Strobe Talbott

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Nelson Strobridge "Strobe" Talbott III
Strobe Talbott
In office
February 23, 1994 – January 19, 2001
President Bill Clinton
Preceded by Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
Succeeded by Richard Armitage
Born April 25, 1946
Dayton, Ohio
Political party Democratic
Profession journalist, translator, diplomat, political scientist

Nelson Strobridge "Strobe" Talbott III (born April 25, 1946 in Dayton, Ohio to Jo & Bud Talbott) is an American journalist associated with Time magazine, political scientist and diplomat who served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 until 2001. He has also been a friend of Bill Clinton since their days as fellow Rhodes Scholars at the University of Oxford, where he translated Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs into English.

Through the 1980s he was Time magazine's principal correspondent on Soviet-American relations, and wrote several books on disarmament, and his work for the magazine was cited in the three Overseas Press Club Awards won by Time in the 1980s. Following Clinton's election to national office, Talbot was invited into government where he served at first managing the consequences of the Soviet breakup as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State on the New Independent States.

After leaving government, he was for a short period Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. He is currently the president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Yale University in 1968 and was chairman of the Yale Daily News, a position whose previous incumbents include Henry Luce, William F. Buckley, and Joe Lieberman. He was also a member of the Scholar of the House program in 1967-8.

Talbott is a noted author who wrote in a July 20, 1992 Time magazine article, "The Birth of the Global Nation", that "The best mechanism for democracy, whether at the level of the multinational state or that of the planet as a whole, is not an all-powerful Leviathan or centralized superstate, but a federation, a union of separate states that allocate certain powers to a central government while retaining many others for themselves."[1]

At Brookings he is responsible for formulating and setting policies, recommending projects, approving publications and selecting staff. Talbott, whose career spans journalism, government service and academe, is an expert on U.S. foreign policy, with specialties on Europe, Russia, South Asia and nuclear arms control. In a recent appearance at Google he discussed his career, his work, and his latest thoughts on U.S. foreign policy.[2] In a speech at the University of Virginia he discussed the role of independent research in partisan times.[1] He recently testified at a hearing on Russia and U.S.-Russians Relations before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives.[2]

According to a former Russian Foreign Intelligence Service operative Sergei Tretyakov, SVR considered Talbott a source of intelligence information and classified him as "a special unofficial contact", although "he was not a Russian spy."[3] These unproven allegations center on Talbott's relationship with Russian ambassador Mamedov, who called the allegations "blatant lies."[4] Talbott himself has similarly rejected the accusations,calling them "erroneous and/or misleading in several fundamental aspects...[T]here was never a presumption that what we (he and Mamedov) said to each other in our one-to-one sessions would remain private."[5] Further, Talbott has noted that his meetings with Mamedov advanced US objectives, such as getting Russia to accept NATO enlargement and help end the Kosovo conflict.[6]

[edit] Partial bibliography

  • The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (2008)
  • Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (2004)
  • The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (2002)
  • Master of the game : Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace (1989)
  • Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II (1979)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Talbott, Strobe. "The Birth of the Global Nation", Time magazine, July 20, 1992. Retrieved June 30, 2007
  2. ^ Talbott, Strobe. "Google Talks with Strobe Talbott", Authors@Google Series April 09, 2007.
  3. ^ Pete Earley Comrade J, Putnam Adult, January 24, 2008
  4. ^ Pete Earley Comrade J, Putnam Adult, January 24, 2008
  5. ^ Stein, Jeff. "Top U.N. Nuclear Watchdog a Russian Spy, Defector Says in New Book", Congressional Quarterly, 2008-01-19. Retrieved on 2008-01-31. 
  6. ^ Pete Earley Comrade J, Putnam Adult, January 24, 2008

[edit] External links and further reading

Preceded by
Clifton R. Wharton Jr.		 United States Deputy Secretary of State
1994 – 2001		 Succeeded by
Richard Armitage
Preceded by
Michael Armacost		 President of the Brookings Institution
2002 – present		 Succeeded by
incumbent
v • d • e
United States Deputy Secretary of State of the United States of America
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