Thomas A Keaney

Expertise

Topics

• Air Power
• American Defense Policy
• Strategic and Security Issues

Background and Education

Thomas Keaney is senior fellow at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies and a senior adjunct professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).  Until June 2017, he was the Associate Director of Strategic Studies at the school.  Before coming to SAIS in 1998, he was for ten years a professor of military strategy at National War College, Washington DC, and director of its core courses on military thought and strategy. A retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force, during his military career he served in positions including: associate professor of history at the U.S. Air Force Academy; planner on the Air Staff; chairman of the department of military strategy at National War College; forward air controller in Vietnam; and B-52 squadron commander. During 1991 and 1992 he was a researcher/author with the Gulf War Air Power Survey. He was co-author of two reports of that survey, The Summary Report and The Effects and Effectiveness of Air Power, and a subsequent book, Revolution in Warfare?: Air Power in the Persian Gulf (with Eliot A. Cohen).

Among his publications are: US Allies in a Changing World (2001) and Armed Forces in the Middle East, Politics and Strategy (2002) (both ed. with Barry Rubin); War in Iraq: Planning and Operations (2007) (ed. with Thomas Mahnken); and Understanding Counterinsurgency Warfare (2010) (ed. with Thomas Rid).  He received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan.