Speaker
Details

Colonel Dan Leard has served as an infantry officer in the U. S. Army for over twenty years. Since 2003, he has led every type of infantry formation through extensive combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and he has also served in key staff roles supporting operations in the European and Pacific theaters. In this lecture, he will use a case study from his time as the senior commander of coalition security forces in Northeast Syria under Operation Inherent Resolve to discuss the role of military power in competitive non-conflict arenas while building interagency and intergovernmental teams to manage effective strategies in competitive spaces.
About the Speaker
Colonel Dan Leard is a National Security Fellow at Princeton University. He has served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army since 2003. During this time, he has spent over five years on operational deployment, primarily to combat zones in the Middle East and Central Asia. As a senior officer, he served as the senior commander of coalition security forces in Northeastern Syria, notably during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. COL Leard has also served as a chief operations officer for the U.S. “assure, deter, and reinforce” mission in eastern Europe and spent over six years in Special Operations organizations charged with conducting counterterrorism missions abroad.