Stimson Open Online Course: “Nuclear ” Section 2: Speaker Bios

Mansoor Ahmed Mansoor Ahmed is a Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow at the International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. An expert on ’s nuclear program, policy, and posture, he is currently researching the influence of bureaucratic politics and myth-making on nuclear decision-making in Pakistan. Prior to joining the Belfer Center, he served as a Lecturer in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), Islamabad, and was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Sandia National Laboratories. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from QAU.

Rabia Akhtar Rabia Akhtar is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy, and Policy Research at the University of Lahore. She holds a Ph.D. in Security Studies from Kansas State University. Her research focused on U.S. nonproliferation policy towards Pakistan and foreign policy analysis of executive-legislative interactions in U.S. foreign policymaking and related issues in congressional oversight of U.S. foreign policy towards Pakistan from Ford to Clinton. She is a Fulbright Scholar (2010-2015). Her co-authored research monograph on “Nuclear Learning in South Asia” was published in January 2015 by the Regional Center of Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Raj Chengappa Raj Chengappa serves as the Group Editorial Director (Publishing) of the India Today Group. Previously, he served as the Editor-in-Chief of The Tribune Group of Newspapers. Chengappa is an award winning journalist of 40 years standing. Apart from editing publications, he has done over a hundred cover stories and exclusive reports for India Today on a range of subjects, including international affairs, defense, science, health, education, and environment.

Chengappa is the author of the best-selling book on India’s nuclear program titled, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power. He won the Prem Bhatia Award for Excellence in Reporting in 1998. He is also the winner of the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting in 1987. He was a Stimson Fellow on Security Issues in Washington, DC in 1995, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1990-91, and a Harry Britain Fellow partly at Oxford University in 1985.

Lisa Curtis Lisa Curtis focuses on U.S. national security interests and regional geopolitics as Senior Research Fellow on South Asia in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

Her research centers on the U.S.-India strategic and defense partnership, U.S. counterterrorism policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and trends in Islamist extremism and religious freedom throughout the region.

Lawmakers and journalists alike turn to Curtis for her clear-eyed research and perspective on U.S. interests in some of the most desperate, dangerous, and fast-developing parts of the world. She has testified before Congress on about 20 occasions regarding topics related to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Islamist extremism, and America’s image abroad.

Curtis has commented on developments in South Asia during appearances on major broadcast and cable networks, including CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and BBC. She also has been quoted or cited by dozens of news publications.

Her commentary has appeared in: the Wall Street Journal; the Los Angeles Times; Newsweek; U.S. News & World Report; Foreign Policy; The National Interest; CNN.com; FoxNews.com, and South Asian publications such as: the Hindu; Mint; Express Tribune; News; Friday Times; and Outlook.

Curtis regularly travels to the South Asia region to participate in conferences. She has contributed chapters to books and academic journals, including a chapter on India in “Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics,” edited by Susan Yoshihara and Douglas A. Sylva (Potomac Books, 2011) and an article on Pakistan’s foreign policy in Contemporary South Asia (June 2012).

Before joining Heritage in August 2006, Curtis worked for the U.S. government on South Asian issues for 16 years. From 2003 to 2006, she was a member of the Professional Staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she was in charge of the South Asia portfolio for the chairman at the time, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN).

From 2001 to 2003, Curtis was the White House-appointed senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, where she helped develop policy to manage Indo- Pakistani tensions. Before that, she worked as an Analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and, in the mid-1990s, served as a diplomat in the U.S. embassies in Pakistan and India.

A native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Curtis received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Indiana University. She currently resides in Herndon, Virginia with her husband and two children.

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Robert Einhorn Robert Einhorn is a Senior Fellow in the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, both housed within the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Einhorn focuses on arms control (U.S.-Russia and multilateral), nonproliferation and regional security issues (including Iran, the greater Middle East, South Asia, and Northeast Asia), and U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs.

Before joining Brookings in May 2013, Einhorn served as the U.S. Department of State Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, a position created by Secretary of State in 2009. In that capacity, he played a leading role in the formulation and execution of U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear program, both with respect to sanctions and negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries. He also helped shape the Obama administration’s overall approach to nonproliferation; supported nonproliferation goals through diplomatic contacts with China, Russia, and key non-aligned countries; and addressed nuclear security and strategic stability challenges in South Asia. He played a key role in the development of the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and served as U.S. delegation head in negotiations with South Korea on a successor civil nuclear agreement.

