Robert F. Byrnes
Russian and East European Institute

REEI alumnus Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Robert A. McVey Jr. will be in residence at REEI in 2021-22 as its Strategic Russian and East European US Army War College (USAWC) Fellow. The Hamilton Lugar School is one of a select number of institutions with the privilege to host fellows from the US Army War College Program, which helps Army leaders sharpen their skills and broaden their outlook as strategic thinkers. LTC McVey is the third USAWC Fellow that HLS has hosted since 2019-20. He comes to us from Vilnius, Lithuania, where he served as the Senior Defense Official/Defense Attaché at the US Embassy. LTC McVey holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Loyola University in Chicago, a Master of Science in Logistics Management from the Florida Institute of Technology and a Master of Arts in Russian and East European Studies from REEI (2011). His formal military education includes the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Combined Logistics Officer Captain Career Course, Russian Basic Course - Defense Language Institute, Command and General Staff College, Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management, Joint Forces Staff College, and the Joint Military Attaché School. He has served at a wide variety of locations here in the United States and abroad including Fort Wainwright, Alaska; Monterey, California; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Riga, Latvia; Kiev, Ukraine; and Washington DC. In addition to auditing four Russian and East European focused courses per semester LTC McVey will be researching and writing about the Russian Federation’s strategic interests in the Arctic to fulfill his USAWC academic requirements. Welcome back to Bloomington, Robert!