Dr. Evelyn Farkas is one of the nation’s premier voices on American foreign policy and geopolitics, and one of the nation’s most-trusted experts on U.S.-Russia relations. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, she was the Department of Defense’s top Russia expert under President Obama. Farkas advised three Secretaries of Defense during her tenure at the Pentagon and was responsible for policy toward Russia and the surrounding region. She is an outspoken voice on how America ought to respond to adversaries and manage aggressors, ranging from Russia to North Korea to Iran and China. Expertly positioned to discuss the at times tenuous intersection of foreign objectives and domestic priorities, Dr. Farkas appears regularly on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and other networks. She currently serves as the executive director of the McCain Institute, and her op-eds are regularly featured in leading publications. She discusses how America’s position abroad is shifting under the current presidential administration, and the global gamut of national security challenges

Dr. Farkas’s government experience is impressive and wide-ranging, and she has served alongside some of the biggest names in Washington and abroad. She has a deep understanding of how major foreign policy decisions are made, having worked for about a decade in Congress and another decade for the Department of Defense. She skillfully dissects international disarray and its implications on businesses globally. Specific areas of focus have included foreign and defense policy in Asia Pacific and Latin America, special operations and counterterrorism, foreign military assistance, peace and stability operations, homeland defense, export control, and more. Former posts include: Senior Advisor for Public-Private Partnership to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe/Commander, U.S. European Command; Special Advisor for the Secretary of Defense for the NATO Summit; Executive Director of the Graham-Talent Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism; and senior staffer for the Senate Armed Services Committee.

From 2008-2009, Dr. Farkas served as Executive Director of the congressionally mandated bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which published its report “World at Risk” in 2008. Before that, she served for 7 years as a Professional Staff Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, conducting policy and budget oversight for over $20 billion of the Department of Defense policy office and military commands—including the U.S. Pacific Command, Special Operations Command, Southern Command, Northern Command, and U.S. Forces Korea. She also served in Bosnia in the 1990s as a Human Rights Officer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and as an election observer in Bosnia and Afghanistan. She is a former Senior Fellow at the American Security Project, where she focused on stability and special operations, counterproliferation, and U.S.-Asia policy.

Dr. Farkas was a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe and on sites including The Daily Beast, Politico, and Foreign Policy. Her commentary has been featured on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and more, and she is the author of Fractured States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s.

She obtained her MA and Ph.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She speaks fluent Hungarian and German, and has studied French, Spanish, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, Russian and Hindi. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, sits on several non-profit boards including Project 2049 Institute and previously served on the Board of Trustees of Franklin and Marshall College, and the Leadership Council-Women in National Security (LC-WINS.board. She has received several Department of Defense and foreign awards and has an honorary doctorate from Franklin & Marshall College.

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