Atlantic Council

Biography

Robert Nurick

Robert Nurick is a senior fellow with the Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.

Prior to his appointment at the Council, Mr. Nurick was senior fellow in the Washington, DC office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a non-governmental organization devoted to training and policy research in non-proliferation and related international security issues.

From February 2001 through August 2003 Mr. Nurick was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a Russia-based public policy research institution established in 1993 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In that capacity, Mr. Nurick had overall responsibility for the intellectual agenda of the Center's research staff and for day-to-day management of Center operations.

From 1985 until joining the Carnegie Moscow Center, Mr. Nurick was a senior political scientist at RAND in Santa Monica, California and Washington, DC. In 1994-1995 he was associate corporate research manager for international policy, and from 1995-1999 he was manager of foundation programs. He also served from 1985-1988 as associate director of the RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, and from 1991-1992 as associate director of the National Security Strategies Program in RAND's Project Air Force.

Before joining RAND, Mr. Nurick was from 1981-1985 the assistant director and director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. His responsibilities there included overall planning and supervision of the Institute's research program, and editorship of the IISS journal, Survival. As the American member of the directing staff he also had primary responsibility for US foreign and defense policy, and European-American relations.

From 1977-1978 he was special assistant to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy plans and National Security Council affairs, and from 1978-1981 he served as principal action officer for theater nuclear forces and SALT in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In the latter capacity he was ACDA representative to the inter-agency Working Group on Theater Nuclear Forces, which coordinated the government's staff level work leading to the December 1979 decision to deploy Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe and to enter into arms control negotiations with the USSR.

Mr. Nurick's principal research interests are focused on the interrelationships between domestic politics and security policies in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Central Asia; on NATO reform and its impact on evolving security arrangements in Europe; on Russian-American relations; and on arms control and nuclear non-proliferation. Recent project work at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies includes examination of security perspectives in Central Asia and their implications for US nonproliferation initiatives in the region, US nuclear policy, and the Global Threat Reduction Initiative. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and the Central Eurasia Studies Society, and is a member of the board of directors of the US-Baltic Foundation.