Atlantic Council

Biography

Harald Kujat

General Kujat is a member of the Strategic Advisors Group.

As early as 1977, Mr. Kujat was assigned by Minister of Defense George Leber to the Northern Air Support Command in Münster as a member of his staff, and a year later became a consultant in the operational headquarters of the Armed Forces. In 1980, then Chancellor Helmut Schmidt called on Kujat’s security policy expertise as a consultant at the Federal Chancellery. There he remained, despite the change of Government, for 5 years until he was assigned as Commander of the II Battalion of the Air Force training regiment in Appen. In 1988, he completed a course at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Later promoted to Colonel, Kujat moved on to become Department Head of "German Military Representative" in the Military Committee of NATO, but returned two years later to the Defense Ministry.

Kujat changed jobs between Bonn and Berlin three more times. In 1992, Kujat again made his way to Brussels, where he became Chief of Staff and Deputy of the German military representative in the NATO Military Committee. In 1995, Volker Rühe appointed him to Staff Department Head III (military policy) in the Command Staff of the Armed Forces. At the end of the same year, the former NATO Supreme Commander General Joulwan seated Mr. Kujat on the newly created post of Director for the Coordination of IFOR Forces in Bosnia to protect the military implementation of the Dayton agreement. At the same time, he was Deputy Director of the International Military Staff (Planning and Policy) at the NATO Military Committee.

In 1998, Kujat became Head of Planning Staff in the Defense Ministry. On 01 July 2000, he became the 13th Inspector General of the Bundeswehr. The competences of the position were adapted to the changed requirements of the office during Kujat’s tenure. The Inspector General is now no longer just the organizational link between politics and the military; instead the position entails duties as Chairman of the Council and also the Bundeswehr Chief of Staff. This expansion of authority also benefited his successor, General Wolfgang Schneider Hahn, who took command from General Kujat on 1 July, 2002.

General Kujat spent seventeen years in the Luftwaffe. At the Leadership Academy of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg, he attended the General Staff Course in 1975.