Daalder, Ivo H. 1960–

PERSONAL: Born 1960, in the Hague, Netherlands; son of Hans and Annie-Pauline (Neukircher) Daalder; married Elisa D. Harris; children: two sons. Education: University of Kent at Canterbury, B.A. (honors), 1982; Georgetown University, M.A., 1982; Nuffield College, Oxford, M.Litt., 1984; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D., 1989.

ADDRESSES: Home—Washington, DC. Office—Foreign Policy Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036-2188. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Harvard University Center for Science and International Affairs, Cambridge, MA, Harvard-MacArthur predoctoral fellow, 1985–87, member of study group on international implications of ethnic conflict, 1994–95; International Institute for Strategic Studies, research associate, 1987–88, senior research fellow, 1988–89; National Security Council, director for global affairs, 1995–96, director for European affairs, 1996–97; Center for International and Security Studies at University of Maryland, College Park, research fellow, 1989–91, director of research, 1991–98; University of Maryland, School of Public Affairs, College Park, adjunct professor, 1991, visiting assistant professor, 1991–93, assistant professor, 1993–95, associate professor and director of international security and economic policy, 1995–98; Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, senior fellow in foreign policy studies. RAND Corporation, member of project on arms control, 1990–93; United Nations Secretariat, consultant to study on defensive security concepts and policies, 1991–92; University of Maryland-University of Tsukuba, member of study group on U.S.-Japan relations, 1993–94; National Intelligence Council Office for Europe, consultant, 1997–; U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, study group member, 1998–2001.

MEMBER: Council on Foreign Relations, International Institute for Strategic Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright fellowship, Netherlands-America Foundation for Educational Exchange, 1984; Institute for the Study of World Politics fellowship, 1985; advanced foreign policy studies fellowship, SSRC/Ford Foundation, 1989–91; Pew faculty fellowship in international affairs, 1994–95; Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellowship, 1995–96.

WRITINGS:

The SDI Challenge to Europe, Ballinger (Cambridge, MA), 1987.

Strategic Defences in the 1990s: Criteria for Deployment ("Studies in International Security" series, number 30), Macmillan (Basingstoke, England), 1991.

The CFE Treaty: An Overview and an Assessment, Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute (Washington, DC), 1991.

The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response: NATO Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces since 1967, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Cooperative Arms Control: A New Agenda for the Post-Cold War Era, Center for International Security Studies at University of Maryland (College Park, MD), 1992.

Stepping Down the Thermonuclear Ladder: How Low Can We Go?, Center for International and Securities Studies at Maryland (College Park, MD), 1993.

(Editor, with Terry Terriff) Rethinking the Unthinkable: New Directions in Nuclear Arms Control, Frank Cass (London, England), 1993.

The Clinton Administration and Multilateral Peace Operations, Georgetown University (Washington, DC), 1995.

Anthony Lake and the War in Bosnia, Georgetown University (Washington, DC), 1995.

Prospects for Global Leadership Sharing, Center for International Studies at University of Maryland (College Park, MD), 1996.

(Editor, with Frances G. Burwell) The United States and Europe in the Global Arena, Macmillan (Basingstoke, England), 1998.

Getting to Dayton: The Making of America's Bosnia Policy, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2000.

(With Michael E. O'Hanlon) Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2000.

(With James M. Lindsay) America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2003.

(Editor, with Nicole Gnesotto and Philip H. Gordon) Crescent of Crisis: U.S.-European Strategy for the Greater Middle East, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2005.

Member of editorial board of Contemporary Security Issues (previously Arms Control), 1991–; contributor to periodicals, including Foreign Affairs, National Interest, Foreign Policy, Survival, Internationale Politik, Strategic Survey, Washington Quarterly, International Affairs, Disarmament, Journal of Strategic Studies, and West European Politics. Contributor to newspapers, including International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Financial Times, and San Jose Mercury News. Author of numerous policy reports, conference papers, and book reviews.

SIDELIGHTS: Ivo H. Daalder is a frequent commentator on international security in American and European periodicals. His publications include several books, as well as numerous journal and newspaper articles, opinion articles, monographs, and policy reports. He has been a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, and has held the positions of associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs and director for European affairs on President Clinton's National Security Council staff. His areas of expertise include U.S. foreign policy, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the twentieth-century wars in Kosovo and Bosnia, nuclear arms control, and strategic defenses. Born in the Netherlands, Daalder is often asked to provide insight into European attitudes toward American foreign policy.

