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Sean McFate is a scholar-practioner in the field of international relations with experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of International Security Studies at the National  Defense University, Fort McNair.  There he teaches three courses: military strategy, geopolitics, and political philosophy.  He is also a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington DC, where he researches future trends in warfare.

Previously, Mr. McFate was a foreign policy advisor for the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign and member of its Foreign Policy Expert Group.  He was also a Program Director of national security at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank founded by former senate majority leaders Bob Dole, George Mitchell, Howard Baker, and Tom Daschle.  There he directed the “Stabilizing Fragile States” project, chaired by retired General Jim Jones, the current US National Security Advisor and former NATO Commander.

Mr. McFate also worked in the private sector as an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton consulting on interagency organization and “whole of government” strategy for the federal government.  He was also a Business Advisor for BearingPoint, now Deloitte Consulting, advising on international relations challenges and opportunities for the firm’s emerging markets practice. 

Prior to this, he spent several years living and working in Africa demobilizing and building African armies.  As a Program Manager for DynCorp International, a New York Stock Exchange-listed company that provides unique services for the US government, he was an architect of several innovative US stabilization programs, including: demobilizing and then rebuilding Liberia’s military and Ministry of Defense following its civil war; protecting the President of Burundi from assassination by extremist groups that wished to re-trigger the Rwanda-Burundi genocide of 1994 with his death; legally conducting small arms and equipment transfers to African militaries; and professionalizing the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. Many of these programs now serve as case studies in stabilization operations for the US government, foreign governments, United Nations, and scholars. The International Crisis Group lauded his human rights vetting process he designed for the Liberian military recruits as: “a notable success - the best, several experts said, they had witnessed anywhere in the world” (Africa Report N°148, 13 January 2009, p. 12).

Before working in Africa, Mr. McFate was a policy adviser for Amnesty International USA, advising executive staff on human rights and armed conflict, terrorism, and civil-military relationship issues.  Additionally, he worked closely with a range of non-governmental organizations on related issues.

He also served as a Captain in the US Army, primarily as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division under David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal in the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.  He commanded several units and attended elite training schools, such as Jungle Expert Warfare School in Panama.

Mr. McFate has published in African Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military Review, RUSI Journal, and Review of African Political Economy. He has authored two US Institute of Peace Special Reports, several book chapters in edited volumes on foreign affairs, and was a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence and also War Crimes and Trials: A Historical Encyclopedia. He serves on the editorial board of Millennium: Journal of International Studies and the publications board of National Defense University Press.

Mr. McFate holds double BAs from Brown University, a MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and is finishing his PhD in international relations at the London School of Economics.