateral and violate prohibitions on pre-emptive warfare. In late 2012, Kaplan published The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, [3] which examines how General David Petraeus attempted to implement new thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq regarding the traditional clear and hold counter-insurgency strategy, and the shortcomings of this strategy, its intellectual underpinnings, and the individuals who defined it. [4] The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2014. [5]
In 2009, Kaplan published 1959: The Year Everything Changed. [6] The book argues that the course of world history was not changed by the counter-culture movements of the 1960s but rather by artistic, scientific, political, and economics events occurring in the year 1959.
Kaplan is an enthusiast of high-end audio and video equipment, and has reported from the Consumer Electronics Show on new technologies in this area, [7] as well as penning shopping-advice columns on which new televisions offer the best value. [8]
He has authored articles covering jazz and hi-fi equipment for the magazine Stereophile . [9]
Kaplan married Brooke Gladstone, a journalist, author and media analyst, in 1983. The couple has twin daughters.
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Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.
Herman Kahn was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theorist while employed at the RAND Corporation. He analyzed the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommended ways to improve survivability during the Cold War. Kahn posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War for which he was one of the historical inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy film satire Dr. Strangelove. In his commentary for Fail Safe, director Sidney Lumet remarked that the Professor Groeteschele character is also based on Herman Kahn. Kahn's theories contributed to the development of the nuclear strategy of the United States.
Albert James Wohlstetter was an American political scientist noted for his influence on U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War. He and his wife Roberta Wohlstetter, an accomplished historian and intelligence expert, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985.
Frederick W. Kagan is an American resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a former professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Able Archer 83 was the annual NATO Able Archer exercise conducted in November 1983. The purpose for the command post exercise, like previous years, was to simulate a period of conflict escalation, culminating in the US military attaining a simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack. The five-day exercise, which involved NATO commands throughout Western Europe, was coordinated from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) headquarters in Casteau, Belgium.
Bernard Brodie was an American military strategist well known for establishing the basics of nuclear strategy. Known as "the American Clausewitz," and "the original nuclear strategist," he was an initial architect of nuclear deterrence strategy and tried to ascertain the role and value of nuclear weapons after their creation.
David Howell Petraeus is a retired United States Army general and public official. He served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 6, 2011, until his resignation on November 9, 2012. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus served 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and commander, U.S. Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A) from July 4, 2010, to July 18, 2011. His other four-star assignments include serving as the 10th commander, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) from October 13, 2008, to June 30, 2010, and as commanding general, Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I) from February 10, 2007, to September 16, 2008. As commander of MNF-I, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq.
Herbert Raymond McMaster is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018. He is also known for his roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Meghan L. O'Sullivan is a former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan. She is Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School. She is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Raytheon, and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission.
Thomas Edwin "Tom" Ricks is an American journalist and author who specializes in the military and national security issues. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as part of teams from the Wall Street Journal (2000) and Washington Post (2002). He has reported on military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He previously wrote a blog for Foreign Policy and is a member of the Center for a New American Security, a defense policy think tank.
William J. Broad is an American science journalist, author and a Senior Writer at The New York Times.
John M. "Jack" Keane is a former United States Army general who served as Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1999 to 2003. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he is a national security analyst, primarily on Fox News, and serves as chairman of the Institute for the Study of War and as chairman of AM General.
Whiz Kids was a name given to a group of experts from RAND Corporation with which Robert McNamara surrounded himself in order to turn around the management of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in the 1960s. The purpose was to shape a modern defense strategy in the Nuclear Age by bringing in economic analysis, operations research, game theory, computing, as well as implementing modern management systems to coordinate the huge dimension of operations of the DoD with methods such as the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). They were called the Whiz Kids recalling the group at Ford Motor Company that McNamara was part of a decade earlier. The group included :
Martin Jay Sherwin was an American historian. His scholarship mostly concerned the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. He served on the faculty at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Berkeley, and as the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University, where he founded the Nuclear Age History and Humanities Center.
The RAND Corporation is a non-partisan American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm that engages in research and development (R&D) across multiple fields and industries.
Clear and hold is a counter-insurgency strategy in which military personnel clear an area of guerrillas or other insurgents, and then keep the area clear of insurgents while winning the support of the populace for the government and its policies. As defined by the United States Army, "clear and hold" contains three elements: civil-military operations, combat operations, and information warfare. Only highly strategic areas are initially chosen for "clear and hold" operations; once they are secure, the operation gradually spreads to less strategic areas until the desired geographic unit is under control. Once an area has been cleared, local police authority is re-established, and government authority re-asserted.
Derek J. Harvey is a retired US Army Colonel who currently serves on the staff of Congressman Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Harvey is a former National Security Council (NSC) staffer in President Donald Trump's administration and was the first director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), having been selected by General David Petraeus in 2009 to lead the new organization. Harvey was the previous senior analytical specialist for Iraq to Petraeus, then Commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq. He became a top aide to Republican congressman Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017.
All In: The Education of General David Petraeus is the biography of David Petraeus, written by co-authors Paula Broadwell and Vernon Loeb. The books were released on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, it reached No. 33 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2012.
Peter R. Mansoor is a retired United States Army officer, military historian, and commentator on national security affairs in the media. He is known primarily as the executive officer to General David Petraeus during the Iraq War, particularly the Iraq War troop surge of 2007. He is a professor at the Ohio State University, where he holds the General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History.
Eric Chewning is an American businessman, veteran, former Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, and current partner at McKinsey & Company.
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