Caleb S. Rossiter

Dr. Caleb Rossiter is an anti-imperialist author and activist. He has worked in Washington for 40 years in opposition to U.S. domination of developing countries through military, financial, and covert support for repressive governments. His most recent work of foreign policy non-fiction, "The Turkey and the Eagle: The Struggle for America's Global Role" (2010), is an anti-imperialist history of U.S. foreign policy that includes first-hand accounts of his 30 years, from 1980 to 2010, working in and around Congress trying to end wars in Central America, South Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan. More recently he has begun a series of "Mar'Shae McGurk Thrillers," legal mysteries with anti-imperialist themes, including The Weathermen on Trial (2019) and Arms Deals (2020). From 1984 to 1990 Dr. Rossiter served as deputy director for foreign policy of the bipartisan Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus of the U.S. Congress; from 1992 to 1999 he was founder and director of Demilitarization for Democracy, a research and advocacy center. DFD also promoted the broadening of the professional arms control community to include more people of color. In both positions, he wrote research reports on U.S. military and financial support for repressive regimes and promoted legislation restricting such support, with particular emphasis on El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Rossiter was one of the founders of the "No Arms to Dictators" Code of Conduct movement and the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines. DFD was a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the Nobel Peace Prize. From 2002 to 2016, Dr. Rossiter was a professor at American University in both international affairs and mathematics and statistics, again a member of the congressional staff, and an adviser on military alternatives to landmines, international treaties affecting landmines, and methods to reduce civilian casualties of war, particularly from cluster bombs, to the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. In 2019 and 2020 he served as executive director of the CO2 Coalition of 55 climate scientists and energy economists. Dr. Rossiter earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University in Policy Analysis in 1983, with a focus on quantitative methods and a dissertation on the diplomatic and developmental uses of U.S. foreign aid in Southern Africa during Zimbabwe's war of independence. He is the author of three non-fiction books on foreign policy: Development versus Diplomacy: The Bureaucratic Struggle for Control of U.S. Foreign Aid in Southern Africa, 1973-1981 (1985), and The Chimes of Freedom Flashing: A Personal History of the Vietnam Anti-war Movement and the 1960s (1996), and The Turkey and the Eagle: The Struggle for America's Global Role (2010). Dr. Rossiter has written dozens on reports on foreign and military policy, including: Barriers to Reform: A Profile of El Salvador's Military Leaders (1990); and Fighting Retreat: Military Political Power and Other Barriers to Africa's Democratic Transition (1997); Commander in Chief: Contrasting Presidential Roles in the World Campaigns to Ban Chemical Weapons and Landmines (1999); and Winning in Korea without Landmines (2000). In 1998 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 31st congressional district. Dr. Rossiter can be reached, and read, on www.calebrossiter.com.