Rearuh

Strobe Talbott
12th United States Deputy Secretary of State
In office February 23, 1994 – January 19, 2001
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
Succeeded by	Richard Armitage
Personal details
Born	Nelson Strobridge Talbott III (1946-04-25) April 25, 1946 (age 72) Dayton, Ohio
Political party	Democratic
Alma mater	Yale University (BA) Magdalen College, Oxford (MLitt)
Profession	Journalist, translator, diplomat

Nelson Strobridge "Strobe" Talbott III (born April 25, 1946) is an American foreign policy analyst associated with Yale University and the Brookings Institution, a former journalist associated with Time magazine, and a diplomat who served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001. He was president of Brookings from 2002 to 2017.

Early life

Talbott was born in Dayton, Ohio, to Helen Josephine (Large) and Nelson Strobridge "Bud" Talbott II.^[1] He attended the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and graduated in 1968 from Yale University, where he had been 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 1967–68, and belonged to a society of juniors and seniors called Saint Anthony Hall. He became friends with former President Bill Clinton when both were Rhodes Scholars at the University of Oxford;^[2] during his studies there he translated Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs into English.^[2]

Career

Talbott with George Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece, 2009

In 1972, Talbott, along with his friends Robert Reich (a fellow Rhodes Scholar) and David E. Kendall, rallied to his friends Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton to help them in their Texas campaign to elect George McGovern president of the United States. In the 1980s, he was Time's principal correspondent on Soviet-American relations, and his work for the magazine was cited in the three Overseas Press Club Awards won by Time in the 1980s.^[3] Talbott also wrote several books on disarmament.

Following Bill Clinton's election as president, Talbott 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 Warren Christopher on the New Independent States. After leaving government, he was for a period Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.^[4]

Talbott was the sixth president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., from 2002 to 2017.^[5] At Brookings, he was responsible for formulating and setting policies, recommending projects, approving publications and selecting staff. He brings to Brookings the experience of his careers spanning journalism, government service and academe, and his expertise in US foreign policy^[6] with specialties on Europe, Russia,^[7] South Asia and nuclear arms control.^[8] On January 31, 2017, Talbott announced his resignation from the Brookings Institution. The resignation was later retracted, but in October he was succeeded by General John R. Allen.^[9][5]

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.^[10] Talbott currently also sits on the DC non-profit America Abroad Media's advisory board.^[11]

Controversy

Talbott with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev whilst the latter was on a visit to the United States in April 2010.

The former Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) operative Sergei Tretyakov said that SVR considered Talbott a source of intelligence information and classified him as "a special unofficial contact," even though "he was not a Russian spy."^[12] The allegations center on Talbott's relationship with Russia's ambassador to Canada, Georgiy Mamedov, who was a longtime SVR "co-optee," according to Tretyakov. Mamedov called the allegations "blatant lies."^[12] Talbott also rejected the accusations, calling them "erroneous and/or misleading in several fundamental aspects..."^[13] and said that his meetings with Mamedov advanced US objectives, such as getting Russia to accept NATO enlargement and helping to end the Kosovo War.^[12]

Family

He married Brooke Shearer in 1971. Talbott had been her brother, Derek's, roommate.^[14] Brooke, who was Talbott's wife of 38 years, died on May 19, 2009.^[15] He has two sons, Devin and Adrian, co-founders of Generation Engage.^[16]

Quotes

• "In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all." (Time)^[17]
  


• "The Russians have provided an opening for renewed diplomacy. Since last summer, President Dmitry Medvedev has been calling for a 'new Euro-Atlantic security architecture'. So far, except for rehashing old complaints and the unacceptable claim that other former Soviet republics fall within Russia's 'sphere of privileged interests', Mr Medvedev and Mr Lavrov have been vague about what they have in mind.

"That creates a vacuum that the United States and its European partners can fill with their own proposals. The theme of those should be accelerating the emergence of an international system (of which NATO is a part) that is prepared to include Russia rather than exclude or contain it, and to encourage positive forces in Russia that want to see their nation integrated in a globalized world organized around the search for common solutions to common problems." (Financial Times)^[18]

Honors and awards

Talbott is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.^[19]

• 
  Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun (2016)

References

Sources

• Lane, Charles.: “The Master of the Game: A journey down the paper trail of Strobe Talbott: Russophile, establishmentarian, … ”, The New Republic, March 7, 1994. (pp. 19–29) (Retrieved 2017-03-03.)
  

External links

• Strobe Talbott's Brookings Expert Page


• Talbott lecture at Ditchley Foundation, July 2010


• 
  Appearances on C-SPAN