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Nicholas Eberstadt, a long-standing participant in hawkish U.S. advocacy groups dating back to the early 1980s, is an Asia scholar and demographer associated with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Eberstadt often writes on economic and demographic issues, including infant mortality, poverty, foreign aid, and health disparities. He also serves, along with John Bolton and Danielle Pletka, as one of AEI's in-house hawks on North Korea, authoring numerous essays in recent years arguing against diplomatic negotiations with Pyongyang.

In 1990, Eberstadt authored an op-ed piece, "The Coming Collapse of North Korea," for which he was criticized because of its prognostications regarding the survivability of the regime in Pyongyang ("The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe," AEI event, April 17, 2007). Eberstadt now argues that the Pyongyang government has managed to sustain itself through financial activity including the drug trade, counterfeiting of U.S. dollars, and even U.S. economic support via Western countries' "engagement policies" ("Toward a Peaceful Resolution with North Korea: Crafting a New International Engagement Framework," AEI event, February 12, 2004).

Eberstadt has also written for the neoconservative Weekly Standard, edited by Fred Barnes and William Kristol, a co-founder of PNAC. In a November 2004 memo addressed to "opinion leaders" and titled, "Toward Regime Change in North Korea," Kristol enthusiastically endorsed key points from a Weekly Standard article penned by Eberstadt. Kristol praised Eberstadt for emphasizing the need to "[m]ake clear that regime change in North Korea and reunification of the Korean peninsula are our ultimate policy goals" (PNAC, November 22, 2004 ).

Although at times critical of regime change strategies for North Korea, Eberstadt disparaged the ongoing six-party diplomatic talks as concessionist and flawed. In an AEI paper published in September 2005, Eberstadt argued that North Korea's signing of a denuclearization policy, under pressure from the five countries' diplomacy, was in fact a front for Pyongyang to continue to develop nuclear weapons under the guise of energy development (see "North Korea Triumphs Again in Diplomacy," AEI Online/On the Issues, September 30, 2005) .

Eberstadt has served on the Executive Committee of the Committee on the Present Danger, a lobbying group originally formed in the 1950s to push the United States to aggressively challenge the Soviet Union. The Committee re-established itself in 2004 to promote hardline policies in the "war on terror." Eberstadt was also a founding member of the anti-communist Committee for the Free World, formed in 1980, and he remained a member until the organization dissolved in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall (see Who's Who).

Eberstadt has signed various PNAC advocacy letters, including a letter dated September 20, 2001 that argued that deposing Saddam Hussein, even if he was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, was key to winning the "war on terror."

In an April 2002 PNAC "Letter to President Bush on Israel, Arafat, and the War on Terrorism," Eberstadt joined the company of various other neoconservatives to thank George W. Bush for his support of Israel and to ask him to "accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."

"Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight," the letter states. "If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors" (PNAC, "Letter to President Bush on Israel, Arafat, and the War on Terrorism").

At the American Enterprise Institute, where he is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, Eberstadt's research on demography has included the assertion that the U.S. birth rate's lead over Europe's can be attributed to the country's " greater optimism, greater patriotism, and stronger religious values" (Washington Post, May 24, 2006).

Eberstadt spoke at an October 2006 AEI event on "Religion and the American Future." The event's description stated, "The meek, it has been said, shall inherit the earth—but increasingly it appears that the future belongs not so much to the meek as to the devout. As fertility rates plummet across the globe, religious believers seem to be uniquely protected against the 21st century's looming demographic implosion" ("Religion and the American Future").

In March 2006, the Bush administration recognized Eberstadt by naming him as a member of the President's Commission on Bioethics. Despite his background in demographics and political economy, Eberstadt has also been described as a " defense expert" by the State Department (Elizabeth Kelleher, "U.S. Military Humanitarian Efforts Planned for 99 Nations," July 16, 2006). He has also been a commissioner on the U.S. Commission for Helping to Enhance the Livelihood of People since 2005.

Eberstadt's books include The End of North Korea (1999), The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (2006), and Europe's Coming Demographic Challenge (2007).

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.