Stephen Biddle

Last updated
Stephen Biddle
Born (1959-01-19) January 19, 1959 (age 65)
Wilmington, Delaware
Education Harvard University
Occupation(s) Professor, author, historian, columnist, pundit, policy scholar
Organization School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Stephen D. Biddle (born January 19, 1959) [1] is an American author, military historian, policy analyst and columnist whose work concentrates on U.S. foreign policy. Currently, he is the Professor of International and Public Affairs at School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. [2] He received recognition for his 2004 book Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, published through Princeton University Press. He also has worked in groups under Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus forming U.S. counter-insurgency policy.

Contents

Background

Education and early career

Biddle was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of Robert D. and Blanche V. Biddle. [1] His parents frequently discussed politics, and they welcomed his input. Biddle later remarked that such debates took place "from almost as far back as I can remember" and that his father expressly encouraged him to think for himself. Biddle spent a lot of his childhood reading about military history and foreign affairs. [3]

Biddle worked in internships in Washington D.C. that involved studying U.S. defense policy, but he remained skeptical as to whether he could (as he later put it) "actually make a living and pay the rent and eat regularly while doing this." Biddle earned a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from Harvard, which had mostly involved reviewing art history, [3] in 1981. [4]

His first job after earning his degree was at a public policy think tank in the Washington, D.C. area that worked with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He went on to operate 400,000-line Fortran models of combat scenarios outcomes between the Warsaw Pact and NATO from 1981 to 1983. Biddle's suspicions about the model's accuracy and about Defense Department statistical planning in general would later inspire the material in his first book, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle. [5]

Biddle earned a Master's Degree in 1985 and then a Doctor of Philosophy in 1992, [4] both of those degrees coming from Harvard and both focusing on American public policy. He later joked, "I got to know every bad restaurant in Harvard Square very well by the time I was done!" Biddle felt particularly inspired by mentor professors Albert Carnesale and Michael Nacht, political science experts who have since moved to U.C. Berkeley. [3]

Later career

Biddle served as Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs before joining the faculty of School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in 2018. [6] He joined the faculty there in August 2012, after serving as the Roger Hertog Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which he joined in January 2006. He retains an affiliation with the Council as Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy. He formerly worked as an associate professor and Elihu Root chair of military studies at the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute. His popular interest writings have appeared in multiple publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune, and The Guardian. [4]

Biddle's career has also included research and teaching posts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA), and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government's Office of National Security Programs. [4]

He published Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle through Princeton University Press in 2004. The book has won multiple writing awards including CFR's Arthur Ross Award Silver Medal for 2005 and the 2005 Huntington Prize from the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. [4] Biddle extended his analysis to non-state actors in his 2021 book, Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerrillas, Warlords, and Militias. [7]

Biddle received the U.S. Army Superior Civilian Service Medal in 2003 and again in 2006. He received the U.S. Army Commander's Award for Public Service in 2007 as well. Within the U.S. military, he served on General Stanley McChrystal's Initial Strategic Assessment Team in Kabul in 2009, on General David Petraeus's Joint Strategic Assessment Team in Baghdad in 2007, and as a senior adviser to General Petraeus's Central Command Assessment Team in Washington in 2008–2009. [4]

Beliefs

Biddle stated in 2006 that the George W. Bush administration did not do "an adequate job" of establishing a grand strategy for the war on terror with specific aims and specifically defined enemies. He criticized the administration's approach as "quite vague". He called the Bush doctrine of 'rollback', in which the U.S. tries to end the root cause of terrorism by replacing failing autocracies in the Arab world with democracies, "a very demanding program" but a legitimate, if costly and risky, view. [8]

He also remarked in 2006 that the War in Afghanistan had progressively grown more difficult for American forces since, at first, they fought untrained, amateur Taliban-related militants. Yet later on, according to Biddle, American forces began fighting well-trained foreign agents such as al-Qaeda operatives that incorporate Western-style infantry tactics. [9] Biddle referred to the Afghan war in mid-2009 as "perhaps the most controversial and divisive issue in U.S. defense policy". [10]

Biddle has argued generally about the U.S. military and its history,

Americans are a technology-obsessed people. I fancy myself a Luddite, and yet I have a Blackberry in my briefcase. Technology is all around us, it's everywhere, and Americans are just fascinated and intrigued with the stuff. So, when you deal with a society full of people who are fascinated with gadgets and gizmos, and then you ask them, "Now in war, do you think gadgets and gizmos matter?," most of us instinctively say, "Well, of course, they must." And the military, which comes out of this same society, is predisposed to expect that there's a great technological change right around the next bend in the road and it's going to change everything. People think that militaries are incredibly reactionary, conservative, resistant-to-change institutions, and yet the American military in particular has been—almost throughout its history, certainly since World War I—the exact opposite. They're way over-predisposed to expect that everything is going to change because of the next new gadget. [5]

He has stated about U.S. power and prestige,

At the moment, we're in what political scientists describe as a unipolar world. There's one superpower, we overawe all other contestants, and that has a variety of advantages for the United States and some would argue for the world at large. But no condition of unipolarity is ever going to be permanent. Sooner or later—the Romans fell, the British Empire fell—sooner or later, there will be a contestant with the United States for this status, and an important responsibility of grand strategists and the American political elite is to delay, if we can, this condition of the rise of a rival power. Even if you think that the war on terror is our first priority, it remains at least an important responsibility to worry about the longer term future and what's going to happen if China, perhaps, or if India, or if some other rising power comes to challenge our current position in the world in ways that could create a risk of a much more serious military conflict at much higher levels of intensity with much higher levels of loss of life, and try and do what we can to postpone that day. It may be inevitable but it can be later rather than sooner. [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Walt</span> American political scientist (born 1955)

