Desch served two terms as chair of the Department of Political Science. He was also the founding director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs and the first holder of the Robert M. Gates chair in intelligence and national security decision-making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University from 2004 through 2008. From 1993 through 1998, he was assistant director and senior research associate at the Olin Institute. He spent two years (1988–1990) as a John M. Olin post-doctoral fellow in national security at Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, among other positions.
Desch received his BA (with honors) in Political Science (1982) from Marquette University and his AM in International Relations (1984) and PhD in Political Science (1988) from the University of Chicago. He is the author of When the Third World Matters: Latin America and U.S. Grand Strategy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), and Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); co-author of Privileged and Confidential: The Secret History of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012); co- editor of From Pirates to Drug Lords: The Post-Cold War Caribbean Security Environment (Albany: State University Press, 1998), and editor of Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016) and Soldiers in Cities: Military Operations on Urban Terrain (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2001).
Desch has published numerous scholarly and broader interest articles. He has worked on the staff of a U.S. Senator, in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State, and in the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service.
