Morton I. Abramowitz

Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. He retired in 1997 as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and from the State Department in 1991. Abramowitz also served in 1997-98 as acting president of the International Crisis Group. He joined the Foreign Service in 1960 after attending Stanford and Harvard, and serving in the United States Army. Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment in August 1991, he was ambassador to Turkey. He has also served as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research; U.S. ambassador to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Negotiations in Vienna; U.S. ambassador to Thailand; deputy assistant secretary of defense for inter-American, East Asian and Pacific affairs; special assistant to the secretary of defense; and special assistant to the deputy secretary of state. He also served in Hawaii as political advisor to the commander-in-chief, Pacific. He has the permanent title of career ambassador. He is the author (with Richard Moorsteen) of Remaking China Policy, 1972; Moving the Glacier: The Two Koreas and the Powers, 1972, East Asian Actors and Issues, 1991, and China: Can We Have a Policy?, 1997. He was the editor and co-author in 2000 of a book of essays: Turkey’s Transformation and American Policy. His most recent book with Stephen Bosworth is Chasing The Sun: Rethinking East Asian Policy Since 1992. He has published numerous articles and essays on subjects ranging from American foreign policy to issues in the former Yugoslavia. They have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, TIME, International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and many others. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Joseph C. Wilson Award for International Service from the University of Rochester in 1980, and the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Service in 1981, 1985, and 1988. He also was awarded the National Intelligence Medal in 1989, the Director General’s Cup of the Foreign Service in 1995, and the Award for Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy of the American Foreign Service Association. He serves on the board of many nonprofit organizations, including the International Rescue Committee and the National Endowment for Democracy.