Between 2001 and 2009, Einhorn was a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he directed the Proliferation Prevention Program. Prior to joining CSIS, he was Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation from 1999 to 2001, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs from 1992 to 1999, and a member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff from 1986 to 1992. Between 1972 and 1986, he held various positions at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), including as ACDA’s representative to the strategic arms reduction talks with the Soviet Union. In 1984, he was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Einhorn has written extensively in the area of arms control and nonproliferation. He authored Negotiating from Strength: Leverage in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control Negotiations, co-edited Protecting against the Spread of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons: An Action Agenda for the Global Partnership, and The : Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choices, and published numerous articles in such journals as Survival, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, Arms Control Today, The Washington Quarterly, The Nonproliferation Review, and Yaderny Kontrol.

Einhorn holds a Bachelor’s in Government from Cornell University and a Master’s in Public Affairs and International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

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Touqir Hussain Touqir Hussain is a Senior Pakistan Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at SAIS Johns Hopkins University and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and the Syracuse University (Washington, DC campus). Earlier, he also taught at the University of Virginia. He was a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace from 2004 to 2005 and a Research Fellow with the Center for the Study of Globalization at the George Washington University from 2006 to 2010. Mr. Hussain is a former senior diplomat from Pakistan. He held senior positions in the Pakistani Foreign Office and served as Ambassador to Brazil (1990-1993), Spain (1993-1995), and Japan (1998-2003). He was also Diplomatic Adviser to the Prime Minister from 1996-1998.

Ambassador Hussain specializes in South Asian security issues. He has been guest speaker and panelist at several American academic institutions and think tanks. He has also appeared on the PBS NewsHour, Al Jazeera, and Voice of America, and was invited to speak on NPR’s Diane Rhem and Kojo Namdi shows. Ambassador Hussain has written regularly for American and Pakistani newspapers on democracy, South Asian security issues, the dispute, U.S.- Pakistan relations, political Islam, and U.S. relations with the Islamic world.

Zahid Imroz Zahid Imroz previously served as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Space Policy Institute, Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, where he researched the “strategic implications of the Indian space program for South Asia.” Part of his work also focuses on U.S.-Iran relations and nuclear standoff. He received an M.Sc. in 2009 and M.Phil. in 2011 in Physics from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He later served as an Adjunct Faculty Member at International Islamic University, Islamabad, teaching courses in Physics.

He has been working on global peace and security issues since 2007. He has presented his work at Union of Concerned Scientists summer symposia and other international conferences. He is also a poet and published two collections of his poetry. His first book was awarded with National Youth Award in 2009.

Abhijit Iyer-Mitra Abhijit Iyer-Mitra is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. After receiving his B.Com. from the University of Madras, he pursued a career in the corporate world before turning to academia. He served as Research Assistant on several projects all under the aegis of the Centre for Muslim Minorities & Islam Policy Studies at Monash (2007-2010). He previously was a Programme Coordinator at the Observer Research Foundation, , and a Visiting Research Scholar at Sandia National Laboratories. His primary research is on limited wars and nuclear thresholds, but his interests include: military transformation; defense planning; procurement and offsets; infrastructure; governance; and historical patterns of conflict

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in democracies. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the School of Political & Social Inquiry at Monash University, and is currently pursuing his Ph.D.

Feroz Khan Feroz Khan is a Lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is a former Director of Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs in the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), Joint Services Headquarters, in Pakistan. Khan had been a key contributor in formulating Pakistan’s security policies on nuclear and conventional arms control and strategic stability in South Asia and represented Pakistan in several multilateral and bilateral arms control negotiations. He has served on numerous assignments in the , Europe, and Asia. He has widely participated in international and national conferences on: strategic issues; international security; terrorism; nuclear arms control; and nonproliferation issues. He is the author of Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb ( Press, 2012). Khan holds an M.A. in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.

Michael Krepon Michael Krepon is the Co-Founder of the Stimson Center. He previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency within the U.S. State Department, and on Capitol Hill. He is the author or editor of 20 books, including: Better Safe than Sorry: The Ironies of Living with the Bomb; Nuclear Risk Reduction in South Asia; Escalation Control and the Nuclear Option in South Asia; Cooperative Threat Reduction, Missile Defense, and the Nuclear Future; Global Confidence Building: New Tools for Troubled Regions; Crisis Prevention, Confidence Building, and Reconciliation in South Asia; and Rummaging in Shoeboxes for Stories about the Bomb, the Nuclear Age and Arms Control (two collections of blog posts from Arms Control Wonk).

Sameer Lalwani Sameer Lalwani is Deputy Director for the Stimson Center’s South Asia Program. From 2014- 15, Lalwani was a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the RAND Corporation. He completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and remains a Research Affiliate at MIT’s Center for International Studies. His research interests include grand strategy, counterinsurgency, civil-military relations, ethnic conflict, nuclear security, and the national security politics of South Asia and the Middle East. Lalwani has conducted field research in the British archives, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. His work has been published through RAND, Oxford University Press, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, CTC Sentinel, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and a number of other outlets. Previously he was a Fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies, a member of the CNAS

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Next Gen National Security Leaders Program, a participant in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Nuclear Scholars Initiative, and a Policy Analyst with the New America Foundation. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from University of California, Berkeley.

