Catherine Kelleher Authors Paper on Missile Defense

February 27, 2012

Watson Institute Senior Fellow Catherine McArdle Kelleher has co-authored a working paper on missile defense as part of a joint project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The paper, “Missile Defense: Toward a New Paradigm,” was written by the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (EASI), a consortium of former policymakers, diplomats, generals and business leaders from Russia, the United States, Canada, Central Europe, and European Union member states. Kelleher has been a member of the EASI since its foundation in 2009.

EASI is charged with moving toward the goal of an inclusive Euro-Atlantic Security Community. Its members work to formulate practical action to allow the region to build a more secure future based on mutual trust and cooperation.

“Missile Defense: Toward a New Paradigm” is the product of such work. Written by a panel of experts, including EASI membership and a wider circle of former senior policymakers and defense specialists, it provides a basic concept for a cooperative NATO-Russian missile defense system. The paper describes the principles that should underlie such a system, and lays out an architecture that gives practical expression to the concept.

Its publication is just the latest in a string of achievements for Kelleher. Last month, she was one of only 37 women and three academics at the 48th Munich Security Conference in Germany. And last autumn, she was selected to attend the December 2011 launch of the Women in Public Service Project and Colloquium at the US Department of State, an initiative bringing together women leaders from around the world, seeking to create the foundation for training institutes that are replicable and sustainable around the globe as part of the Women in Public Service initiative.

Kelleher, who earned her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is professor emeritus of strategic research at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. She is the founder of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland and a former senior fellow of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. Kelleher also directed the Aspen Institute in Berlin.

Kelleher has served the US government in various capacities. Under the Clinton administration, she worked as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, and as the secretary of defense's representative to NATO in Brussels. She was also on President Carter's National Security Council staff. In 2005, she completed 15 years of service as vice chair of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academies of Sciences and directed annual policy dialogues with China, Russia, and India. In 2007, she became the second-ever recipient of the Joseph J. Kruzel Memorial Award for Public Service from the International Security Studies and Arms Control section of the American Political Science Association, and she was named to the Naval Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences. In 2009, the American Political Science Association honored her with its Hubert H. Humphrey Award in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist.

At the Watson Institute, Kelleher’s Dialogue among Americans, Russians, and Europeans (DARE) project has brought policymakers and academics together to discuss cooperation on security issues.

By Watson Institute Student Rapporteur Lauren Fedor '12