Daalder's first book is The SDI Challenge to Europe, a volume that offers an analysis of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and its impact on European governments during the 1980s. Reagan sought to create a system that could disable incoming (presumably Russian) nuclear missiles—including technology that could attack missiles outside the earth's atmosphere—which came to be known as his "Star Wars" plan. Daalder explains how SDI research was seen as a threat to European security, requiring a response on three fronts: improving the U.S. government's understanding of European concerns, adapting to a situation where the United States but not Europe was protected from nuclear attack, and maintaining comparable technological abilities. He goes on to delineate the difficulty of addressing each concern without impacting the others and concludes that the American-European alliance will be hurt by developing SDI.

In a review of The SDI Challenge to Europe for Science, Donald L. Hafner described the book as "written with clarity and force" and found that "Daalder's conclusion is sobering but persuasively argued." Hafner also commended Daalder's skill in presenting this material. "Daalder is an excellent guide through complicated territory. He knows how to lay the analytical groundwork for the reader and when to step aside and let the flavor and color of European opinions emerge from the words of Europeans themselves. This is a first-rate book."

In Strategic Defences in the 1990s: Criteria for Deployment, Daalder identifies the three options being considered during that decade and shows their weaknesses. One was an accidental-launch protection system, another was ground-based defense of military targets, and the third was deploying a system to intercept incoming Soviet warheads. Daalder also considers three objectives: defending strategic forces from Soviet attack, responding to Soviet noncompliance to arms control agreements, and defending the country from Third World-based missile attacks. He argues that strategic defense research rather than deployment is the best strategy against Soviet threats. L.S. Hulett, writing for Choice, called the book "a concise and neatly argued analysis of strategic defense deployment criteria," but felt that Daalder's viewpoint in Strategic Defences in the 1990s was threatened with "obsolescence," given the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Daalder reviews the primary nuclear issues affecting NATO in The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response: NATO Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces since 1967. He details the difficulties the alliance faced in developing policies for nuclear weapons use following its 1967 adoption of a flexible response strategy. This includes discussion of the neutron bomb, the 1979 Long-Range Theater Nuclear Forces decision, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) negotiations, and nuclear modernization in the 1980s.

Writing in American Political Science Review, John S. Duffield called this work "arguably … the most important study of the alliance" in many years, following in the footsteps of the 1962 publication of Robert Osgood's NATO: The Entangling Alliance. Duffield appreciated the difficulty Daalder faced in finding declassified materials and credited him with creating "an innovative analytical framework that helps to impose order on a seemingly unending series of intraalliance squabbles." The critic regretted that Daalder did not succeed in explaining the impetus and determinants of differing strategic preferences among the member countries. However, Duffield asserted that "reference to these conceptual shortcomings should not obscure the overall conclusion that The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response makes a significant contribution, thanks to its thoughtful analysis, thorough research, and considerable breadth."

Direct participation in American policymaking informs Getting to Dayton: The Making of America's Bosnia Policy. As the title implies, Daalder details the political developments prior to the Dayton meeting. At the same time, American and European relations were rocked by conflicting ideas on how to end the war. Daalder shows how national security advisor Anthony Lake (his exboss) convinced the Clinton administration to follow a strategy that would improve American leadership—diplomatic if possible, military if necessary—to effect an end to the war in Bosnia.

Helen Fessenden reviewed the book for the Christian Science Monitor, describing it as an "account to complement and correct his colleague's"—that is, U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke's book To End a War, which had been published two years earlier. She explained that "Lake emerges from Daalder's account as a heroic 'policy entrepreneur'…. Holbrooke, in contrast, is cast in a less favorable light." She judged, however, that this facet of the book was not what would impress Daalder's audience. "Most readers … will value the book less for its inside-the-Beltway scuffling and more for its detail and candor about an important episode in recent history," Fessenden offered.

Fessenden was surprised that Getting to Dayton did not include discussion of the political upheaval developing in nearby Kosovo. This, in fact, turned out to be the subject of Daalder's next book, Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo, which he co-wrote with Brookings Institution associate Michael O'Hanlon. This study looks at the U.S. and NATO bombing campaign to remove Serbian invaders from Kosovo in the spring of 1999. The authors seek to answer questions raised that year following the intervention, such as "Did NATO in fact win?" They answer affirmatively, feeling that definite improvements were made in the region. However, the victory is described as an "ugly" one; Daalder and O'Hanlon point out diplomatic mistakes and criticize the policy of limited force that preceded the airstrikes and failed to curb Serbian genocide and mass expulsions in Kosovo. They also try to discern the possible influence of NATO participation on future events.

