Caitlin Talmadge

Caitlin Talmadge is associate professor of security studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Her research and teaching focus on deterrence and escalation, nuclear strategy, civil-military relations, emerging technologies, defense policy, and U.S. military operations and strategy, particularly in Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Talmadge is author of “The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes” (Cornell, 2015), which Foreign Affairs named the “Best Book in Security” for 2016 and which won the 2017 Best Book Award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association. She also is co-author of “U.S. Defense Politics: the Origins of Security Policy” (third edition 2017, Routledge, with Harvey Sapolsky and Eugene Gholz). Her current book project examines the challenge of crafting conventional military strategies against nuclear-armed opponents, and the implications for potential conflict escalation in eastern Europe and Asia. She has published articles in International Security, Security Studies, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The Non-Proliferation Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

Talmadge’s work has received funding from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Stanton Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Political Science Association, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Talmadge is a graduate of Harvard (A.B., summa cum laude) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.). Previously, she worked as a research assistant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a consultant to the Office of Net Assessment at the U.S. Department of Defense, and a professor at the George Washington University.

Outside of Brookings, Talmadge is providing outside informal counsel exclusively to the Biden campaign for President.

Affiliations:

• American Political Science Association, member
• Council on Foreign Relations, term member
• Duco, consultant
• George Washington University Nuclear Security Working Group, member
• Georgetown University Security Studies Program, core faculty member
• International Security, associate editor
• International Studies Association, member
• Journal of Strategic Studies, editorial board member
• International Security Studies Forum
• H-Diplo, editorial board member
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Security Studies Program, research affiliate

Education

• A.B., Government, Harvard College
• Ph.D., Political Science, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology