Richard Betts

Richard K. Betts is the Leo A. Shifrin Professor of War and Peace Studies Emeritus in the Columbia University political science department and School of International and Public Affairs and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He works on international politics and U.S. national security policy.  For many years he was director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the International Security Policy program at Columbia.  Betts was previously a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins’ Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.  He also served on the staffs of the original U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee (the Church Committee) and the National Security Council, was a Commissioner of the National Commission on Terrorism, and member of advisory panels for the Director of Central Intelligence.  He is author of six books — American Force, Enemies of Intelligence, Military Readiness, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance, Surprise Attack, and Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises — coauthor or editor of four other books, and author of numerous articles on U.S. foreign policy, strategic intelligence, and military affairs.