Critics described the book as the first analysis of its kind on the war in Kosovo. Disparate viewpoints allowed it to touch on controversial issues. Writing for Choice, J.P. Dunn called the authors "eminently qualified," but he predicted that "virtually all the conclusions of this informative treatise will be debated." One such challenge was issued by Andrew J. Bacevich in a review for the National Interest, in which he called the book "a quintessential Washington think tank product: thoroughly researched, well organized, timely, judicious and utterly unoriginal." Bacevich agreed that the authors' criticism of NATO and U.S. strategy is fair, but he did not have faith in their concerns about "resurgent American isolationism" and suggested that Daalder and O'Hanlon "ignore a multitude of larger questions posed by facts scattered throughout their own narrative." An enthusiastic response to Winning Ugly came from Timothy Garton Ash in the New York Review of Books. Ash commented that "most of [the] book is a thorough, lucid, hard-hitting examination of Western, and especially American, policy, scrupulously examining the real alternatives available at the time. On the internal disputes of Washington policymaking they are astute and fascinating."

Council on Foreign Relations President James M. Lindsay collaborated with Daalder in writing America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. The authors study the effects of the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the direction of the administration of George W. Bush, and its unilateralism and rejection of international agreements that include the Kyoto Protocol, ABM Treaty, and International Criminal Court. David Marquet wrote for the Naval War College Review that the book "is a readable, balanced, and concise work that explains the present administration's theory behind the practice." The authors write that President Bush feels that the United States is safer unbound by alliances and should use its power for its own benefit, and that preemptive strikes should be employed against threats from outside its borders.

Marquet noted that the book "is, ultimately, a criticism of President Bush's policies, his unilateralism in particular. The last chapter asserts that 'the fundamental premise of the Bush revolution, that America's security rested on an America unbound, was profoundly mistaken.'" Daalder and Lindsay feel that the complexity of foreign policy precludes following a "go it alone" policy.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, March, 1993, John S. Duffield, review of The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response: NATO Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces since 1967, p. 253.

American Prospect, April, 2004, Laura Secor, review of American Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, p. 51.

Booklist, June 1, 2000, Mary Carroll, review of Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo, p. 1841.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November, 1987, Steven J. Breyman, review of The SDI Challenge to Europe, pp. 49-50.

Choice, July-August, 1992, L.S. Hulett, review of Strategic Defences in the 1990s: Criteria for Deployment, p. 1752; March, 2001, J.P. Dunn, review of Winning Ugly, p. 1343.

Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2000, Helen Fessenden, review of Getting to Dayton: The Making of America's Bosnia Policy, p. 20.

Foreign Affairs, spring, 1992, Gregory F. Treverton, review of The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response, p. 191.

International Affairs, autumn, 1988, Martin Edmonds, review of The SDI Challenge to Europe, pp. 660-661; October, 1992, Michael Clarke, review of The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response, p. 729; July, 2001, Susan L. Woodward, review of Getting to Dayton, pp. 694-695.

Journal of Military History, January, 2001, Richard M. Swain, review of Getting to Dayton, pp. 269-270.

National Interest, fall, 2000, Andrew J. Bacevich, review of Winning Ugly, p. 94.

Naval War College Review, winter, 2002, Tom Fedyszyn, review of Winning Ugly, pp. 153-154; spring, 2004, David Marquet, review of America Unbound, p. 169.

New York Review of Books, September 21, 2000, Timothy Garton Ash, review of Winning Ugly, pp. 50-60.

Political Science Quarterly, autumn, 1987, Jerome Slater, review of The SDI Challenge to Europe, pp. 510-511.

Political Studies, September, 2000, Robert J. Lieber, review of The United States and Europe in the Global Arena, p. 921.

Science, September 25, 1987, Donald L. Hafner, review of The SDI Challenge to Europe, p. 1625.

Slavonic and East European Review, January, 2002, James Gow, review of Getting to Dayton, pp. 184-185.

Stanford Journal of International Law, winter, 2001, Carolyn C. Hofig, review of Winning Ugly, pp. 211-213.

Survival, summer, 2000, Christopher Civic, review of Winning Ugly, pp. 173-178.

ONLINE

Brookings Institution Web site, http://www.brook.edu/ (January 17, 2006), biographical page on Daalder.