John M. Shalikashvili

Retired U.S. Army General John M. Shalikashvili is a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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War in Iraq

 * "Gen. John Shalikashvili, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress that the United States should go to war in Iraq only as a last resort."


 * "'We must continue to persuade the other members of the Security Council of the correctness of our position, and we must not be too quick to take no for an answer,'" Gen. Shalikashvili testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee."


 * Source: September 24, 2002, New York Times

Also see Operation Iraqi Freedom: Military and Political Dissent.

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John M. Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw, Poland, on 27 June 1936, the "grandson of a tsarist general and the son of a Polish army officer. Shalikashvili and his mother fled Poland in 1944 and settled in Germany. He immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1952, when he was 16, and settled in Elmwood, IL."

Shalikashvili is a member of the Board of United Defense Industries. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In May 2000, he was elected to the Board of Directors (term expires 2003) at Boeing and selected to serve on the Audit and Finance Committee. He also serves on the boards of Frank Russell Trust Company, L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc., and Plug Power Inc...

General Shalikashvili is a "Visiting Professor with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. During his tenure at Stanford, General Shalikashvili will be a senior adviser to the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project at the Center for International Security and Arms Control, led by William Perry and Ashton Carter.

"General Shalikashvili was appointed the 13th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Defense, by President William Jefferson Clinton and assumed his duties on 25 October 1993. In this capacity, he served as the principal military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. Prior to serving as Chairman, General Shalikashvili served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) and also as the Commander-in-Chief, United States European Command.

"General Shalikashvili holds a bachelor''s degree in mechanical engineering from Bradley University and a master's degree in international affairs from George Washington University. His military education includes completion of the Naval Command and Staff College and the United States Army War College. Upon graduation from Officer Candidate School in 1959, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Artillery. For the next 23 years, he served in a variety of command and staff positions in Alaska, the continental United States, Germany, Italy, Vietnam, and Korea. In 1982, he was selected for promotion to brigadier general and assumed duties as Deputy Director, Strategy, Plans and Policy on the Army Staff.

"In 1984, General Shalikashvili returned to Germany and the 1st Armored Division as an Assistant Division Commander. Two years later, selected for promotion to major general, he returned to the Army Staff as Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans (Joint Affairs) and Director, Strategy Plans and Policy. From June 1987 to August 1989, he served as Commander of the 9th Infantry Division (Motorized), Fort Lewis, Washington.

"Selected for promotion to lieutenant general in August 1989, he returned to Germany and assumed duties as Deputy Commander-in-Chief, United States Army, Europe and Seventh Army. In April of 1991, General Shalikashvili assumed command of Operation PROVIDE COMFORT, the relief operation that returned hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees to Northern Iraq, and in August of 1991, he was called back to Washington, D.C., and became the Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"General Shalikashvili next served as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) and Commander-in-Chief, United States European Command from June 1992 until October 1993 when he returned to Washington to assume his position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In September 1997 General Shalikashvili stepped down as Chairman and retired from the army."

Shalikashvili is Senior Advisor of the Preventive Defense Project, a research collaboration of Stanford University and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Shalikashvili is a member of the Board at The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).


 * Director, Initiative for Global Development