Lieutenant Colonel Robert W. Schaefer is a highly decorated U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) and Eurasian Foreign Area Officer. For over twenty five years he has served in a variety of special units and participated in virtually every U.S. overseas operation since 1990. He is uniquely qualified to explain this complex conflict due to his extensive experience in counterinsurgency and counter-terrorist operations around the world and his firsthand knowledge and participation in the Caucasus conflict. He has trained or served with elite forces in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Georgia, and Latvia among numerous others; he is one of the very few foreign officers to have worked on a Russian Airborne Brigade staff, where he planned operations and led Russian troops in active counter terrorism and peacekeeping operations. LTC Schaefer was the recipient of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Award of Excellence in 2001, obtained his Masters Degree in Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian studies from Harvard in 2005, was a Caucasus Region consultant for the PBS news program "World Focus," and the host of National Public Radio's Memorial Day Special (2007-2011).