Andrew Krepinevich
Andrew Francis Krepinevich Jr. is a defense policy analyst who is a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Army service
Born in New York State, Krepinevich graduated from West Point with a B.S. degree in 1972. He then spent 21 years as an officer in the U.S. Army, serving on the personal staff of three Defense Secretaries and in the Office of Net Assessment, retiring in the rank of lieutenant colonel. While in the army, Krepinevich received an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School in 1980 and then earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1984 while teaching social sciences at the U.S. Military Academy. His doctoral thesis was entitled The Army concept and Vietnam: a case study in organizational failure. He then published an influential book, The Army and Vietnam, in 1986 in which he argued that the United States could have won the Vietnam War had the Army adopted a small-unit pacification strategy in South Vietnam's villages, rather than conducting search and destroy operations in remote jungles. While working for the Office of Net Assessment in 1992, Krepinevich authored "The Military-Technical Revolution: A Preliminary Assessment," an influential document in the development of thinking about the "Revolution in Military Affairs."Civilian career
Following his retirement from the army, Krepinevich assumed his current position as director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-profit think tank focused on defense and national security issues. While at CSBA he has served on the National Defense Panel and Defense Policy Board, and advised senior military and civilian policymakers. In 2005, he published an influential Foreign Affairs article on . Informed by Krepinevich's previous research on Vietnam, the article called for the adoption of a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy much like the approach implemented during the "Surge" of U.S. forces two years later. In 2009 he published 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century, which presents seven hypothetical scenarios that would severely challenge the U.S. military. His recent work has frequently addressed the challenges posed by the modernization of China's military forces, Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the proliferation of precision-guided munitions.Krepinivich has also served as an adjunct professor at George Mason University, the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University.
Most recently, Krepinevich co-authored, with his CSBA colleague Barry Watts, The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy. Both authors had previously worked for Andrew Marshall at the Office of Net Assessment.
Krepinevich's pending departure from CSBA was announced following a July 2015 meeting by the think tank's board of directors. In March 2016, he became a senior distinguished fellow at CSBA.
In 2023, Krepinevich published The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers, in which he describes the ongoing military revolution unfolding around the reconnaissance-strike complex and precision warfare paradigm. He then uses four case studies of disruptive military innovation - the fundamental reform of the Royal Navy by Jackie Fisher, the re-emergence of maneuver warfare via Blitzkrieg tactics, the displacement of the line of battle and its focus on battleships by aircraft carrier operations pioneered by the U.S. Navy, and the transition from mass tactical bombing to precision bombing developed within the United States Air Force - to illustrate its impact on military history and how it may be sustained in the early 21st century.