Zalmay Khalilzad

Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad (ځلمی خلیل زاد, ; born March 22, 1951) is an American diplomat and foreign policy expert.

From 1979 to 1989, Khalilzad worked as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

During that time, he worked closely with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter administration's architect of Operation Cyclone to support the Afghan mujahideen, who resisted the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

In 1984, Khalilzad accepted a one-year Council on Foreign Relations fellowship to join the US State Department, where he was an adviser to the Near East and South Asia Bureau, headed by Richard W. Murphy.

From 1985 to 1989, Khalilzad served in the Reagan administration, as a senior State Department official, advising on the Soviet–Afghan War, after the Soviet invasion.

During that time, he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff and the State Department's Special Adviser on Afghanistan to Undersecretary of State Michael H. Armacost.

In that role, he developed and guided the international program to promote the merits of a mujahideen-led Afghanistan ousting the Soviet occupation.

From 1990 to 1992, Khalilzad served under President George H. W. Bush in the US Defense Department, as Deputy Undersecretary for Policy Planning.

Khalilzad also wrote several articles on the subject of the value of U.S. global leadership in the mid-1990s.

The specific scenarios for conflict that he envisioned if a decline in American power occurred have made his writings extremely popular in competitive high school and college policy debate, particularly his writing that links the loss of US hegemony to global instability.

Between 1993 and 2000, Khalilzad was the director of the Strategy, Doctrine, and Force Structure at the RAND Corporation.

During that time, he helped found RAND's Center for Middle Eastern Studies as well as "Strategic Appraisal," a RAND periodical.

He also authored several influential monographs, including "The United States and a Rising China" and "From Containment to Global Leadership? America and the World After the Cold War."

At RAND, he also had a brief stint in consulting for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which was conducting a risk analysis for Unocal, now part of Chevron, for a proposed 1400 km (890 mi), $2-billion, 622 m³/s (22,000 ft³/s) Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project, which would have extended from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan and then proceeded to Pakistan.

In 1995, Khalilzad articulated his views regarding the appropriate role of the United States in the Post-Cold War period: "'The United States should be willing to use force if necessary for this purpose. There are currently two regions whose control by a hostile power could pose a global challenge: East Asia and Europe. The Persian Gulf is critically important for a different reason—its oil resources are vital for the world economy. In the long term, the relative importance of various regions can change. A region that is critical to American interests now might become less important, while some other region might gain in importance.'"Regarding U.S. military preeminence, Khalilzad argued in favor of maintaining a sufficiently strong military to be able to embark in "two major regional contingencies nearly simultaneously": "'For the foreseeable future, this means having the capability for fighting two major regional contingencies nearly simultaneously, e.g., Korea and the Gulf.

The United States should also acquire increased capabilities for occasional intervention in lesser regional conflicts, such as humanitarian relief operations, and for countering weapons of mass destruction and ballistic and cruise missiles.

Khalilzad was a signatory of the letter from members of the Project for the New American Century to President Bill Clinton sent on January 26, 1998.

It called for Clinton's help in "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power" by using "a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts."

Prior to this, Khalilzad served in the Bush administration as Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005 and Ambassador to Iraq from 2005 to 2007.

Raised in the Afghan capital of Kabul, Khalilzad came to the United States as a high school exchange student, and later received his doctorate at the University of Chicago.

During the Reagan Administration, Khalilzad served in the Department of State, where he advised on the U.S. response to the Soviet–Afghan War.

Khalilzad later served as a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and as president of Gryphon Partners and Khalilzad Associates, an international business consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

Khalilzad has sometimes been characterized as a neoconservative, with one profile in The Guardian in 2006 characterizing him as "combin[ing] the commitment of an American neocon with the cultural sensitivity of his Islamic background".

At times, Khalilzad has embraced the label, authoring an article titled "The Neoconservative Case for Negotiating With Iran" in Politico magazine in 2006.

Khailzad was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, serving in the role from 2007 to 2009.

Khalilzad was the highest ranking Muslim-American in government at the time he left the position.

Khalilzad was rumored to be a potential candidate in the 2014 Afghan presidential election, but ultimately declined to run.

Khalilzad has been described as a "lifelong Republican", though he did not support Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

In 2017, he was considered for Secretary of State by President Donald Trump.

Khalilzad was U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation from September 2018 to October 2021.

Khalilzad was appointed by Trump to serve as Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation on September 5, 2018, remaining in the position under President Joe Biden until October 18, 2021.

In this position, Khalilzad helped broker the US–Taliban deal and facilitating the final United States withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Khalilzad was born in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, and grew up in the country's capital, Kabul.

He is an ethnic Pashtun from the Noorzai tribe.

Khalilzad began his education at the public Ghazi Lycée school in Kabul.

He first spent time in the United States as a high school exchange student with AFS Intercultural Programs in Ceres, California.

Later, he attained his bachelor's and his master's degrees from the American University of Beirut, in Lebanon.

Khalilzad received his doctorate at the University of Chicago where he studied closely with Albert Wohlstetter, a prominent nuclear deterrence thinker and strategist.

Wohlstetter provided Khalilzad with contacts within the government and RAND.

Khalilzad has contributed at least 28 papers to RAND Corporation.