Col. Mark Mykleby was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps following his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 1987. From January 1991 to May 2006, he served in five fleet fighter squadrons and performed numerous operational squadron billets to include Director of Safety and Standardization, Pilot Training Officer, Aircraft Maintenance Officer, Operations Officer, Executive Officer, and Commanding Officer. In June 2007, Mark was assigned to the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) where he developed strategy for Special Operations Forces. From July 2009 until April 2011, he served as a special strategic assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that capacity, he co-authored with Navy Captain Wayne Porter A National Strategic Narrative, a concept and vision for a 21st Century grand strategy for the nation. Mark retired from the Marine Corps in July 2011. Mark is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation where he continues his work on grand strategy and sustainability.

He, along with Capt. Wayne Porter as strategic advisers to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, authored the groundbreaking article “A National Strategic Narrative”, which proposes that the United States must refocus its foreign policy priorities and invest less in overt militarization and more in education, development aid, and sustainability infrastructure. In the article (written under the pseudonym “Mr. Y” in reference to the well-known “X” article written by George Kennan in 1947 that argued for a policy of containment of the Soviet Union), Porter and Mykleby argue that the U.S. must move beyond “a strategy of containment to a strategy of sustainment…and recognize that security means more than defense, and sustaining security requires adaptation and evolution.”