Robert Blackwill

Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill is a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Henry A. Kissinger
senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
His current work focuses on U.S. foreign policy writ large as well as on China,
Europe, Russia, the Middle East, South Asia, and geoeconomics. The
Ambassador’s latest book coauthored with Richard Fontaine, Lost Decade: The US
Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, will be published by Oxford
University Press in June 2024. It examines the formulation of the U.S. Pivot to
Asia and the ramifications of the policy’s failed implementation across Europe, the
Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. The text documents China’s astonishing rise and
argues that the strategic reorientation to Asia remains the right trajectory for
American grand strategy.

As deputy national security advisor for strategic planning under President George
W. Bush, Blackwill was responsible for government-wide policy planning to
develop and coordinate the mid- and long-term direction of U.S. foreign policy. He
also served as presidential envoy to Iraq and U.S. ambassador to India, and is the
first U.S. Ambassador to India since John Kenneth Galbraith to receive the Padma
Bhushan Award, for his role in the transformation of U.S.-India relations.

Prior to reentering government in 2001, Blackwill was the Belfer lecturer in
international security at Harvard’s Kennedy School. During his fourteen years as a
Harvard faculty member, he was associate dean of the Kennedy School, where he
taught foreign and defense policy and public policy analysis. He was faculty chair
for executive training programs for business and government leaders from Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, and Kazakhstan, as well as
military general officers from Russia and the People's Republic of China.

From 1989 to 1990, he was special assistant to President George H.W. Bush for
European and Soviet affairs, during which he was awarded the Commander’s
Cross of the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany for his
contribution to German unification. Earlier in his career, he was the U.S.
ambassador to conventional arms negotiations with the Warsaw Pact, director for
European affairs at the NSC, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for
political-military affairs, and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for
European affairs.

Blackwill’s best-selling book, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on
China, the United States, and the World (MIT Press, February 2013), coauthored
with Graham Allison of Harvard’s Kennedy School, has sold over 300,000 copies.
His book, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (Harvard University
Press, April 2016), coauthored with Jennifer M. Harris, was named one of the best
foreign policy books of 2016 by Foreign Affairs. His CFR reports include The End
of World Order and American Foreign Policy; Containing Russia: How to
Respond to Moscow’s Intervention in U.S. Democracy and Growing Geopolitical
Challenge; Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China; and Repairing the U.S.-
Israel Relationship. His next, coauthored with Richard Fontaine, published in the
fall of 2024 addresses the China-Russia relationship and its threat to World Order.

Blackwill is a member of CFR, the Aspen Strategy Group, the Trilateral
Commission, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a jazz and
Notre Dame football enthusiast.