Colonel (retired) Liam Collins, PhD is the executive director of the Madison Policy Forum, a senior fellow with New America, and a permanent member with the Council on Foreign Relations. He is co-editor of the recently released Routledge Handbook of U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations and co-author of Understanding Urban Warfare.
From 2016-2018, Collins served as a defense advisor to Ukraine. In that position he met with hundreds of Ukrainian officials to include their president, minister of defense, and chief of defense to help them reform their defense establishment. Within the United States he met with numerous officials including the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense, senior Department of State Officials, and the House Armed Services Committee. He has also conducted field research in Georgia to study the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and to the Baltics to study their attempts to deter Russian aggression. He has authored numerous articles and reports and most recently, he has provided expert commentary for BBC World News, CNN, Fox News, CBC News, Deutsche Welle News TV, BBC Radio, and CBC Radio, among others, to discuss the current war.
Collins served in the U.S. Army for 27 years. As a career Special Forces officer, he conducted multiple operational and combat deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, South America, and the Horn of Africa. Collins retired from the military in 2019 as the founding director of the Modern War Institute and the director of the Department of Military Instruction at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The author of dozens of articles and reports related to terrorism and conflict, Collins’s work has been cited by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security & Counterterrorism, the White House Press Secretary, the New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, ABC News, Fox News, NPR, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering (Aerospace) from the United States Military Academy, and a Master’s in Public Affairs and a PhD from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.