ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS: WHO IS KURT CAMPBELL?

AllGov
Monday, August 17, 2009

United States policy toward the troubled and perilous region of East
Asia-home of volatile conflicts between North and South Korea, China
and Taiwan, and the military junta of Burma and its own people-is
now the province of a highly esteemed academic and international
relations specialist, Dr. Kurt Campbell. Campbell was confirmed by
the Senate on June 26, 2009, as the new Assistant Secretary of State
for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Perhaps a harbinger of political
conflicts to come, conservative Republican Kansas Senator Sam Brownback
had put a hold on Campbell’s nomination as a way to press the Obama
administration to consider imposing more restrictive economic sanctions
on the military dictatorship ruling Burma (also called Myanmar).

Born in 1957, Campbell earned a B.A. in Science, Technology, and Public
Affairs from the University of California, San Diego, a certificate
in music and political philosophy from the University of Yerevan in
Soviet Armenia, and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford
University in 1985. As an officer in the U.S. Navy, Campbell served as
an assistant on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and between 1987 and 1995
as a reserve naval officer in a special Chief of Naval Operations
advisory unit in the Pentagon. Early in his career, he worked as a
stringer for The New York Times Magazine in southern Africa.

In his academic career, Campbell has been an Olin Fellow at the
Russian Research Center at Harvard University, a Lecturer in
International Relations at Brown University, and, from 1988 to
1993, he was associate professor of public policy and international
relations at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Assistant
Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
both at Harvard University. Campbell is the author or co-author of
numerous books, including Difficult Transitions: Why Presidents Fail
in Foreign Policy at the Outset of Power; Hard Power: The New Politics
of National Security; and To Prevail: An American Strategy for the
Campaign against Terrorism. He is the editor of Climatic Cataclysm:
The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change
and Nuclear Tipping Point. He has also written numerous scholarly
articles and opinion pieces on a wide range of international subjects.

Campbell has been a member of a number of think tanks, including the
International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Council on
Foreign Relations and the Wasatch Group. He has also been a consultant
to the Rockefeller Foundation. In the early and mid 2000s, he served as
Senior Vice President, Director of the International Security Program,
and Henry A. Kissinger Chair in National Security Policy at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies. From January 2007 through
June 2009, Campbell was the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
of the centrist-Democratic Center for a New American Security. He
concurrently served as Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and the
Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Washington Quarterly, and is
the Founder and Principal of StratAsia, a strategic advisory company
focused on Asia, especially Japan.

Campbell served in several capacities in government during the Clinton
administration, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Asia and the Pacific, Director on the National Security Council Staff,
Deputy Special Counselor to the President for the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and as a White House fellow at the Department
of the Treasury.

A Democrat, Campbell was Hillary Clinton’s chief adviser on Asian
affairs during her campaign for the presidency in 2008. Since 2004, he
has contributed more than $28,000 to Democratic candidates and causes,
including $6,900 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, followed
by $4,600 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign after the former’s
withdrawal from the Democratic nomination contest. He had previously
donated $4,100 to Senator Clinton’s 2006 re-election campaign.

Campbell is a member of the advisory boards of Aegis Capital
Corporation, Civitas Group, STS Systems, PLC, the O’Gara Group, New
Media Strategies, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He is
on the board of the US-Australian Leadership Dialogue, the Advisory
Committee of the International Relations Program at the College of
William and Mary, and the policy advisory board of the Asia Society.

Campbell is married to Under Secretary of Treasury for International
Affairs Lael Brainard, and they have three daughters.

– Matt Bewig