Alexandre Adler

Alexandre Adler (23 September 1950 – 18 July 2023) was a French historian, journalist and expert of contemporary geopolitics, the former USSR, and the Middle East. He was a Knight of the Legion of Honour (2002). A Maoist in his youth and then a member of the Communist Party (PCF), he shifted to the right at the end of the 1970s and later became close to U.S. neoconservatives, as did his wife Blandine Kriegel (daughter of the communist Resistant Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont). Adler was the counsellor of Roger Cukiermann, chairman of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF, Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France).

Born in 1950 in Paris into a German-Jewish family, which survived World War II and the Holocaust, Adler was a history graduate of the École normale supérieure (1969–1974). He directed the chair for International Relations of France's Ministry of Defense Interarmy College of Defense (1992–1998) where he remained a professor of higher military learning.

After working with the French daily Libération (1982–1992), Adler went on to become editorial director of Courrier International (1992–2002), a weekly selection of significant articles from the international press. In the 1980s, Adler played a prominent role in L’Affaire Manouchian as the debate about who betrayed Missak Manouchian was known. Adler was a defender of Boris Holban against the allegation that he was the police informer who betrayed Manouchian, writing a series of articles in 1985-86 that argued that Holban was not in position to betray Manouchian even if he had wanted to.