, USA (Ret)

Ralph Peters is a writer, strategist, commentator and retired military officer.  He is the author of 19 books and several hundred columns, articles and essays.  Uniformed service, personal interests and research have taken him to 60 countries.  He served in the U.S. Army for 22 years, first as an enlisted man, then as an officer.  He retired shortly after his promotion to lieutenant-colonel to write with greater freedom.

     As a soldier, Ralph Peters served in Infantry and Military Intelligence units before becoming a Foreign Area Officer specializing in Russia and surrounding states.  Special assignments took him to Southeast and Central Asia, to the Caucasus, to the Kremlin, to the Andean Ridge and to the southwest border of the United States.  He has traveled extensively in the Muslim world, as well as studying India, southern Africa and Indonesia.  In addition to assignments to the Pentagon and the Executive Office of the President, he served and lived in Europe for a total of ten years.  Recent travels have taken him to Iraq and back to Africa.

     Ralph Peters has published three books on strategy and military affairs, Beyond Baghdad, Beyond Terror and Fighting for the Future, each of which collected his previously-published essays and articles.  He is presently at work on a new book on strategy that argues for a dramatic realignment of our nation’s engagements abroad—as well as for extensive military and diplomatic reforms.

     Also a novelist, under his own name and as Owen Parry, he has written a number of bestsellers and prize-winning historical novels.  His commentaries and essays have appeared in The New York Post, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Newsweek, Harpers, Parameters, Strategic Review, Maclean’s and a wide range of other domestic and foreign publications.  He has appeared on every major American television and cable-news network, as well as on numerous national and regional radio programs.

      Peters firmly believes that only first-hand experience of the world beyond our shores allows us to make intelligent judgments about issues of war and peace.