Mr. J. Kael Weston

Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism

“MCUF continues to serve a critical function for MCU education and training objectives. In my role, I have focused PME instruction on the importance of healthy State Department – Pentagon relationships, both in DC and abroad, and how diplomacy is done to reinforce U.S. national security. Former Secretary of State George Shultz — a former WWII-era Marine Corps captain — rightly compared diplomacy to gardening: how relationships inside government and between governments takes care, consistency and work. MCUF helps ensure today’s Marines are ready for today’s global challenges — and opportunities.”

Mr. J. Kael Weston

Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism

Mr. Kael Weston represented the U.S. government for over a decade as a State Department official. Across seven consecutive years in Iraq and Afghanistan (2003-2010), he worked closely with frontline U.S. military units, local Iraqi and Afghan leaders, and coalition partners in Fallujah, Baghdad and Sadr City, and Khost and Helmand provinces. He served as the State Department Political Advisor to Marine commanding generals in both wars, including Generals James Conway, John Sattler, Robert Neller, and Larry Nicholson.

While serving previously at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City, he was the U.S. representative on the UN Security Council’s Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee and helped oversee U.S. government sanctions policy on Iraq.

Weston is author of the book, The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan (Knopf/Penguin Random House, 2016), a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Military Times’ Best Book of the Year, and recipient of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal and has been frequently interviewed on NPR about U.S. foreign policy.

Weston is a graduate of the University of Utah (BA), University of Cambridge (MPhil), and did additional PhD coursework at the London School of Economics and was a Fulbright Scholar in the Netherlands.

As the Marine Corps University Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism since 2018, Mr. Weston lectures across the schools, including the Marine Corps War College – MCWAR, the Command and Staff College – CSC, the School of Advanced Warfighting – SAW, and the Expeditionary Warfare School – EWS. Through MCU’s College of Distance Education and Training, he has taught a course focused on the civilian experience in warfare (“Homefronts as Warfronts”) and another course that explores war through film and documentaries. Weston has instructed Marines in Okinawa and Hawaii, 29 Palms, and through ongoing joint PME with retired LtGen Larry Nicholson. In a related capacity as the MCUF Adamson Chair, he advises and mentors Marines (active duty and reserve) regarding their various writing