Kori N. Schake (born 1962) is an American international relations scholar currently serving as Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high-level positions in the U.S. Defense and State Departments and on the National Security Council. She was a foreign policy adviser to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. Schake is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She serves on the board of advisors of Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Alexander Hamilton Society. Schake is a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.

Education

Schake obtained her PhD in government from the University of Maryland, where she was a student of Thomas Schelling and Catherine Kelleher. She holds both MA and MPA degrees in from the School of Public Affairs. She did her undergraduate studies at Stanford University, where she studied under Condoleezza Rice.

Career

Pentagon

Schake's first government job was with U.S. Department of Defense as a NATO Desk Officer in the Joint Staff's Strategic Plans and Policy Division (J-5), where from 1990 to 1994 she worked military issues of German unification, NATO after the Cold War, and alliance expansion. She also spent 2 years (1994–1996) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as the special assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Strategy and Requirements.

National Security Council

During President George W. Bush's first term, she was the director for Defense Strategy and Requirements on the National Security Council. She was responsible for interagency coordination for long-term defense planning and coalition maintenance issues. Projects she contributed to include conceptualizing and budgeting for continued transformation of defense practices, the most significant realignment of U.S. military forces and bases around the world since 1950, creating NATO's Allied Command Transformation and the NATO Response Force, and recruiting and retaining coalition partners for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

State Department

Schake was the deputy director for Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department from December 2007 to May 2008. Her responsibilities included staff management as well as resourcing and organizational effectiveness issues, including a study of State Department reforms that enable integrated political, economic, and military strategies.

Academia

She has held the Distinguished Chair of International Security Studies at West Point, and also served in the faculties of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, and the National Defense University. She was previously a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She blogs regularly for Shadow Government on Foreign Policy and is on the editorial board of Orbis and the board of Centre for European Reform. She is also commonly featured on the Deep State Radio podcast. Schake advises Spirit of America, a 501(c)(3) organization that supports US troops.

Trans Atlantic Task Force

Since 2019, Schake has also been serving on the Transatlantic Task Force of the German Marshall Fund and the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung (BKHS), co-chaired by Karen Donfried and Wolfgang Ischinger.

McCain-Palin campaign

Schake left the State Department in order to serve as a senior policy advisor to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign, where she was responsible for policy development and outreach in the areas of foreign and defense policy. Earlier in the campaign, she had been an adviser to Rudy Giuliani. In 2020, Kori endorsed Joe Biden for president following Rudy Giuliani joining President Donald Trump's legal team in 2018. On February 12, 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin appointed Schake as one of four Departmental representatives to the Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America. In 2020, Schake, along with over 130 other former Republican national security officials, signed a statement that asserted that President Trump was unfit to serve another term, and "To that end, we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him."

Personal life

Schake was raised in a small town in Sonoma County, California, by her parents Cecelia and Wayne, a former Pan Am pilot. Kori has a brother and sister. Kristina Schake, her 8-year-younger sister, has also worked in the White House, and played key roles in Democratic presidential campaigns, working with Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. Kori is a Republican. Despite their political differences, they remain very close.

Publications

Books

Articles

Reports