Counselor, Center for Strategic & International Studies; and Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy, the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC.

From 1977 to 1981, National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.  In 1981 awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom “for his role in the normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations and for his contributions to the human rights and national security policies of the United States.”

Other Current Activities

Public and Pro Bono   Honorary Chairman, AmeriCares Foundation (a private philanthropic humanitarian aid organization);  Co-Chairman, American Committee for Peace in Chechnya;  Member, Board of Directors, Jamestown Foundation;  Member, Board of Trustees, Freedom House (a non-profit institution dedicated to the promotion of freedom);  Member, Board of Trustees, International Crisis Group;  Trustee, Trilateral Commission (a cooperative American-European-Japanese forum);  Member, Board of Directors, Polish-American Enterprise Fund and of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation;  Member, Honorary Board of American Friends of Rabin Medical Center;  Chairman, International Advisory Board for the Yale Project on “The Culture & Civilization of China”;  Member, International Honorary Committee, Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, etc.

Private Sector   International advisor to major U.S./global corporations; frequent participant in annual business/trade conventions; also a frequent public speaker, commentator on major domestic and foreign TV programs, and contributor to domestic and foreign newspapers and journals.

Past Activities

U.S. Government   1966-68, Member of the Policy Planning Council of the Department of  State;  1985, Member of the President’s Chemical Warfare Commission;  1987-88, Member of the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy;  1987-89, Member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (a Presidential commission to oversee U.S. intelligence activities).

Public and Political   1973-76, Director of the Trilateral Commission;  in the 1968 presidential campaign, chairman of the Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force;  in the 1976 presidential campaign, principal foreign policy advisor to Jimmy Carter.   In 1988, co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force.   Past Member of Boards of Directors of Amnesty International, Council on Foreign Relations, Atlantic Council, the National Endowment for Democracy.   2004, Co-Chair, Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force, Iran: Time for a New Approach.

Academic   On the faculty of Columbia University 1960-89;  on the faculty of Harvard University 1953-60.  Ph.D., Harvard University, 1953;  B.A. and M.A., McGill University 1949 and 1950.  His most recent book is THE CHOICE: Global Domination or Global Leadership;  also author of THE GRAND CHESSBOARD: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives;  the best-selling THE GRAND FAILURE: The Birth and Death of Communism in the 20^th Century, as well as of  OUT OF CONTROL: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21^st Century;  GAME PLAN: How to Conduct the U.S.-Soviet Contest;  POWER AND PRINCIPLE: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977-1981;  THE FRAGILE BLOSSOM: Crisis and Change in Japan;  BETWEEN TWO AGES: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era;  THE SOVIET BLOC: Unity and Conflict; and of other books and many articles in numerous U.S. and foreign academic journals.

Official Honors   In 1995, awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest civilian decoration, for his contributions to recovery by Poland of its independence;  also highest civilian decorations from the governments of Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.  Honorary degrees from Georgetown University, Williams College, Fordham University, College of the Holy Cross, Alliance College, the Catholic University of Lublin, Warsaw University, the University of Tbilisi, the University of Vilnius, the Ukrainian Free University, the Jagiellonian University, Comenius University (Bratislava); Tashkent University;  Baku State University (Azerbaijan);  Honorary Citizenship from the City of Lviv and the City of Vilnius;  Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of Harvard University; the Hubert Humphrey Award for Public Service from the American Political Science Association;  the U Thant Award;  the David Rockefeller International Leadership Award;  as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Ford Foundation, etc.   In 1969, elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Public Recognition   In 1963, selected by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of America’s Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Year.  Late 1960’s, selected by a poll of academic peers as the scholar who made the most significant contribution to Soviet Studies in the decade of the 1960’s; 1980, placed second after the U.S. President among the 10 top choices selected in the annual USNews & World Report on “Who Runs America;” 2004, listed as 21^st among “the world’s 100 most influential individuals” and seventh in the more specific list of the world’s politically most influential intellectuals in a poll of 40 editorial boards among leading European news publications.

Principal Scholarly Contributions   1950’s, the theory of totalitarianism;  1960’s, contributed to wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc;  1960’s, developed the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union; 1970’s, propounded the proposition that the Soviet system is incapable of evolving beyond the industrial phase into the “technetronic” age;  1980’s, argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadows communism’s end; 1990’s, warned that global discord may get out of control; 1990’s, formulated a geostrategy of U.S. global preponderance.

Principal Policy Contributions   1960’s, articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and persuaded President Johnson, while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as U.S. strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior U.S. priorities;  1970’s-1980’s, advocated formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement U.S.-Japanese-European relations;  while serving in The White House, emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive; assisted the President in Camp David I to attain the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty;  actively supported Polish Solidarity and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion;  played leading role in normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations and in the development of joint strategic cooperation;  provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union;  1990’s, formulated the strategic case for buttressing the independent statehood of Ukraine;  promoted “geopolitical pluralism” in the space of the former Soviet Union; developed “a plan for Europe” urging the expansion of NATO;  served as U.S. Presidential emissary to Azerbaijan in order to promote the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline; made the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic Republics;  led, together with Lane Kirkland, the effort to increase the endowment for the U.S.-sponsored Polish-American Freedom Foundation from the proposed $112 million to an eventual total of well over $200 million; urged a U.S. leadership role in the world, based on established alliances, and warned against unilateralist policies that could destroy U.S. global credibility and precipitate U.S. global isolation.

Personal

Born in Warsaw, Poland, 1928; son of a diplomat posted to Canada in 1938; married to Emilie Anna (Muska) Benes, a graduate of Wellesley College, internationally recognized sculptor; three children: Ian, currently Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO; Mark, partner, McGuire Woods LLP, Washington, DC; Mika, reporter and occasional anchor, CBS-TV “Evening News.”