Guermantes Lailari

Guermantes Lailari is a retired USAF Foreign Area Officer specializing in the Middle East and Europe as well as counterterrorism, irregular warfare, and missile defense. He has studied, worked, and served in the Middle East and North Africa for over 14 years and similarly in Europe for six years. He has also worked and traveled in Asia.  He was a US Air Force Attaché in the Middle East, served in Iraq and holds advanced degrees in International Relations and Strategic Intelligence.  After retiring from the USAF, he worked as a contractor in variety of positions including for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD-SOLIC) Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) and managed a US forward based missile defense radar in the Middle East.  He researches authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that threaten the US, including examining strategies and policies to understand and respond to China, Russia, and Iran.

He was selected as a JPC Fellow in 2021. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs selected him as a Taiwan Fellow in 2022. In 2023, he was a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University and Taiwan’s National Defense University in 2023, and is a visiting researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in 2024.