Colonel Michael J. Meese is a Professor, USMA, and Head of the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. He teaches economics and national security courses and leads the 70 military and civilian faculty members in the Department and the Combating Terrorism Center who teach political science, economics, and terrorism-related courses. He is a visiting Professor at Princeton University and taught a graduate course in military force planning and decision-making. From June to September 2007, he worked as a senior advisor to the Commander of Multinational Force-Iraq as the Chief of his Initiatives Group to assist in General Petraeus's assessment, recommendations, and testimony concerning Iraq. From January-March 2007, he assisted with the development of Iraq campaign plan, concentrating on economic and political issues. From 2003-2004, he was assigned as the United States Military Academy Fellow at the National War College where he taught National Strategy, Military Policy, and Bureaucratic Politics courses. In 2003, he deployed as special advisor on political, economic, and military issues for MG Dave Petraeus, Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), in Mosul, Iraq. From January to July 2002 he served as Executive Officer to the Assistant Chief of Staff (Operations) in Bosnia-Herzegovina conducting peacekeeping and counterterrorism operations.

His dissertation is entitled Defense Decision Making under Budget Stringency: Examining Downsizing in the United States Army. His research examines budget decisions during previous military reductions with implications for improving defense effectiveness. In 2005, he was Executive Director of the Secretary of the Army's Transition Team. In 2001, he assisted the Army Science Board Team that examined alternative approaches to Army Headquarters organization. He served as the executive director the Department of Defense Panel on Commercialization (the Dawkins Panel) that examined leveraging commercial capabilities to improve defense efficiency and effectiveness. He has been a visiting lecturer on the U.S. Army's Transition to the All-Volunteer Force at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies. In May 1998, he was part of a two-person team that traveled to South Africa to assess and assist the transformation and integration of the South African National Defense Force. He has participated in four Marshall Center Partnership-for-Peace Conferences as rapporteur and co-author of the final conference proceedings on the subjects of Defense Economics, Extremism, Transformation, and Crime and Corruption. In June 2004, he co-chaired the USMA Senior Conference on "Defense Transformation and the Army Profession."

He is a field artillery officer with previous assignments with the 7th Infantry Division (Light), as a Battery Commander in the 3rd Armored Division in Germany, and as a Battalion Operations Officer and Deputy Division Operations Officer in the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas. He is a graduate of the National War College, an honor graduate of the Command and General Staff College, a distinguished graduate from the U.S. Military Academy, and holds a Ph.D., MPA and an M. A. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

He has written several papers and articles concerning economics and national security and is the author and editor of the Armed Forces Guide to Personal Financial Planning, published by Stackpole in 1998 and the author of American National Security, due to be published in 2009.

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