He held the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and was a national security analyst on a number of global conflicts.

He was a Professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown University and fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.

The report analyzes the views and reactions of Arabs, but emphasized that Hamas has not provided more than "minimal details on the fighting, other than ideological and propaganda statements".

He believed the military used "decisive force" against legitimate targets, and that the killing of civilians (including women, children, and the elderly), along with other human rights abuses, was justified by Israel's strategic, economic, and political gains.

[11][12] According to an article in National Business Review, Cordesman was said to have been only "48 per cent" convinced on the need to invade Iraq in 2003, but contended that "concerns over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were valid".

He considered the then current "chaos" in Iraq as the result of "pre-existing fractures in the country's social makeup", and a "tribal, clan-based society" and not due to a foreign invasion that destroyed the preexisting order.

He concludes with the opinion that "Any realistic resolution to the Iranian nuclear program will require an approach that encompasses Military, Economic, Political interests and differences of the West vs Iran.