EDITION: U.S.
 
CONNECT    

Heather Hurlburt
GET UPDATES FROM Heather Hurlburt
 
Heather Hurlburt is the Executive Director of the National Security Network, a progressive nonprofit which develops and promotes for experts and non-experts alike national security policies that are both pragmatic and principled. From 2002-2008, Hurlburt ran her own communications and strategy practice, working on global and political issues with political, entertainment, and educational leaders, as well as groups such as DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Stanley Foundation, and many others. Previously, she was deputy director of the Washington office of the International Crisis Group, creating and implementing its Washington outreach around global conflict prevention and crisis recovery. From 1995-2001, Hurlburt served in the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant and Speechwriter to President Clinton, speechwriter for Secretaries of State Albright and Christopher, and member of the State Department's Policy Planning staff. She has also worked for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and she began her career in Washington at the Congressional Helsinki Commission, where she served as a member of the US delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and an adviser to Congress on European human rights, security and conflict resolution issues. In that capacity, she was part of the US negotiating team, observed elections and helped lead human rights seminars in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

She is a Senior Adviser to the U.S. in the World Project of Demos, appears frequently as a commentator in print and new media, and is a regular guest on Robert Wright's Bloggingheads.tv. Hurlburt holds a BA from Brown University and an MA from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs.

Blog Entries by Heather Hurlburt

Pentagon Strategy Review: Why It Matters

1 Comments | Posted January 5, 2012 | 08:52:03 (EST)

A week ago, no visions of Pentagon strategy reviews were dancing in the heads of journalists, pundits or budget wonks. One well-placed New York Times article and one little announcement of a presidential stop-by later, and all eyes that can tear themselves away from the froth of New Hampshire will...

Read Post

GOP Foreign Policy Debate: Dime-Store Neo-cons

18 Comments | Posted November 23, 2011 | 10:43:42 (EST)

Tonight's GOP presidential foreign policy debate hit some new lows for accuracy and some surprising glimpses of nuance -- but lacked completely a larger sense of strategy or vision from the candidates. Major issues were virtually ignored -- China, defense strategy, nuclear weapons, the Arab Spring and Middle East Peace,...

Read Post

Wikileaks: War Is (Misbegotten) Hell

Posted October 22, 2010 | 18:56:46 (EST)

This afternoon's new tranche of Wikileaks seems to add a numbing amount of new, awful detail to what we already knew about the Iraq war. They are a flood on top of a steady, if less headline-grabbing, drip from other sources: Salon's report that an originator of the...

Read Post

Wall Street Journal on Nukes: Ten Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Posted January 5, 2010 | 22:18:36 (EST)

The new START Treaty cutting US and Russian nuclear arsenals, set to be concluded later this month, enjoys broad, bipartisan support from national security experts in the US and from America's friends and allies around the world - but you'd never know that by reading the editorial pages of the...

Read Post

In Fact, We do Have A Counter-Terrorism Strategy -- And Experts Say It's Producing Results

Posted December 30, 2009 | 16:33:44 (EST)

Today John Boehner made the nonsensical claim that the Administration doesn't actually have a strategy for combating terrorism. Since one of the core elements of the Administration's strategy has been to go about the business of blocking violent extremists without giving them the gratification of talking about them in public...

Read Post

Help Jon Kyl Save Us From... Don Rumsfeld?

Posted December 1, 2009 | 14:49:09 (EST)

Before this week was Afghanistan week, jobs summit week, and Tiger Woods week, it was arms control week. On Saturday, the existing 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires. The treaty matters because it limits the US and Russia to fewer than 6,000 strategic (long-range) nuclear warheads and 1,600 missiles and...

Read Post

Note to Assignment Editor: Not Your Dad's National Security Establishment

Posted November 5, 2009 | 11:25:57 (EST)

I'm getting a little exhausted with reading assessments of President Obama and his team's first year that feature ten white men (own it, National Journal), or six male "experts" including the writer, President Obama and John Bolton (that's you, Politico). Foreign Policy "wins" this sorry competition with...

Read Post

Six Reasons to Love the Supplemental and Celebrate Progressives in Government

Posted June 12, 2009 | 12:46:05 (EST)

Usually, there are lots of reasons for progressives not to love supplemental spending bills. And I won't argue that this one is perfect. But before you get too queasy, consider six ways that progressives in Congress and the man at 1600 Pennsylvania turned "more of the same" into "change." Perhaps...

Read Post

100 Days of the Obama Doctrine

Posted April 28, 2009 | 14:19:00 (EST)

At the 100-day mark, the Obama administration has many things on its plate and even more challenges ahead. With policy reviews and staffing incomplete and some choices not yet made, evaluations at this date are at best artificial -- yet the Obama administration has produced a remarkable body of early...

Read Post