COL Chicky is a Eurasian Foreign Area Officer who served in the Abkhazia region of Georgia as the Senior U.S. Military Observer (1995-1996) seconded to the UN Military Observer Mission. Assigned to the On-Site Inspection Agency-Europe and later to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, On-Site Europe, he led conventional forces arms control inspections (1998-2001) throughout the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. During this period, COL Chicky represented the U.S. in an OSCE military fact finding mission that observed Russian military operations in Chechnya and Dagestan during the Second Chechen War. From 2004 to 2005, he served as the OSD-Policy Country Director for Georgia where he led DOD’s efforts in the creation and execution of the Sustainment and Stability Operations Program (SSOP), which trained and equipped a Georgian infantry brigade for subsequent battalion-sized deployments to Iraq. COL Chicky served in USCENTCOM J5 from 2001-2003 as political-military and security assistance staff officer for Uzbekistan where he was responsible for CENTCOM’s efforts in establishing and sustaining the U.S. presence at a forward operating base in Uzbekistan for Operation ENDURING FREEDOM.
COL Chicky was commissioned as a Military Intelligence officer in 1983 and served in tactical intelligence command and staff assignments in Germany (1983-1986, 1995-1997), Panama (1987-1990) and Bosnia (1996-1997). He is a 2004 graduate from the U.S. Army War College, a 2001 graduate from the Joint Forces Staff College, and a 1998 graduate with distinction from the College of Naval Command and Staff, U.S. Naval War College. He holds an M.A. from the University of Kansas in Soviet and East European Studies, an M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, and a Masters in Strategic Studies from the Army War College. COL Chicky is also a graduate of resident programs with the Gornii Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Moscow State University. He holds a certificate in National Security Policy from the Army War College’s National Security Policy Program.
Since joining the faculty, Colonel Chicky has spoken to audiences at American University's School of International Service, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, the Jamestown Foundation, the Foreign Service Institute, NDU and George Washington University on military and security matters in Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Johns Hopkins' Central Asia and Caucasus Institute and Sweden's Institute for Security and Development Policy jointly published one of his lectures, "The Russian-Georgian War: Political and Military Implications for U.S. Policy," in February 2009. He is a contributor to a variety of regional media outlets -the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Eurasianet, Azerbaijan Press Agency, News.az, Janes Defense Weekly-and think tanks on political-military affairs in the Caucasus and Central Asia.