New Center on the U.S. and France at Brookings

On September 1, 1999, the Foreign Policy Studies program at Brookings established a new Center on the United States and France, which will pursue an active agenda of research, analysis, publications, media briefings, workshops, and conferences featuring American and French experts, and dedicated to the study of France and U.S.-French relations.

France is a critical partner for the United States across a wide range of issues because of its will and capacity to assert its interests, its influence in European and transatlantic councils, its importance in world trade and finance, and its role in the UN Security Council and other global institutions.

On December 1, 1999, Philip H. Gordon will join Brookings as the Center’s Director and as a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program. Dr. Gordon has been Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, where his responsibilities have included NATO, France, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, and a range of other economic, political, and security matters. Before his White House appointment, he served as the Carol Deane Senior Fellow in U.S. Strategic Studies and as editor of Survival at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Dr. Gordon has been a professor at both the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France and at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C.

“I can’t think of a scholar-practitioner better qualified to serve as the first director of the new center than Philip Gordon,” commented Brookings President Michael Armacost. “Phil’s knowledge of France, Europe, and the transatlantic relationship will produce timely scholarship of great significance.”

Gordon’s publications include The Transatlantic Allies and a Changing Middle East (1998); NATO’s Transformation: The Changing Shape of the Atlantic Alliance (1997); France, Germany, and the Western Alliance (1995), and A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy (1993).

Dr. Gordon speaks fluent French, German, and Italian, and holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

The Brookings Center on the United States and France is being created simultaneously with the French Center on the United States at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris. The two centers, both supported by the German Marshall Fund, will maintain a close working relationship.