Speaker Biographies

October 19, 2005

Rick Barton is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project there. He has led work to improve the way the United States and the international community approach war-prone situations, including action strategies for Iraq, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, and is a regular contributor to public discussions on peace building. His work is informed by ten years in over twenty global hot spots, as United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva (UNHCR, 1999-2001), and as the first Director of the Office of Transition Initiatives at USAID (1994-1999). He continues to teach at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he was the Frederick H. Schultz Professor of Economic Policy and Lecturer of Public and International Affairs. Prior public service includes work for cabinet secretaries Joseph Califano and Patricia Roberts Harris, and U.S. senator William D. Hathaway of Maine. He was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Congress from Maine’s First District in 1976 and was state party chairman in the late 1980’s.

Joseph J. Collins joined the National War College faculty in 2004 as a professor of national security strategy. Before this assignment, he served for three years as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations, the Pentagon’s senior civilian official for peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and stabilization and reconstruction operations. From 1998 to 2001, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he researched economic sanctions, military culture, and national security policy. In 1998, he retired from the U.S. Army as a colonel after nearly twenty-eight years of military service. His Army years were equally divided among infantry and armor assignments in the United States, South Korea, and Germany; teaching at West Point in the Department of Social Sciences; and a series of assignments in the Pentagon. His Washington assignments included Army staff officer for NATO and Warsaw Pact strategic issues, special assistant to the chief of staff of the Army, military assistant to the under secretary of defense for policy during Operation Desert Storm, and special assistant and chief speechwriter to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has also taught as adjunct faculty in the graduate divisions of Columbia University and Georgetown University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a graduate of the Army’s Command and General Staff College and the National War College. His many publications include books and articles on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Operation Desert Storm, contemporary U.S. military culture, defense transformation, and homeland defense.

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI and editor of Armed Forces Journal. He is the author of The Military We Need: The Defense Requirements of the Bush Doctrine (AEI Press, 2005); Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004); and AEI’s monthly National Security Outlook. In February 2005, he was appointed by Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to a two-year term on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Before coming to AEI, he served as the director of strategic communications and initiatives at Lockheed Martin and as deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century. From 1995 to 1999, he was the policy group director, as well as a professional staff member, for the Committee on National Security (now the Committee on Armed Services) in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Donnelly has also been the executive director of The National Interest, editor of Army Times, and deputy editor of Defense News.

Colonel David W. Lamm is a professor of strategy at the National War College and a recognized expert on information operations, deception operations, conventional and counterinsurgency operations, and personnel training and manning. From 2004 to 2005, he served as the chief of staff of Combined Forces Command–Afghanistan, where he was responsible for all international and national policies, plans, orders, procedures, and budget for a $550 million a month combat and counterinsurgency mission comprising 20,000 U.S. and coalition soldiers, civilians, and contractors, synchronizing all elements of national power. He has served in the Army for more than two decades and held numerous positions, including as chief of plans and operations, Operations Directorate (Information Operations), Joint Staff, from 1997 to 1999, and from 2000 to 2002, commander of U.S. Army Central Command–Kuwait, where he commanded the units directly supporting the nation’s initial entry into Afghanistan in 2001, all subsequent support missions for Operation Enduring Freedom, while simultaneously working with the national command authority and the government of Kuwait on combat, combat support and combat service support preparations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His scholarly works include "Manning the Machine," a critical examination of the Army’s individual replacement system conducted for the chief of staff of the Army in 2001; "The Post-Cold War Army," an analysis conducted for the chief of staff of the Army, later published in Military Review (1991); and "The War of 1812" for the Book of Days.

Colonel Christopher Langton (Ret.) joined the staff of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in June 2001 after thirty-two years of service in the British Army. He is the head of the Defence Analysis Department of IISS and editor of The Military Balance, its authoritative assessment of the military capabilities and defense economics of 170 countries. He has experience from Northern Ireland and from service in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, including the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia. He has also held attaché appointments in Russia, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia and was deputy chief of UNOMIG, the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia.