Stephen Martin Walt is an American political scientist currently serving as the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of international relations at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., that focused on United States foreign policy. It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership". The organization stated that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world", and sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Council on Foreign Relations</span> American think tank on foreign policy

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is an independent and nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. CFR is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. Its membership has included senior politicians, secretaries of state, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, corporate directors, CEOs, and prominent media figures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eliot A. Cohen</span> American political scientist

Eliot Asher Cohen is an American political scientist. He was a counselor in the United States Department of State under Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009. In 2019, Cohen was named the 9th Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, succeeding Vali Nasr. Before his time as dean, he directed the Strategic Studies Program at SAIS. Cohen "is one of the few teachers in the American academy to treat military history as a serious field", according to international law scholar Ruth Wedgwood. Cohen is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is also, with Eric Edelman, a co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast, published by The Bulwark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick Kagan</span> Academic and think tank scholar

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Jervis</span> American political scientist and academic (1940–2021)

Robert Jervis was an American political scientist who was the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. Jervis was co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, a series published by Cornell University Press.

Robert L. Gallucci is an American academic and diplomat, who formerly worked as president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He previously served as dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, from 1996 to June 2009. Prior to his appointment in 1996, for over two decades he had served in various governmental and international agencies, including the Department of State and the United Nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ash Carter</span> American government official (1954–2022)

Ashton Baldwin Carter was an American government official and academic who served as the 25th United States secretary of defense from February 2015 to January 2017. He later served as director of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Kaplan (journalist)</span> American author and journalist (born 1954)

Fred M. Kaplan is an American author and journalist. His weekly "War Stories" column for Slate magazine covers international relations and U.S. foreign policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Petraeus</span> U.S. Army general and public official (born 1952)

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.

Robert Jeffrey Art is Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations at Brandeis University, and Fellow at MIT Center for International Studies. He subscribes to the theory of neorealism, which argues that force still underlies the power structure in the modern world. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a United States nonprofit think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meghan O'Sullivan</span> Chairman of the Trilateral Commission North American

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas E. Ricks (journalist)</span> American journalist and author (born 1955)

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 U.S. 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.

Stephen Peter Rosen is a Harvard College Professor and Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs in the Government Department in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and is known as a neoconservative. In addition to his academic work, Rosen was also Master of Harvard College's Winthrop House from 2003 to 2009. He is also Senior Counsellor to the Long Term Strategy Group based in Washington D. C., a defense consulting firm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimberly Kagan</span> American military historian (born 1972)

Kimberly Ellen Kagan is an American military historian. She founded and heads the Institute for the Study of War and has taught at West Point, Yale, Georgetown University, and American University. Kagan has published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Weekly Standard and elsewhere. In 2009, she served on Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategic assessment team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gian Gentile</span>

Gian P. Gentile is a retired US Army colonel, who served for many years as a history professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Gentile has also been a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior historian at the RAND Corporation. He is a leading critic of U.S. military counter-insurgency doctrine.

Michael Dalzell Swaine is a senior research fellow in the field of China and East Asian security studies at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Prior to joining the Quincy Institute, Swaine was a Senior Associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment as co-director of the China Program in 2001, Swaine worked for 12 years at the RAND Corporation, where he was appointed as the first recipient of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy Chair in Northeast Asian Security.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute for the Study of War</span> American think tank

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is an American nonprofit research group and advocacy think tank founded in 2007 by military historian Kimberly Kagan and headquartered in Washington, D.C. ISW provides research and analysis regarding issues of defense and foreign affairs. It has produced reports on the Syrian civil war, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War, "focusing on military operations, enemy threats, and political trends in diverse conflict zones". ISW currently publishes daily updates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas War. ISW also published daily updates on Mahsa Amini protests in Iran.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paula Broadwell</span> Figure in Petraeus scandal

Paula Dean Broadwell is an American writer, academic and former military officer. Broadwell served in the US Army on both active and reserve duty for over 20 years. In 2012, she co-authored, with Vernon Loeb, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, a biography of then-International Security Assistance Force commander David Petraeus. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Think Broader Foundation, a media consulting firm that focuses on addressing gender bias in the media and society. Broadwell is most notable for her involvement in the Petraeus scandal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Goldgeier</span> American political scientist

James M. Goldgeier is a professor of international relations at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C., where he served as dean from 2011 to 2017.

References

  1. 1 2 "Biddle, Stephen 1959- (Stephen D. Biddle)". Contemporary Authors . 2007. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02.
  2. ↑ "Stephen Biddle". Columbia SIPA. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 "Conversation with Stephen D. Biddle, p. 1 of 7". Institute of International Studies at U.C. Berkeley. 2006. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Stephen Biddle – Council on Foreign Relations – Bio" (PDF). Council on Foreign Relations . Retrieved March 24, 2011.
  5. 1 2 "Conversation with Stephen D. Biddle, p. 2 of 7". Institute of International Studies at U.C. Berkeley. 2006. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
  6. ↑ "NEW FACULTY & RESEARCH SCHOLARS 2018–19". Columbia SIPA. September 5, 2018. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
  7. ↑ Freedman, Lawrence D. (17 June 2021). "Two Books on Military Strategy and Nonstate Actors". Foreign Affairs (May/June 2021). Retrieved 24 July 2022.
  8. 1 2 "Conversation with Stephen D. Biddle, p. 6 of 7". Institute of International Studies at U.C. Berkeley. 2006. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
  9. ↑ "Conversation with Stephen D. Biddle, p. 4 of 7". Institute of International Studies at U.C. Berkeley. 2006. Archived from the original on April 6, 2012. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
  10. ↑ Biddle, Stephen (July–August 2009). "Is It Worth It?". The American Interest . Archived from the original on March 29, 2011. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.