Evelyn Farkas

Dr. Evelyn N. Farkas is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia. Previously she was a senior fellow at the American Security Project, where she focuses on stability and special operations, counterproliferation and U.S-Asia policy. In 2008, she served as executive director of the congressionally mandated Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which published its report World at Risk (Random House/Viking) in November 2008. From April 2001 to April 2008, she served as a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her issue areas included foreign and defense policy in Asia Pacific, Western Hemisphere, Special Operations Command (policy and budget oversight), foreign military assistance, peace and stability operations, the military effort to combat terrorism, counternarcotics programs, homeland defense, and export control policy. Prior to assuming that position she served for four years on the faculty of the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University as assistant professor and then associate professor of international relations. She served in Bosnia for five months as a human rights officer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) during 1996, and as an election supervisor in 1997.

Dr. Farkas is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, International Institute for Security Studies, Women in International Security Studies, and on the advisory board for the Harold Rosenthal Fellowship in International Relations and the Aspen Institute Socrates Scholar Program. In 2005 she served on a Council of Foreign Relations task force chaired by Samuel R. Berger and Brent Scowcroft that produced a monograph In the Wake of War: Improving U.S. Post-Conflict Capabilities. In 2009 she became a member of the Center for National Policy's Future Forces advisory group. She is also an expert blogger for National Journal.

Dr. Farkas' publications include journal articles and opinion pieces in The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times on issues including Balkan peace operations and military readiness. She is also the author of Fractured States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s (Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, 2003). While working on Capitol Hill, she was the subject of an article in Roll Call newspaper on December 1, 2003: "Valuable Lessons: Ex-Marine Corps Professor Faces Familiar Challenges on the Hill.