Brookings Foreign Policy Studies Director Appointed to Head State Department Policy Planning

Richard N. Haass, vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, has accepted an appointment from President George W. Bush to become director of policy planning at the State Department, with the rank of ambassador.

Haass, who also held the Sydney Stein Jr. Chair in International Security at Brookings, has overseen the Institution’s foreign policy program for the past four and a half years.

“Richard has built an extremely strong team in the foreign policy studies area and has been a key member of the Brookings management team. He has provided a constant source of thoughtful public commentary on the major issues confronting the United States overseas. We are pleased, of course, that he will now be able to apply his impressive skills to the development and implementation of American foreign policy initiatives. But he will surely be missed at Brookings,” said Michael H. Armacost, president of the Brookings Institution.

Nicholas R. Lardy will serve as interim director of Foreign Policy Studies while a national search is conducted for a permanent replacement. He has been a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at Brookings since 1995. His area of expertise is Asian economies, especially China.

Haass is the author or editor of nine books on American foreign policy, including The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War; Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy; and Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World. He is also the author of a book on management titled The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization.

From 1989-1993, Haass was special assistant to then-President George Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. In 1991, Haass was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions to the development and articulation of U.S. policy during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Previously, he served in various posts in the Departments of State (1981-85) and Defense (1979-80) and was a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate. Haass also has been director of National Security Programs and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Studies at Hamilton College, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

While at Brookings, Haass served as a consultant for NBC News, contributed his foreign policy expertise to other television and radio programs, and was a frequent contributor to foreign affairs journals and the op-ed pages of major newspapers.

A Rhodes Scholar, Haass holds a B.A. degree from Oberlin College and both the Master and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Oxford University.