Morton Abramowitz

Former Assistant Secretary of State, Former Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense

Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. He is on the boards of the International Rescue Committee, the International Crisis Group, and Human Rights in North Korea, and is on the advisory council of the National Interest quarterly journal and Foreign Policy magazine.  Formerly, he was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has held numerous positions in the Department of State. He also served as acting president of the International Crisis Group—a multinational, nongovernmental organization headquartered in Brussels and Washington, focusing on crisis prevention. Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment in August 1991, he was ambassador to Turkey. He also has served as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research; United States ambassador to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Negotiations in Vienna; ambassador to Thailand; deputy assistant secretary of defense for inter-American, East Asian, and Pacific affairs; special assistant to the secretary of defense; special assistant to the deputy secretary of state; and political adviser to the commander-in-chief, Pacific. He is coauthor (with Stephen Bosworth) of Chasing the Sun: Rethinking East Asian Policy (The Century Foundation Press, 2006) and editor of The Century Foundation Press books The United States and Turkey: Allies in Need (2003) and Turkey’s Transformation and American Policy (2000).