Stephen Peter Rosen
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Stephen Peter Rosen is a
Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...
Professor and Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs in the Government Department in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
and is known as a neoconservative. In addition to his academic work, Rosen was also Master of Harvard College's
Winthrop House John Winthrop House, commonly known as Winthrop House, is one of 12 undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University, an Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which houses approximately 400 upper class undergraduates. Winthro ...
from 2003 to 2009. He is also Senior Counsellor to the Long Term Strategy Group based in Washington D. C., a defense consulting firm.


Early life and education

Rosen was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. He received his A.B. (in 1974) and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. He was influenced by the teaching of Harvey Mansfield as an undergraduate. As a graduate student, Rosen roomed with
Bill Kristol William Kristol (; born December 23, 1952) is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine ''The Weekly Standard''. Kristol is edi ...
and
Alan Keyes Alan Lee Keyes (born August 7, 1950) is an American politician, political scientist, and perennial candidate who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987. A member of the Republican P ...
. His PhD dissertation entitled "Leadership in Foreign Policy" studied the ways in which Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln tried to moderate American public opinion that could negatively affect American foreign policy. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard he worked with Sam Huntington to create the Olin institute for Strategic Studies.


Career

His first book ''Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military'' was published by Cornell University Press in 1991, and received the 1992 Edgar S. Furniss Book Award for outstanding contribution to national security studies from the Ohio State University. The book demonstrates how the dynamics of officer promotion are the key to understanding military innovation in peacetime. Senior officers infrequently change their views, so the key to the military innovation lies in establishing new promotion pathways for younger officers. The book reviews all the major non-nuclear innovation of the 20th century. This book had been cited approximately 1000 times according to Google Scholar, and has been continuously in press since 1991. His second book ''Societies and Military power: India and its Armies'' was published by Cornell University press in 1996 and studied the impact of social structures on military effectiveness. The book explains the strength and weakness of the Indian army during the Mughal, British, and post independent eras. The book shows how military effectiveness on the battlefield could only be achieved at the price of civil-military tensions. His third book ''War and Human Nature'' was published by Princeton University press in 2005. The book connected the literature in biology to the literature in national security, and described the effect of biological mechanisms on stress, status competition, and fear and memory, as they affect national security behavior. The book pays special attention to the factors affecting the behaviors of tyrannies. It did path breaking work showing the connection between biological processes and time horizons. He has published widely in journals including ''International Security'',''The Wall Street Journal'' ''Foreign Affairs'', ''Journal of Strategic Studies'', ''Joint forces Quarterly'', ''The Washington Quarterly'', ''Foreign Policy'', and ''Diplomatic History''. His Op-ed ''The emperor’s Nuclear Clothes'' was published in the ''Wall Street Journal'' criticizing the nuclear zero movement, arguing that the abolition of nuclear weapons was a utopian pipe dream. For many years Rosen taught the popular undergraduate course ''War and Politics'', as well as the introductory international relations course ''International Conflict and Cooperation'', and a lecture course on ''The Ethics of the Conduct of War''. He has been recognized as an outstanding undergraduate teacher and has received all three major awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching from Harvard University: The Harvard College Professorship in 2002, the award from the Alpha and Iota Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 2003, and the Levenson Award from the Harvard Undergraduate Council in 2016. In addition, he was co-master of Winthrop House with his wife Mandana Sassanfar in 2003 to 2009, where he was responsible for the well being of over 350 resident undergraduates. He gave the address at the Harvard ROTC commission ceremony in 2007. Rosen advised many graduate students, some of whom are now professors at Princeton University, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, the University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University, The University of Texas at Austin, and the United States Military Academy. Parallel to his career in academia, he worked for Herman Kahn at the Hudson Institute (1973 and 1974) and served in the United States government from 1981 to 1990. He worked in the Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense 1981-1984 where he was author of the first net assessment of the East Asian military balance. He was the Director of Political-Military Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council 1984-1985 where he was the author of NSDD 166, the strategy document for the American operations in Afghanistan. He taught in the Strategy and Policy Department at the Naval War College from 1986 to 1990. Rosen was associate director of the
John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Ep ...
(part of Harvard's Department of Government) from 1990 to 1996, and was Director from 1996 until 2008. Rosen was also a consultant for the President's Commission on Integrated Long-term Strategy. Shortly after the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
, Rosen signed an open letter from the
Project for the New American Century The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative *"The PNAC's 33 leaders were highly connected with the American state – displaying 115 such connections: 27 with the Department of Defense, 13 with State, 12 with the Whit ...
to President George W. Bush that advocated war in Afghanistan and "a large increase in defense spending." Rosen also signed the PNAC's Statement of Principles and its controversial 90-page report entitled ''Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century'' (2000), advocating the redeployment of U.S. troops in permanent bases in strategic locations throughout the world where they can be ready to act to protect U.S. interests abroad.',
Project for the New American Century The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative *"The PNAC's 33 leaders were highly connected with the American state – displaying 115 such connections: 27 with the Department of Defense, 13 with State, 12 with the Whit ...
, September 2000, accessed May 14, 2007.
In 2007, Rosen was named as a member of foreign policy advisory team of Republican Party presidential candidate
Rudy Giuliani Rudolph William Louis Giuliani ( , ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and Disbarment, disbarred lawyer who served as the 107th mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney ...
. Rosen holds the view that U.S. military supremacy is not guaranteed into the future, remarking on it that, "we mericanshave grown up and become accustomed to a world in which we can exercise ''force majeure'' and we just can’t do that. And this is not a matter of ideology. This is not a matter of ethics. This is a matter of a change in the character of power and the distribution of power." As of 2015, Rosen did not, however, believe that American power was in decline, telling former roommate
Bill Kristol William Kristol (; born December 23, 1952) is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine ''The Weekly Standard''. Kristol is edi ...
:
We can’t play the same kind of dominant role, but we can and should play a role in creating this new world order in which people in those regions take more responsibility for defending themselves, but where we play a crucial role. And if we don’t do that we are more at risk of losing our republican liberties than if we undertake the tasks that are associated with this more forward posturing.
Rosen currently serves on the advisory board for Washington, DC–based non-profit
America Abroad Media ''America Abroad'' was a monthly documentary radio program produced by America Abroad Media (AAM), a Washington D.C.–based non-profit organization. The program was distributed by Public Radio International (PRI) and broadcast on public radio s ...
.


References


Further reading


Remarks at the Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony 2007


External links


Biography at Harvard University Department of Government
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosen, Stephen Peter Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Harvard College alumni Harvard University faculty