Eland joins Independent Institute

WASHINGTON, March 5 (UPI) -- The Independent Institute has announced that national security expert Dr. Ivan Eland has joined the Oakland, Calif.-based think tank. Eland will to head the organization's new Center on Peace and Liberty.

"At this moment of looming crisis from a pre-emptive war by the United States in Iraq, we are fortunate to have such a highly regarded authority on domestic security, defense, and foreign policy joining us as senior fellow and director of our new Center," said David J. Theroux, founder and president of the institute.

Theroux said praised Eland's "enormous understanding and scholarship in the related fields of military preparedness, the war on terrorism, alternatives to using military force, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, homeland security and civil liberties, national missile defense, arms reduction, NATO expansion, and U.S. policies toward Iraq, North Korea and other countries."

Eland's widely published commentaries on these topics have appeared in national newspapers and periodicals, and he has provided analysis for both radio and television news programs. Eland has also testified on related issues before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He is also the author of a new book, "Putting 'Defense' Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S. Security in the Post-Cold War World."

Theroux said that II's new Center for Peace and Liberty will "enhance and deepen II's role as an independent, non-partisan voice in the ongoing dialog and debate on public policy." In the polarized world of policy think tanks, where politically biased organizations routinely characterize themselves as nonpartisan, the Independent Institute is almost universally regarded as perhaps the only truly unbiased think tank.

The board of advisors for the Center on Peace and Liberty includes scholars and policy experts such as former Assistant Defense Secretary Lawrence Korb, Bruce Russett of Yale, Harvey Sapolsky of MIT and Monica Toft of Harvard.

Eland has been director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, the principal defense analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, the evaluator-in-charge for the U.S. General Accounting Office in the area of national security and intelligence, and investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.