Catherine McArdle Kelleher

Catherine McArdle Kelleher (January 19, 1939 – February 15, 2023) was an American political scientist involved in national and international security policy.

She served both in the White House on the National Security Council staff (under President Jimmy Carter) and at various levels in the Department of Defense.

She spearheaded these efforts as Chair of the Social Science Research Council's prestigious MacArthur Committee on International Peace and Security fellowships.

[8] Kelleher was celebrated for her excellence in scholarship and public service with the Joseph Kruzel[9] and Hubert Humphrey[10] awards from the American Political Science Association.

She was one of the few academics asked in 2010 to join the Carnegie Commission's European American Security Initiative (EASI)[11] and was a member of the much-lauded working group on cooperative solutions to missile defense, which Ambassador Steven Pifer called "the most detailed Track II discussion of NATO-Russia missile defense cooperation" in a report for the Brookings Institution.

[13] Kelleher was the author of more than 70 publications focused principally on European security, with special interests in Germany and Russia beyond the United States.

Lawrence Freedman, writing in Foreign Affairs, wrote that the “impressive group of scholars” contributing to the book move the debate on nuclear disarmament “to a more serious level.”[14] According to American physicist Richard Garwin: "This valuable book extends the important conversation on getting to zero nuclear weapons by asking hard questions about how to accommodate the desires and preferences of the global community while making progress toward that goal.