Salma Malik Salma Malik is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), Islamabad. She specializes in the areas of war, arms control and disarmament, military sociology, and South Asian affairs. Her research areas include: conflict management and transformation; human security; confidence-building measures; and micro-disarmament.

Vipin Narang Vipin Narang is Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Security Studies Program. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University in May 2010, where he was awarded the Edward M. Chase Prize for the best dissertation in international relations. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering with distinction from Stanford University and an M. Phil with Distinction in International Relations from Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Marshall Scholarship. He has been a Fellow at Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, a Predoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a Stanton Junior Faculty Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His research interests include nuclear proliferation and strategy, South Asian security, and general security studies.

His first book, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era (Princeton University Press, 2014), on the deterrence strategies of regional nuclear powers won the 2015 ISA International Security Studies Section Best Book Award. He is currently working on his second book, Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation (Princeton University Press, under contract), which explores how states pursue nuclear weapons. His work has been published in several journals including: International Security; Journal of Conflict Resolution; The Washington Quarterly; and International Organization.

George Perkovich George Perkovich is Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He works primarily on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation issues, and on South Asian security.

Perkovich is the author of the prize-winning book, India’s Nuclear Bomb (University of California Press, 1999), which Foreign Affairs called “an extraordinary and perhaps definitive account of 50 years of Indian nuclear policymaking.”

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Perkovich is co-author with James Acton of the 2008 Adelphi Paper, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, and co-editor of the subsequent book, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate. His writing has appeared in: Foreign Affairs; Foreign Policy; the Atlantic Monthly; the Weekly Standard; the New York Times; the Wall Street Journal; ; the Los Angeles Times; and other publications. His essay in Foreign Affairs, “Giving Justice Its Due,” reflects ongoing work on the challenge of justice in international relations.

On Iran and South Asian security affairs, he has advised many agencies of the U.S. government, and testified before both houses of Congress. Perkovich served as a Speechwriter and Foreign Policy Adviser to Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) from 1989-90.

He has been a member of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Arms Control and International Security, the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Nuclear Policy, and was a Principal Adviser to the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, a joint initiative of the governments of Japan and Australia.

Rajesh Rajagopolan Rajesh Rajagopalan is Professor in International Politics at the Centre for International Politics, Organization, and Disarmament in the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. His areas of interest include international relations theory, military doctrines, and nuclear weapons and disarmament. Previously, he was Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Rajagopalan also served as Deputy Secretary in the National Security Council Secretariat, Government of India (2000-2001). His recent books include Fighting Like a Guerrilla: The Indian Army and Counterinsurgency and Second Strike: Arguments about Nuclear War in South Asia. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the City University of New York.

Robin Raphel Ambassador Robin Raphel is a consultant advising clients on political and economic developments in South Asia and the Middle East. She retired from the State Department for a second time in October 2014 after a five-year stint with the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She served first as Assistance Coordinator in Pakistan at the behest of the late Ambassador , and later as the Senior Advisor for Pakistan.

Before returning to the State Department, Ambassador Raphel was Deputy Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, and then Senior Vice President for International Affairs for the consulting firm Cassidy and Associates.

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Ambassador Raphel launched the congressionally-mandated South Asia Bureau at the State Department in 1993, serving as the first Assistant Secretary of State for this new regional bureau. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Tunisia in the late 1990s. She became Vice President of the National Defense University in 2000, and in 2003 joined the first civilian team deployed to Iraq to set up the new civilian administration. As Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, she oversaw the restoration of the critical food distribution system. She then became Coordinator for Iraq Reconstruction, working with all national security agencies to ensure more effective and relevant reconstruction programs.

Ambassador Raphel began her federal government career as an Economic Analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, focusing on the oil-rich state of Indonesia. She later joined the Foreign Service, working on detail to U.S. Agency for International Development as an Economic/Financial Analyst in Pakistan. Returning to the State Department, she worked on inward investment policy and efforts to set standards for conduct of U.S. investors abroad, and on economic assistance issues for Israel. She served as Staff Aide to the Assistant Secretary for Near East and South Asian Affairs, and as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Political Affairs. She was posted to the U.S. Embassy in London where she covered regional issues involving the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, and East Asia, and later as Political Counselor in U.S. embassies in South Africa and India. Before joining the Foreign Service, she taught history at Damavand College in Tehran, Iran.

Ambassador Raphel was born in Vancouver, Washington, and is a graduate of the University of Washington in history and economics. She did graduate studies at Newhall College in Cambridge, England in Modern European History. She holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Maryland.

