DR. ALEXANDER VINDMAN, PH.D., a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, was the director for European Affairs on the National Security Council. Before that, he served as the political-military affairs officer for Russia for the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as an attaché at the U.S. embassies in Moscow and Kyiv. While on the joint staff, he authored the National Military Strategy for Russia. He earned a master’s degree from Harvard University, where he served as a Hauser Leader, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins University, where he is a senior fellow. He leads the national security think tank Institute for Informed American Leadership, is the president of the nonprofit Here Right Matters Foundation, an executive board member for the Renew Democracy Initiative, a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation, and a senior advisor to VoteVets. Vindman is the author of the Why It Matters Substack and The New York Times bestselling books Here, Right Matters and The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine (PublicAffairs).