David Kilcullen

His thesis, entitled "The Political Consequences of Military Operations in Indonesia 1945-99: A Fieldwork Analysis of the Political Power-Diffusion Effects of Guerrilla Conflict," focused on the effects of guerrilla warfare on non-state political systems in traditional societies.

He drew on ethnographic methods to research traditional systems of governance in East Timor and West Papua.

His research centered on investigating power diffusion in Indonesia during the Darul Islam Era of 1948 to 1962 and the Indonesian Occupation of East Timor of 1974 to 1999.

Kilcullen argues that counter-insurgency operations, whether successful or not, cause the diffusion of political power from central to local leaders and that populations are the major actors in insurgency and counter-insurgency dynamics.

Kilcullen was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Australian Army and served in a number of operational, strategic, command, and staff positions in the Royal Australian Infantry Corps and Australian Defence Force.

He served in several counter-insurgency and peacekeeping operations in East Timor, Bougainville, and the Middle East.

Kilcullen attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Australian Army and served as a staff officer in the Australian Defence Force Headquarters.

David John Kilcullen FRGS (born 1967) is an Australian author, strategist, and counterinsurgency expert who is currently the non-executive chairman of Caerus Associates, a strategy and design consulting firm that he founded.

He is a professor at Arizona State University and at University of New South Wales, Canberra.

Kilcullen graduated from St Pius X College in 1984.

He then attended the Australian Defence Force Academy and completed a Bachelor of Arts with honours in military art and science through the University of New South Wales and graduated as a distinguished graduate and was awarded the Chief of Defence Force Army Prize in 1989.

He took his army officer training at the Royal Military College, Duntroon.

After twelve months of training in Indonesia, Kilcullen graduated from the Australian Defence Force School of Languages in 1993 with an advanced diploma in applied linguistics.

He is fluent in Indonesian and speaks some Arabic and French.

Kilcullen received a Ph.D. in politics from the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy in 2000.

In 2004, he became a senior analyst in the Australian Office of National Assessments, where he served on the writing team for the Australian Government's 2004 Terrorism White Paper, "Transnational Terrorism: The Threat to Australia."

Kilcullen was seconded to the United States Department of Defense in 2004, where he wrote the counter-terrorism strategy for the Quadrennial Defense Review that appeared in 2006.

From 2005 to 2006, he was chief strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department.

He left active duty in 2005 and is commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Australian Army Reserve.

After going to reserve status in the Australian Army, Kilcullen worked for the United States Department of State in 2005 and 2006, serving as the Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

He worked in the field in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.

He helped design and implement the Regional Strategic Initiative.

Kilcullen helped write the United States Army's Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, published in December 2006.

He also wrote an appendix, entitled "A Guide to Action."

Kilcullen was a senior counter-insurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in 2007 and 2008, where he helped design and monitor the Iraq War troop surge.

He was then a special advisor for counter-insurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Kilcullen has been a senior fellow of the Center for a New American Security and an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Highly critical of the decision to invade Iraq, he is on record as saying "There undeniably would be no ISIS if we had not invaded Iraq."

Kilcullen has written six books: The Accidental Guerrilla, Counterinsurgency, Out of the Mountains, Blood Year, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West and The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan.

In early 2007, Kilcullen became a member of a small group of civilian and military experts, including Colonel H. R. McMaster, who worked on the personal staff of General David Petraeus, the Commander of the Multi-National Force – Iraq.

He was the principal architect of the Joint Campaign Plan which guided the Iraq War 2007 Troop Surge.

He has also served as the Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007 and 2008.

There, Kilcullen served as the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor until 2008 and was responsible for planning and executing counterinsurgency strategy and operations.

Kilcullen was a member of the White House 2008 Review of Afghanistan and Pakistan Strategy.

From 2009 to 2010, he was the counterinsurgency adviser to NATO and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Kilcullen has also been an adviser to the British Government, the Australian Government, and to several private sector institutions and companies.

He was a senior fellow and a member of the advisory board of the Center for a New American Security.

He was a partner at the Crumpton Group, but left "over a matter of principle."

He has also been an adjunct professor of Security Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Kilcullen founded Caerus Associates, LLC in 2010.