Philip Gordon

Philip H. Gordon is the Sydney Stein, Jr. Scholar in the Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at Brookings. His research covers a wide range of U.S. foreign policy and national security issues, including the role of U.S. power and alliances in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. 

Gordon served as assistant to the president and national security adviser to the vice president in the White House from March 2022 to January 2025. In that role, he advised President Biden and Vice President Harris on the full range of U.S. national security issues and was a regular participant in meetings of the National Security Council, principals committee, deputies committee, and president’s daily brief. In this position, he met with leaders from all over the world and traveled to dozens of countries throughout Europe, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In addition to his diplomatic and national security policy-making roles, Gordon helped launch public-private partnerships and U.S. government initiatives on economic development, digital inclusion, clean energy, women’s empowerment, artificial intelligence, and space. 

From 2015-2021, Gordon was a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, in Washington, D.C. He worked on a broad range of international political, security and economic topics, with a particular focus on U.S. foreign policy, national security, the Middle East, Europe, and China.

From 2013 to 2015, Gordon was special assistant to the president and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf region at the National Security Council (NSC). As the most senior NSC official focused on the greater Middle East, he worked closely with the president, vice president, secretary of state, and national security adviser on issues including Iran, Middle East peace negotiations, the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, and U.S. relations with Israel, the Gulf States, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and North Africa. 

From 2009 to 2013, Gordon served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. As head of the department’s largest bureau, he was responsible for 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia as well as for the NATO, the EU, and the OSCE. During the Clinton administration, Gordon served as director for European affairs at the National Security Council. He was responsible for NATO, the European Union, Western Europe, and the Mediterranean. 

Gordon received his doctorate in international relations and international economics from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in 1991; he also has a master’s from SAIS (1987) and a bachelor’s from Ohio University (1984). He has lectured widely at universities and other institutions around the world and taught at SAIS and INSEAD, in Fontainebleau, France. 

Gordon is the author of numerous books on international relations and foreign policy including, most recently, “Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East,” named as a “book of the century” by Foreign Affairs and “book of the year” by the Financial Times and CNN. He has published numerous articles in journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, Security Studies, as well as newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Politico. Gordon is proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish. 

Affiliations:

• Council on Foreign Relations, member
• Gerson Lehrman Group, expert
• Leading Authorities, Inc., speaker
• Mastaba Foundation (Christo), adviser
• XN, executive partner