Ivo Daalder

Ambassador Ivo H. Daalder is a leading expert and commentator on international affairs, geopolitics, and geoeconomics. He served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama, on the U.S. National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, and is currently a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center. He served as President and CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs from 2013-2025.

Ambassador Daalder was a senior advisor on nonproliferation policy to Senator Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign and served as the National Security Council and nonproliferation lead on the Obama-Biden transition team. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Action Council and Geopolitical Advisory Council and served as a member on the OSCE Panel of Eminent Persons on the future of European Security. He is a geopolitical consultant to global businesses and financial institutions, and has worked at leading think tanks around the world, including the Brookings Institution and Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, and the International Institute on Strategic Studies in London.

Ambassador Daalder is a widely published author of more than a dozen books on American foreign policy, European security, national security affairs and policy making. His most recent book is The Empty Throne: America’s Abdication of Global Leadership (2018) and his forthcoming book is After The Fall: An American Strategy for a Post-Trumpian World (both with James M. Lindsay).

He is a frequent commentator on television and radio on current events and has written for the leading newspapers around the world. He writes the bi-monthly “From Across the Pond” commentary for Politico Europe and the “America Abroad” newsletter on Substack. His weekly podcast, “World Review with Ivo Daalder,” features leading journalists from around the world to discuss the week’s global affairs news. 

Ivo Daalder was educated at the Universities of Kent and Oxford, Georgetown University, and received his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law from the University of Kent. For his service as US Ambassador to NATO, Daalder was honored by the governments of Germany, Latvia, and Estonia, and received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. He was born in the Hague (the Netherlands) and is married to Elisa D. Harris. They live in Chicago.