Walter L. Christman, Ph.D
Visiting Fellow

Dr. Walter L. Christman is a Visiting Fellow of the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He resides in Geneva, Switzerland.

A twenty-year career civil servant in the U.S. Department of Defense, Dr. Christman is a pioneer in the global adoption of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to enable regional security cooperation through educational collaboration and communities of practice. He has been the principal architect of seven Secretary of Defense initiatives, three of which were endorsed by a President of the United States. For the past eight years, Dr. Christman has held a diplomatic position in Geneva, Switzerland supporting the global adoption of collaborative networking and distributed learning approaches to international security cooperation. With CTNSP he is a research partner with Dr. Linton Wells, II, who is a Distinguished Research Fellow and serves as the Force Transformation Chair at NDU.

A member of the United States Delegation to the “World Summit on the Information Society” in 2003 and 2005, Dr. Christman provides strategic direction in the development of ICT efforts in collaboration with the United Nations, NATO, and the Partnership for Peace (PfP), and is presently facilitating expanded outreach to the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Middle East regions. He has overseen strategic collaboration and multinational interoperability efforts in support of the Office of the Secretary Defense, the U.S. Joint Forces Command, and the Naval Postgraduate School. He is presently leading an effort in collaboration with Dr. Leonard Ferrari, Provost of the Naval Postgraduate School, to develop a program of cooperation in globalization, stability and security linking leading educational centers in Geneva, Dubai, and Singapore.

Previously, Dr. Christman served for over ten years in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he pioneered a wide variety of non-traditional approaches to enhanced international security. He authored and negotiated several bilateral agreements signed by the Secretary of Defense to facilitate wider international cooperation through information technology and defense education. Dr. Christman was the principal architect of the NATO-PfP Training and Education Enhancement Program endorsed by the NATO Heads of State and Government at the Washington Summit in 1999, as well as the PfP Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes and the PfP Simulation Network. He was awarded the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Service Medal in 1993 for his leadership in establishing the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany.

Dr. Christman began his public service career in 1975 on active duty in the U.S. Army Special Forces. A graduate of the Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, Scuba, and Russian Language Schools, Christman served on an A-Team trained in the employment of man-portable nuclear weapons. He was decorated for heroism for risking his life to save others during a peacetime training mission. Dr. Christman’s first job in civilian life was as a Foreign Affairs Legislative Assistant to Congressman Doug Bereuter, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he participated in Congressional staff assessment visits to Honduras and Nicaragua during the Contra War, and throughout Iraq just prior to the end of the Iran-Iraq war. His civilian career in the Defense Department commenced in 1988 as a Presidential Management Intern in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which also afforded him a developmental assignment as a desk officer in the Inter-American Affairs Bureau of the State Department.

Dr. Christman holds a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University, a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University, and a PhD in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies and the University of Geneva. Professional associations have included the Council on Foreign Relations, Trustee of the Marshall Foundation, and the editorial board of the journal “European Security.” He recently completed a 350-page manuscript for a book entitled: Toward a Global Partnership: Security Cooperation in the Information Age.