Colin Kahl

Dr. Kahl is Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. He previously served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security and as an Associate Professor in Security Studies at Georgetown University, where his research focused on civil and ethnic conflicts in developing countries. Prior to that, Dr. Kahl served in the Obama Administration from 2009 until 2011 as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, where he was the senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense on key security issues in the region. Dr. Kahl also has experience in the academic think tank world, having served at the Council on Foreign Relations and as a professor at the University of Minnesota. 

He has published articles on U.S. foreign and defense policy in the Middle East in Al-Monitor, Defense One, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly and has published several reports for CNAS.

His previous research analyzed the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries, focusing particular attention on the demographic and natural resource dimensions of these conflicts. His book on the subject, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, was published by Princeton University Press in 2006, and related articles and chapters have appeared in International Security, the Journal of International Affairs, and various edited volumes.