Robert Perito is the coordinator of the Iraq/Afghanistan Experience Project and a former senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). He is an expert on peace and stability operations, police and constabulary forces, organized crime, terrorism, and U.S. national security affairs. Mr. Perito came to USIP after a distinguished career in government service. From 1967 to 1995, he was a U.S. foreign service officer with the Department of State, retiring with rank of minister counselor. His last assignment was director of the Office of International Criminal Justice where he received a superior honor award for chairing the Administration’s Task Force on Combating International Alien Smuggling. Mr. Perito’s State Department assignments included directorships of the Offices of Chinese Affairs, Southern African Affairs, and Eastern European Affairs and special assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State. His diplomatic assignments included Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva. In 1992, he received a Presidential Meritorious Honor Award for leading the U.S. delegation to the successful Angola peace talks. From 1995 to 2001, Mr. Perito served as deputy director of the U.S. Justice Department’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program. During his tenure, ICITAP grew into a global law enforcement development program that worked in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and more than seventy other countries. From 1988 to 1989, Mr. Perito served in the White House as deputy executive secretary of the National Security Council under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. From 1983 to 1984, he was director of the Office of Chinese Affairs at the Department of Commerce. In 1980, Mr. Perito was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow and worked for the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Perito has taught at Princeton, American, and George Mason Universities. His most recent book is entitled Where is the Lone Ranger When We Need Him? America’s Search for a Post Conflict Security Force. He is also the author of The American Experience with Police in Peace Operations, USIP Special Reports on Iraq and Afghanistan, book chapters, and journal articles.

Barnett R. Rubin is the director of studies and a senior fellow at the Center for International Cooperation at New York University. From November to December 2001, he served as special adviser to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, during the negotiations that produced the Bonn Agreement. From 1994 to 2000 he was the director of the Center for Preventive Action and director of peace and conflict studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Afghanistan and the surrounding region, as well as on conflict prevention and peace building. He was an associate professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia at Columbia University from 1990 to 1996. Previously, he was a Jennings Randolph Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and assistant professor of political science at Yale University. He is currently the chair of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum and a member of the executive board of Human Rights Watch/Asia and the board of the Open Society Institute’s Central Eurasia Project. From 1996 to 1998 he served on the secretary of state’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. He is the author of Blood on the Doorstep: The Politics of Preventing Violent Conflict (2002). He is also the author, coauthor, or editor of The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (2002; first edition 1995); Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia (1999); Stabilizing Nigeria: Sanctions, Incentives, and Support for Civil Society (1998); Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building (1998); Cases and Strategies for Preventive Action (1998); Toward Comprehensive Peace in Southeast Europe: Conflict Prevention in the South Balkans (1996); and The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State (1995). He has written numerous articles and book reviews on conflict prevention, state formation, and human rights. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Orbis, Survival, International Affairs, and elsewhere.

Larry Sampler—an adjunct staff member of the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia—served as the chief of staff for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Before that assignment, he was a consultant to the Afghan government, in support of the Afghan Constitutional Loya Jirga, where, as the director of international support, he served as the focal point for international assistance and support to the constitutional process. Sampler also performed a similar role for USAID in support of the Afghan Emergency Loya Jirga in 2002. He was awarded the Constitutional Medal by President Hamid Karzai for his efforts. Mr. Sampler has both a professional and an academic interest in post-conflict reconstruction. He has worked with USAID in a number of venues to evaluate and consider post-conflict interventions and assistance. He has also worked with the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he served variously as director of the elections operations center; director of election implementation; deputy chief of staff and operations; deputy political director; and was the first international arbiter assigned to Srebrenica. As the international chair of the interim executive board governing Srebrenica, Sampler led a multidisciplinary, multi-agency team dedicated to ensuring the safety, dignity, and eventual return of the residents of Srebrenica. Mr. Sampler has also served in the Special Operations community of the United States as a member of, or attached to, the 5th, 10th, and 11th Special Forces Groups, 96th Civil Affairs Brigade, U.S. Naval Special Warfare Center, and 360th Civil Affairs Brigade. He has participated in exchange programs with sister units in the United Kingdom, Italy, Norway, and Canada.

Vance Serchuk is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at AEI, where he studies international organizations and the overlap between U.S. strategic interests and development policy. Previously he was a research associate at AEI, coordinating its defense and security policy program. He has also worked as a consultant for the Project for the New American Century and the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Before joining AEI, Mr. Serchuk was a Fulbright scholar in the Russian Federation. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, New York Sun, The Forward, and other publications.

S. Frederick Starr is a research professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. Previously, he was president of the Aspen Institute and of Oberlin College, as well as an associate professor of history at Princeton University. Mr. Starr was also a founding director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a regular participant in the World Economic Forum and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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