Richard K. 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 (SIPA). He was for many years Director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and Director of the International Security Policy program in SIPA, as well as Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations for four years where he is now an adjunct Senior Fellow. Previously he was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and adjunct Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He also served at different times on the Harvard University faculty as Lecturer and Visiting Professor. Betts invented the Summer Workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS) in 1997 and has directed or co-directed it since. He received his B.A. (1969 mcl), M.A. (1971), and Ph.D. (1975) in Government from Harvard.

A former staff member of the original Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (the Church Committee), the National Security Council, and the Mondale Presidential Campaign, Betts has been an occasional consultant to the National Intelligence Council and Departments of State and Defense, served on the National Security Advisory Panel for three Directors of Central Intelligence in the 1990s and later on the External Advisory Board for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was a Commissioner of the National Commission on Terrorism (the Bremer Commission). He served briefly as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and has lectured occasionally at schools such as the National War College, Foreign Service Institute, and service academies.

Betts’ first book, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, originally published by Harvard University Press (1977), was issued in an updated second edition by Columbia University Press (1991).  He is author of two other Columbia University Press books: Enemies of Intelligence (2007) and American Force (2012); three books published by the Brookings Institution: Surprise Attack (1982), Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (1987), and Military Readiness (1995); coauthor and editor of three other Brookings books: The Irony of Vietnam (1979), Nonproliferation and U.S. Foreign Policy (1980), and Cruise Missiles (1981); editor of Conflict After the Cold War, published by Routledge (seven editions, 1993–2023); and coeditor of Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence (2003), from Cass.  Betts has published numerous articles on foreign policy, military strategy, intelligence, conventional forces, nuclear weapons, arms trade, collective security, strategic issues in Asia and Europe, terrorism, and other subjects in professional journals. His writings won five prizes, and he received the International Studies Association’s ISSS Distinguished Scholar Award in 2005, MIT’s Doolittle Award in 2012, and Notre Dame’s NDISC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024.

Betts is married to Adela M. Bolet, has three children and a grandson, and lives in Teaneck, New Jersey.

Updated October 4, 2024