Walter and Leonore Annenberg Professor of International Communication – Institute of World Politics, Washington D.C.
J. Michael Waller holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair in International Communication, and directs the Institute’s graduate programs on public diplomacy and political warfare.
He has been a scholar-practitioner in public diplomacy, political warfare, psychological operations and information operations in support of US foreign and military policy for 25 years. He was a member of the staff of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, served on the White House Task Force on Central America, was an operator for members of the White House Active Measures Working Group, and has been a consultant to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the US Information Agency, the US Agency for International Development, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the US Army. In 2006 he received a citation from the Director of the FBI for “exceptional service in the public interest.”
Professor Waller is Vice President for Information Operations of the Center for Security Policy, and a member of the Center’s Team B II on the shariah threat doctrine. In that capacity he was acontributing author to Team B II’s landmark 2010 book, Shariah: The Threat to America: An Exercise in Competitive Analysis. He is a frequent lecturer and instructor in psychological and information operations for the US military and the intelligence community.
He is a member of the faculty of the Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) program at the Naval Postgraduate School; and is an Honorary Fellow at the Proteus Futures Group at the Center for Strategic Leadership of the US Army War College, sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence University. In 2010 he was named a member of the Psychological Operations Capabilities-Based Assessment team for the US Special Operations Command.
Professor Waller is a Senior Analyst for Wikistrat.com, a crowdsourcing geopolitical analysis firm; and a member of the International Advisory Forum of the Niccolo Machiavelli Institute in Rome, Italy.
Dr. Waller has written for Insight, the Los Angeles Times, Reader’s Digest, USA Today, theWashington Times and the Wall Street Journal. He is an occasional commentator on the BBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
He was a founding editor of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, published in cooperation with the American University and Moscow State University. He founded and edited Serviam, a magazine for and about private sector global stability solutions, published between 2007 and 2009. His blog is PoliticalWarfare.org. In July 2010 he became an original contributing editor for BigPeace.com.
Books:
– The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the North American Front of El Salvador’s Guerrilla War(University Press of America, 1991), author.
– Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today (Westview Press, 1994), author.
– The Rule Of Law And Economic Reform In Russia (John M Olin Critical Issues Series) (Westview Press, 1997), contributor; edited by Jeffrey Sachs and Katharina Pistor.
– Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), co-editor with Ilan Berman.
– Counterintelligence: Reform for a Critical National Capability (McCormick-Tribune Foundation, 2005/IWP Press, 2009), co-editor with John Lenczowski.
– Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War (Institute of World Politics Press, 2007), author.
– The Public Diplomacy Reader (Institute of World Politics Press, 2007), editor.
– Strategic Influence: Propaganda, Counterpropaganda and Political – Warfare (Institute of World Politics Press, 2009), editor.
– Founding Political Warfare Documents of the United States (Crossbow Books, 2010), editor.
– Shariah: The Threat To America: An Exercise In Competitive Analysis (Report of Team B II)(Center for Security Policy, 2010), contributor. An Amazon.com bestseller.
