Stephen Flanagan

Stephen J. Flanagan is an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include U.S. alliance and partnership relations and regional security in Europe/Eurasia, U.S. global defense strategy, and outer space security. Flanagan has served in several senior positions in the U.S. government, most recently as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council (NSC) Staff from April 2013 to September 2015. Between 1989 and 1999 he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Central and Eastern Europe, at the NSC Staff; Associate Director and Member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff; and National Intelligence Officer for Europe. Early in his career, he was a Professional Staff Member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He held the Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from 2007 until 2013, where he also served as Senior Vice President and Director of the International Security Program. In 2009-10 he served as the lead advisor to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her capacity as Chair of the Group of Experts that developed the foundation for NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept. From 2000-2007 he was Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies and Vice President for Research at the National Defense University. He has also held research and faculty positions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the National War College. Flanagan has published six books and over seventy reports and journal articles and many commentaries on transatlantic, international security, and defense issues, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the editorial board of the journal International Security. He earned an A.B. in political science from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School, Tufts University and holds an honorary doctorate of laws from Monmouth University.