Scott Sagan Scott Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Project Chair for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Initiative on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War and as Senior Advisor for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a Lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1984 to 1985, he served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a Consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Sagan is the author of: Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons

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(Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of: Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz; the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009); and co-editor of Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima (Stanford University Press, 2016) with Edward D. Blandford. Sagan also is the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War (forthcoming, Fall 2016, Winter 2017); co-editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010), with Steven E. Miller. Sagan’s recent publications include “A Call for Global ” in Nature (July 2012); “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013); and, with Matthew Bunn, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences occasional paper, “A Worst Practices Guide to Insider Threats: Lessons from Past Mistakes” (2014). Sagan’s forthcoming book, Insider Threats, co-edited with Matthew Bunn, is expected to be published by Cornell University Press later in 2016.

Sagan was the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015 and the International Studies Association’s International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998- 99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.

Amy Sands Amy Sands is the Executive Director for Research Centers and Initiatives at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. In this role, Amy works to align Middlebury’s research centers and initiative’s activities with the strategic priorities of the Institute and the larger Middlebury enterprise, advising the centers on governance issues and advancement strategies, and coordinating with Institute leadership and Middlebury colleagues in pursuit of these objectives. She also oversees the Institute’s memoranda of understanding.

Prior to her current position, Amy served for eight years as the Provost of the Institute, two and a half years as the Dean of the Graduate School of International Policy Studies, and seven years as the Deputy Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. From August 1994 to June 1996, she was Assistant Director of the Intelligence, Verification, and Information Management Bureau at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Upon leaving the government, Dr. Sands received ACDA’s Distinguished Honor Award and the On-Site Inspection Agency’s Exceptional Civilian Service Medal. Before joining ACDA, she led the

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Proliferation Assessments Section of Z Division (Intelligence) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Women in International Security (WIIS), and was appointed in August 2014 to the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board.

Jayita Sarkar Jayita Sarkar is currently Associate of the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and will join Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Research Fellow in Fall 2016. She was a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, where she also held the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellowship. Her expertise is in international security, nuclear proliferation, foreign policy, South Asia, and qualitative research. Her research projects have been funded by: the Stanton Foundation; Harvard’s Belfer Center’s International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom; Swiss National Science Foundation; Feris Foundation of America; Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation; and Gerald R. Ford Foundation, among others. Dr. Sarkar has published her research in peer-reviewed journals like Cold War History, International History Review, and Critique Internationale, among others.

She has worked for think tanks through visiting research positions held at: the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Henry L. Stimson Center; Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies; United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research; and the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Dr. Sarkar held the Albert Gallatin Fellowship in International Affairs at Yale University and, until recently, was a visiting scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute Geneva in Switzerland.

Dave Smith Dave Smith is currently an independent consultant. He previously worked as a consultant to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a variety of projects for the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA and the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. He retired from government service in May 2012 after serving as the Senior Defense Intelligence Analyst for Pakistan in the Defense Intelligence Agency. Before that, he was the Senior Country Director for Pakistan in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy). A career U.S. Army Officer, he retired in 2003 after 34 years of service. His last military assignment was a three-year tour of duty as Army Attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, his second assignment in that capacity. He has frequently lectured on Pakistan at: the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute; Georgetown University; the U.S. Army War College; the National Defense University; and several agencies of the United States government.

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Rakesh Sood Ambassador Rakesh Sood is a Post-Graduate in Physics and additionally in Economics and Defense studies. He has over 38 years of experience in the field of foreign affairs, economic diplomacy, and international security issues.

Before joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1976, Ambassador Sood worked for a couple of years in the private sector. Ambassador Sood initially served in the Indian missions at Brussels, Dakar, Geneva, and Islamabad in different capacities and as Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, later in his career. He set up the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division in the Foreign Ministry, which he led for eight years till the end of 2000.

During this period, Ambassador Sood was in charge of: multilateral disarmament negotiations; bilateral dialogues with Pakistan; and strategic dialogues with other countries including the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel (especially after the nuclear tests in 1998). He also dealt with India’s role in the ASEAN Regional Forum, as part of the ‘Look East’ policy.

He then served as India’s first Ambassador – Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva. He also chaired a number of international Working Groups including those relating to negotiations on landmines and cluster munitions and was a member of UN Secretary General’s Disarmament Advisory Board (2002-03). Subsequently, he was India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to early 2008, Ambassador to Nepal from 2008 to 2011, and to France from 2011 to March 2013.

In September 2013, Ambassador Sood was appointed Special Envoy of the Prime Minister for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Issues, a position he held until May 2014.

Since his retirement he has been writing and commenting regularly in both print and audio visual media on India’s foreign policy, its economic dimensions, and regional and international security issues. He is a frequent speaker/contributor at various policy planning groups and reputed think- tanks in India and overseas.

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