Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Karl Eikenberry served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009–2011 and is a decorated retired Lieutenant General with more than 35 years in the U.S. Army. While in uniform, Karl held senior political-military posts in Europe and Asia before serving as Commander of the American-led Coalition forces in Afghanistan. He holds master’s degrees from Stanford and Harvard, as well as an advanced degree in Chinese history from China’s Nanjing University. He was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, taught at Stanford, and lived in Riyadh advising on Saudi Arabia's defense transformation.  Karl serves on numerous boards, including The Asia Foundation and the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.; a faculty member at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing; and a senior advisor to the United States Institute for Peace. His articles and essays on U.S. and international security issues have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere.