Kenneth Lee Adelman (born June 9, 1946) is an American diplomat, political writer, policy analyst and William Shakespeare scholar. Adelman has been a member of the board of directors of the global data collection company RIWI Corp. since June 2016.
Early career
Adelman was born to a Jewish family and graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, majoring in philosophy and religion. He received his master's degree in Foreign Service studies and Doctorate in political theory from Georgetown University.
Adelman began working for the government in 1969 at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and then served in the Office of Economic Opportunity. From 1975 to 1977 during the Gerald Ford administration, Adelman was an Assistant to United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and was later a member of the Defense Policy Board. He has also served as a national editor of Washingtonian magazine for more than 17 years.
He was the deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for two-and-a-half years, working with Jeane Kirkpatrick. He also served as the Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for nearly five years, during the Reagan administration. He was an advisor to President Ronald Reagan during the superpower summits between Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
He took part in the Zaire River Expedition in 1975, travelling down the Congo River on the 100th Anniversary of Henry Morton Stanley's exploration.
In 1981, he was selected to be one of the first Young Leaders of the French-American Foundation.
Later career
Adelman was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board well-known for his involvement in conservative policy efforts dating back to the 1970s when he was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. He strongly supported the war on Iraq and worked for the think tank Project for the New American Century, arguing for new policies to help the United States remain a global leader. Adelman, called "a lifelong neocon activist", worried in 2006 that the incompetence shown in handling the war in Iraq would damage the neoconservative movement; neoconservatism, he said, "is not going to sell" for at least a generation.
Adelman went on to become senior counsel at Edelman Public Relations, where he led several campaigns linked to U.S. trade and intellectual property interests via the organization USA Innovations, an organization he also leads. Using the USA Innovations platform and through other published articles Adelman has attacked the Thai government for violating U.S. pharmaceutical industry HIV/AIDS drug intellectual property patents and other topics linked to Edelman Public Relations clients.
Adelman is also an expert on William Shakespeare and has taught extension school classes at Georgetown University and George Washington University on Shakespeare. He co-wrote with Norman R. Augustine a book on drawing leadership lessons from Shakespeare, called Shakespeare in Charge: The Bard's Guide to Leading and Succeeding on the Business Stage. He is known for invocations of Shakespeare in favor of his political positions, including an NPR analysis of a scene from Othello in support of the invasion of Iraq, and lauding President Bush as King Henry V.
Iraq war
Adelman wrote a pair of editorial columns regarding the Iraq War in the Washington Post in February 2002 and April 2003 entitled, respectively, "Cakewalk In Iraq" and "'Cakewalk' Revisited". In the first he argued that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would be a simple matter to accomplish: "I believe that demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk". In the later editorial, published just a few weeks after the invasion, he claimed his vindication and in particular praised key Bush administration players: "My confidence 14 months ago sprang from having worked for Don Rumsfeld three times—knowing he would fashion a most creative and detailed war plan—and from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz well for many years".
Also notable are Adelman's predictions regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Adelman said that weapons were likely to be near Tikrit and Baghdad, "because they're the most protected places with the best troops. I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction".