The Aspen Institute

Robert D. Blackwill is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Blackwill served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for strategic planning under President George W. Bush, presidential envoy to Iraq, and U.S. ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. Before reentering government in 2001, Mr. Blackwill was the Belfer lecturer in international security and associate dean at Harvard’s Kennedy School. From 1989 to 1990, he was special assistant to President George H.W. Bush for European and Soviet affairs. Earlier in his career, Mr. Blackwill was the U.S. ambassador to conventional arms negotiations with the Warsaw Pact, NSC director for European affairs, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs. He is the recipient of the German government’s Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit for his work in the White House on German unification, and of the Padma Bhushan Award from the government of India for the transformation of the U.S.-India relationship. His books include Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power (2024), War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (2016), and Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (2013). His CFR Special Reports include “The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy” (2020); “Implementing Grand Strategy Toward China: Twenty-Two U.S. Policy Prescriptions” (2020); and “Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship” (2016).