Strobe Talbott

President, Brookings Institution

Strobe Talbott assumed the presidency of the Brookings Institution in July 2002 after a career in journalism, government and academe. His immediate previous post was founding director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Before that, he served in the State Department from 1993 to 2001, first as Ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the Secretary of State for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union, then as Deputy Secretary of State for seven years.

Mr. Talbott entered government service after 21 years with Time magazine. As a reporter, he covered Eastern Europe, the State Department and the White House, then was Washington bureau chief, editor-at-large and foreign affairs columnist. He was twice awarded the Edward Weintal Prize for distinguished diplomatic reporting.

His newest book, The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation, published in January 2008, combines historical and political analysis with personal reflection on efforts to forge a peaceful community of nations. His past books include: Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb; The Russia Hand; At the Highest Levels (with Michael Beschloss); The Master of the Game; Reagan and Gorbachev (with Michael Mandelbaum); Deadly Gambits; Reagan and the Russians; and Endgame. He translated and edited two volumes of Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs in the early 1970s.

He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, International Security, The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post and Slate.

Mr. Talbott has been a fellow of the Yale Corporation, a trustee of the Hotchkiss School and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, the North American Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission, and the American Association of Rhodes Scholars, and a member of the participating faculty of the World Economic Forum. He is currently a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Academy of Diplomacy, and, in 2007-08, served as a member of the National Commission on War Powers.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1946, he was educated at Hotchkiss, Yale (B.A., ’68, M.A.Hon., ’76) and Oxford (M.Litt., ’71). He has honorary doctorates from the Monterey Institute, Trinity College, Georgetown University and Fairfield University, and he has been awarded state orders by the presidents of Estonia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and the Kings of Sweden and Belgium.

Writing

• A Better Base for Cutting Nuclear Weapons
  FT.com • September 20th, 2009
• Judging the New START Treaty
  Politico • By Steven Pifer and Strobe Talbott • March 29, 2010
• Completing a New Arms Control Agreement with Russia
  Brookings Institution • January 22, 2010
• Russian Arms Control Gambit May Have Backfired
  Brookings Institution • December 7, 2009
• U.S., Russia must lead on arms control
  Politico • By Brent Scowcroft & Joseph Nye & Nicholas Burns & Strobe Talbott • October 13, 2009