Defense Expert Stephen Biddle Joins the Council to Study U.S. National Security and Strategy

February 2, 2006 —Stephen D. Biddle, associate professor and Elihu Root chair of military studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), has joined the Council as senior fellow for defense policy. Biddle will research and write on questions of U.S. national security and strategy and will direct a roundtable on these issues. “Steve is one of the outstanding defense analysts of his generation,” said Vice President and Director of Studies James M. Lindsay. “His deep knowledge of national security issues makes him an extraordinarily valuable addition to the Studies Program.” Biddle will be based in Washington, DC.

In addition to his position at SSI, Biddle is an adjunct associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. His areas of expertise include U.S. national security policy, military strategy and the conduct of war, technology in modern warfare, defense transformation, and recent operations in the war on terror.

Before joining SSI in June 2001, Biddle was a member of the political science faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has held research positions at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Kennedy School of Government’s Office of National Security Programs. He has also served as U.S. Representative to the NATO Defense Research Group study on Stable Defense, is a member of the Defense Department Senior Advisory Group on Homeland Defense, and is codirector of the Columbia University Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy.

In 2005, Biddle’s book, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton University Press, 2004), won the Council’s Arthur Ross Book Award Silver Medal Prize, Harvard University’s Institute for Strategic Studies’ Huntington Prize, the Institute for Operations Research’s Koopman Award, and the Army War College Foundation’s Management Sciences Madigan Award. He has also written articles for Foreign Affairs, International Security, Survival, Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, Defense Analysis, and Military Operations Research; shorter pieces on military topics in the Wall Street Journal, Orbis, Joint Force Quarterly, and Defense News; various chapters in edited volumes; and twenty-eight IDA, SSI, and NATO reports.

Biddle’s research has won Barchi, Rist, and Impact Prizes from the Military Operations Research Society, and he won the Army Superior Civilian Service Medal in 2003. He has also testified before congressional committees on issues relating to Operation Iraqi Freedom, conventional net assessment, and European arms control.

He holds an AB in fine arts, an MPP, and a PhD in public policy, all from Harvard University.