Ariel Cohen - Benador Associates

Ariel Cohen, L.L.B., Ph.D., is a well-known expert in international energy security and in Russian, Eurasian, European and Middle Eastern foreign and economic policy. Dr. Cohen is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security at the Davis International Studies Institute of the Heritage Foundation. He works closely with Congressmen and Congressional staff members and cabinet- and sub-cabinet level domestic and foreign decision-makers. Dr. Cohen has directed high-level conferences on international energy security including terrorism and energy, global oil and gas supply and demand, geopolitics and ethnic conflict; the rule of law; crime and corruption; and a variety of other issues.

Dr. Cohen has conducted White House briefings and lectured at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Foreign Service Institute of the US Department of State, and regularly participates in CIA/Department of State conferences. He frequently testifies before committees of the US Congress, including House Foreign Relations, House Armed Services, House Judiciary Committees and the Helsinki Commission. He appears on CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, BBC-TV, Al Jazeera, and on most Russian and Ukrainian national TV networks. Dr. Cohen serves as a contributor to Tech Central Station, and has written extensively for National Review Online and UPI. He served as a weekly commentator for The Voice of America Russian Service for eight yers. He has written as a guest columnist for the Washington Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Cohen was a Senior Consultant to Burson Marsteller and to Emerging Market Communications, a strategic communications firm serving billion-dollar corporations. He also served as a Policy Advisor with the National Institute for Public Policy’s Center for Deterrence Analysis in a multi-country, multi-year study commissioned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Dr. Cohen has also consulted for US AID, The World Bank, the Pentagon, the US Senate, Radio Liberty-Radio Free Europe, and a number of private corporations and foundations. He also consults extensively for the non-profit sector, designing interventions and conducting project assessments and evaluations projects in Russia, Georgia, and other countries of Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Dr. Cohen is a member of the Editorial Board of Central Asia and the Caucasus (Stockholm) and is on the Board of Advisors, Institute for Analysis of Global Security (IAGS). His book, Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis, was published by Praeger Publishers/Greenwood (1996 and 1998). His next edited book is Eurasia in Balance: US and the Regional Power Shift (2005, forthcoming, Ashgate). His chapter on Winning the War of Ideas Against Islamist Terrorism is forthcoming in James Carafano, ed., The Strategy for a Long War (The Heritage Foundation, 2005). He is a Member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), the Association for the Study of Nationalities and the American Council on Germany.