Col. Robert Killebrew, (U.S. Army, ret.), Consultant
Biography provided by participant
Robert B. Killebrew is a retired Army colonel who served thirty years in a variety of assignments that included Special Forces, tours in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, XVIII Airborne Corps, high-level war planning assignments and instructor duty at the Army War College.
During his active duty time, he served as a Special Forces platoon leader, an advisor to the Vietnamese airborne division, as a battalion commander in the 82nd Airborne Division, commander of a joint task force in central America under both a regional commander and US ambassador, as the Chief of Staff/ plans officer to the US relief mission to Rwanda and as a special assistant in organizing the US-led UN force in Haiti. (The latter two while detached from the Army War College). His final assignment in the Army was organizing the Army's future concepts program that is still extant.
Since leaving active duty, Killebrew has been an independent consultant. He served on the Hart-Rudman study on national security requirements for the 21st century, has participated in several wargames and one DoD summer study on future national security requirements, and, among other activites, consulted on a several-year series of experiments and wargames on nuclear deterrence and net assessment of future threats. More recently, Killebrew supervised a State/DoD study, The Country Team in American Strategy, on enhancing the role of country teams and military assistance programs in pre-insurgency stability operations; he is currently consulting on a variety of studies involving Defense and State Department concepts and requirements for stability operations in future strategy, and is the author of The Left-Hand Side of the Spectrum, a major study on post-Iraq stability operations for the Center for a New American Security. His most recent articles, including the cover piece for the December, 2008 Armed Forces Journal, have focused on the growing connection between terrorism and criminal gangs.
Killebrew is a 1965 graduate of The Citadel and holds advanced degrees in history and international relations. While on active duty he spent one year as a postgraduate fellow at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario; he is a graduate of the Naval Staff College and taught national and military strategy at the Army War College. He is an occasional university lecturer, speaks on military and strategic subjects and is the author of numerous articles and one book on national strategy. He is married to his first trophy wife, Pixie, and their daughter, an Army lieutenant colonel, serves alongside her husband in the Washington D.C. area. There are two lovely granddaughters.
: If I implied that Iran is building a huge embassy, then I overstated the case; what I think I said was that RG members are working out of the Iranian embassy in Managua, and that the staff there is the largest Iran has overseas. I don't see anything in these stories to change that, though if it has a larger staff somewhere else, I stand corrected. It's correct to point out that Iran's grandiose promises to Venezuela and Nicaragua have not materialized, and for that reason I didn't mention them. Much as I appreciate fact-checking, though - facts are… Read more
Andy, Rachel: In reply to Andy's note -- where are the Venezuelan ICBMs? -- and Rachel's, let me say first that no Latin American scholar would mistake me for one; I had a finger in the wars of the '80s and commanded JTF-B, but like most of us I spent most of my life facing east and west, not south. (They wince in pain at the Mexican restaurants when I try to order a taco en espanol.) I agree with Rachel's prioritization -- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, China. Then Chavez. But he cannot be ignored, and he is steadily becoming… Read more
I think we generally agree, Dov. But the most important point I wanted to leave you with is that though we're hitting about the right notes for now, we had better be prepared to support the present interim government -- which is constitutionally elected -- against what I am dead certain is going to be a Chavez-inspired (if not directed) offensive. Put another way, Honduras is going to become a test between Chavez and his allies and us and ours. In a spooky way, this resembles the '70s, but the comparison is not exact. The return of the Left would… Read more
The Administration has, so far, hit all the right notes on this one; Obama and Clinton's first reaction -- that the U.S. does not condone military coups -- undercut Chavez and put the United States on the right side of the OAS at the beginning of the crisis. It also put the U.S. -- not Chavez -- in the position of being the negotiator between Zelaya and the interim Honduran government, instead of Chavez or others of his camp. First set to the United States. Of course this has been a little rough on Honduras. The country has long been… Read more
The Iraqi war is far from over. In fact, the withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi urban centers moves the war in Iraq to a new and more delicate -- not to say dangerous -- phase; delicate for us, delicate for the Iraqis, and delicate for the prospects for stability in the Middle East. Such much dust has been raised by the controversy over the prosecution of the Iraq war that it's useful to remember that the United States' ultimate objective in the country was the establishment of a democratic, pro-Western country that could be an example to other, less… Read more
I'm for gradually easing the embargo, but I think it has to be accompanied by some serious give and take between the two governments. There's no magic wand that says if we just drop everything, Cuba will reform. In fact, the current Cuban government has shown itself to be pretty good at staying in power and repressing its citizens, and they will try to take advantage of loosened barriers to make a profit and reinforce their positions in power. If in the short term all we do is allow the Cuban government to rake profits of remittances or business ventures,… Read more
There's no question that NATO has changed since the end of the Cold War. But it's my opinion that the basic raison d'etre for the Atlantic Alliance is as strong as ever. Remember that the fundamental reason we and our European allies established the Alliance, and all the complex webs of supporting treaties and arrangements, was for our mutual defense. The winners of WWII, and eventually West Germany as well, realized that the isolation of the U.S. from Europe in the 'twenties and 'thirties had been a major contributor to the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany, and the threat… Read more
Of course we all now see the problem with the cartels. But this didn't happen overnight, and it would be a grave error on the part of the U.S. to treat it as we tend to do -- an overnight issue that we solve by moving some border police around, and then move on to the next media hit. In fact, problems South of the Border have been brewing for years, and we have overlooked them for far too long. Think of the issue as a combination of crime and terrorism both within and outside the U.S. For ease of… Read more
Losing and Winning in Afghanistan The Obama Administration has commissioned a full-blown review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Here are some facts and observations on likely outcomes for the United States in that war. First, U.S. policymakers correctly understand that Afghanistan and Pakistan now comprise separate components of a single theater of war, with the Taliban and Islamic extremists operating on both sides of the border. Because of previous U.S. neglect of this theater, Afghan security forces are not as capable as they should be at this stage of the war; on the Pakistani side, the Pakistani army has thus… Read more
It's reassuring to see all these titles and recognize a few -- didn't know Dave Kilcullen had written, I'll have to look it up when it comes out -- but my holiday fare is a little lighter. I've just finished Churchill's The Story of the Makaland Field Force, which is a younger Churchill, but still jolly fun, what? His view of "political officers" is very current. There's a local book called Cruising Captain, by Captain Richard Tawes, from the Eastern Shore, who skippered "coastal" schooners between Baltimore and Cuba in the late 1800s. For a weekend sailor like me, his… Read more
Dates and pace of any U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will still be dictated by events on the ground and Iraqi sensibilities about US troops. Once he is sworn in, President Obama will be no more eager to lose the war than George Bush, and he will use the many loopholes in the status of forces agreement to iinsure that Iraq is not lost onn his watch. That said, he is very fortunate that conditions in Iraq have so dramatically changed for the better since he took his original, and irresponsible, position on withdrawal early in his campaign. When he takes… Read more
I don't think at the Presidential level scenarios matter all that much. But the two most urgent problems for him to work on assuming office will be: 1. India-Pakistan-Afghanistan, especially India-Pak. Clearly, the nexus of terrorism has moved away from the Middle East, following its defeat in Iraq, and to the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan is a weak state with weak and rogue security services and a deeply embedded Pashtun population. The U.S. is going to have to exert all its influence to keep the Indian-Pak relationship peaceful, and to help the Paks stabilize their government and refocus their security services,… Read more
Biography provided by participant
