Colonel, US Army (Retired)

Colonel Mensch is the Africa Program Manager for The Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR). He has conducted more than seventy civil-military relations seminars in thirty African countries in the past 11 years. He was commissioned in the United States Army in 1969 and after serving in the Vietnam War, became a foreign affairs specialist. He lived and worked in Africa and the Middle East for fifteen years, as a Foreign Area Officer (FAO) for Africa and the Arab World. During that time, he worked as Defense and/or Army Attache in Chad, Namibia, Tunisia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho. Colonel Mensch served temporarily in Ethiopia just prior to the bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi and was dispatched from Ethiopia to assist the embassy staff in Kenya. Colonel Mensch retired from the Army in May 1999. He joined CCMR in January 2000.

Colonel Mensch has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and a Master’s Degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Middle Eastern Studies. He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College, The Army War College, The Foreign Service Institute (Arabic), and the Defense Language Institute (Arabic and French). His functional expertise includes multinational operations, civil-military relations, policy development, international liaison, negotiations, political affairs, and crisis management. He is a member of the United States Defense Attache Hall of Fame.