Strobe Talbott

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.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, to Jo and Nelson Strobridge "Bud" Talbott II, Talbott 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; during his studies there he translated Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs into English.

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. 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. He is currently the president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

At Brookings, he is 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 with specialties on Europe, Russia, South Asia and nuclear arms control. Talbott currently sits on DC non-profit America Abroad Media's advisory board.

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 claimed that SVR considered Talbott a source of intelligence information and classified him as "a special unofficial contact," but "he was not a Russian spy." The unproven allegations center on Talbott's relationship with Russia's ambassador to Canada, Georgiy Enverovich Mamedov, who called the allegations "blatant lies."

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.

Furthermore, Talbott has noted that his meetings with Mamedov advanced US objectives, such as getting Russia to accept NATO enlargement and helping to end the Kosovo War.

He married Brooke Shearer in 1971. Talbott had been her brother, Derek's, roommate. Brooke, who was Talbott's wife of 38 years, died on May 19, 2009.

• 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)
• Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration & the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control (1984)
• Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II (1979)

• "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)
• "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)

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

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