What are you most excited about in your new role?
I am most excited about the opportunity to connect restrainers from various backgrounds and roles with each other in the Strategic Leader Fellowship. Additionally, I look forward to getting to know the talented folks thinking about and working towards a restraint-oriented foreign policy strategy.

What books on U.S. foreign policy have most influenced your career?

There are three books that have influenced my thinking on U.S. foreign policy. The first is The Hell of Good Intentions by Stephen Walt. Walt makes a fantastic argument blaming “liberal hegemony” for the stubborn approach to U.S. foreign policy that has produced a poor success record and the “forever wars” reality. The second book is Black Gold and Blackmail by Rosemary Kelanic. Kelanic discusses the role of oil in great power politics and how that dependency led to the dysfunctional relationships the United States still maintains in the Middle East today. The final book is Busted Sanctions by Bryan R. Early. Early discusses why sanctions fail and greatly impacted my belief that the sanctions imposed by the United States are often just a “forever war” in a different form.

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

I have a goal to summit all fifty-eight 14ers in Colorado. I have a long way to go. When I moved away from Colorado, I had only completed four.