Mark Palmer

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Mark Palmer (born 1941) is the Vice Chairman of Freedom House and the Council for a Community of Democracies. He was the United States ambassador to Hungary, co-founder of the National Endowment for Democracy and of the Council for a Community of Democracies.

Through the years of the Cold War and up to the present, he is one of the most respected foreign policy innovators inside and outside the U.S. government. He served in policy positions in the State Department in the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and first Bush administrations, including launching the National Endowment for Democracy. From the outside, he has worked with both the Clinton and present Bush Administrations, helping persuade them to initiate new democracy policies, including the Community of Democracies and abolishing the so-called "Arab exception", for the first time promoting democracy in the Arab world.

He has practical experience inside dictatorships, working directly with dictators, and helping to oust them without a shot being fired. He lived for 11 years in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Hungary under the communists as a student and diplomat. He organized and participated in the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit as the State Department's top "Kremlinologist," and as the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary helped persuade its last dictator to leave power. He has been active on China and the Middle East, for example, as the founding board member of an organization to support the largest movement for change in China, and working to support the emergence of politically independent commercial television stations throughout the Arab world.

From his days in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, through demonstrating in the streets of Budapest as ambassador, to marching with the students in Belgrade against Milosevic in 1996, he has witnessed and practiced the power of organized nonviolent force in achieving freedom and justice.

As a successful venture capitalist and investor from 1990 to the present, and president of his own company, he also has realized the potential of business in the transition to democracy. He co-founded Central European Media Enterprises, which financed and launched the first national independent television stations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and Ukraine with more than $600 million in investment.

A recognized writer and advocate, Palmer has written speeches for six Secretaries of State and three Presidents, including as principal speechwriter for Henry Kissinger and co-author of Ronald Reagan's favorite speech, and as Vice Chairman of the Board of Freedom House, a frequent contributor to published appeals and policy statements, and participant in democracy programs in the United States and across the arc of dictatorships stretching from China, through the Middle East and Africa, on to Belarus and Cuba.

Palmer is currently a joint founder and Chairman of a Dubai media corporation, SignalOneTV, which plans to broadcast commercial youth-targeted Western TV in Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

Palmer's 2003 book, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025, argued for a revamping of American foreign policy to make the worldwide promotion of democracy its foremost goal.