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The Brookings Institution is pleased to announce that Stephen P. Cohen, one of the most prominent American experts on India and South Asia, joins the Foreign Policy Studies program as a senior fellow. An expert in political and military issues involving both India and Pakistan, Cohen will head the India Project at Brookings, and will undertake an ambitious research and writing agenda. His next book, tentatively titled India: An Emergent Power, promises to be the first full-scale assessment of India’s evolving status undertaken since the end of the cold war.
“Developments in the Asian Subcontinent are increasing the significance of this area to the United States from defense, security, economic, and political standpoints,” said Brookings President Michael H. Armacost. “No one is more capable than Steve of examining their implications for American foreign policy.”
“India is arguably the least studied country relative to its importance to the United States and the world. Steve Cohen is perfectly suited to help meet this critical need. We are thrilled to have him at Brookings,” said Richard Haass, director of Brookings Foreign Policy Studies.
Prior to joining Brookings, Cohen was a faculty member at the University of Illinois from 1965 to 1998 in the Departments of Political Science and History. He was also one of the founder-directors of the University’s Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security. Recently, Cohen served on the Asia Society and the Council on Foreign Relations study groups on South Asia. He has been the founder-chair of the Workshop on Security, Technology and Arms Control for younger South Asian and Chinese strategists, now in its sixth year, and is a founder-member of the Research Committee of the Regional Center for Security Studies, Columbo. In 1992-1993, Cohen was Scholar-in-Residence at the Ford Foundation, New Delhi, and from 1985 to 1987 a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State, where he advised on South Asia, security, and proliferation issues.
Cohen’s publications include The Pakistan Army (second revised edition, 1998, with pirate editions published in Pakistan and China), The Indian Army (revised edition, 1990), and the co-authored Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia (1990) and South Asia after the Cold War: International Perspectives (1993).
Cohen holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin, with a minor field in Indian Studies, and B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science from the University of Chicago. He has conducted research in China, Britain, India, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union and Japan; has been visiting professor both in Tokyo, Japan, and Andhra University, India; and the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. He has served as a consultant to the RAND Corporation, the Department of State, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Department of Defense, and various foundations.
Married to Roberta Brosilow, Stephen Cohen has six children. His biography is in the current edition of Who’s Who in the U.S.
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