Morton I. Abramowitz

Morton I. Abramowitz is a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation and director of the National Endowment for Democracy. He is married to Sheppie Abramowitz. [1]

Profiles

Abramowitz "retired in 1997 as President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and from the State Department in 1991. Ambassador Abramowitz also served recently as Acting President of the International Crisis Group - a multinational, non-governmental organization headquartered in Brussels and Washington, focusing on crisis prevention. 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, United States Ambassador to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Negotiations in Vienna, 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." [2]

"He previously served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey, before becoming president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." [3]

References from the literature

From Diana Johnstone's Fool's Crusade, Pluto Press, 2002, p. 9:

… Presidents come and go but the continuity of U.S. policy is ensured by a small elite of policy-makers who remain outside party politics – and often outside public view. An influential member of this foreign policy establishment is Morton Abramowitz, whose career has involved him with both the Afghan mujahidin and Kosovo Albanian rebels. In 1986, as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research in the Reagan administration, Abramowitz helped arrange delivery of the Stinger missiles. The collapse of the Soviet Union obliged U.S. policy-makers to redefine the "threat" justifying foreign intervention. The "war on terrorism", launched by President Reagan in the early 1980s, was suffering by the end of the decade from a dearth of active terrorists. As president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the early 1990s, Abramowitz headed a project to develop a new U.S. foreign policy for the post-Cold War era. Rather than simply identifying "threats", especially at a time when few threats could be seen, a successful new policy needed to combine promotion of U.S. interests with proclamation of American "ideals".

From Diana Johnstone's Fool's Crusade, Pluto Press, 2002, p. 9:

Abramowitz continued to act from behind the scenes as an eminence grise for [US Secretary of State] Albright. He helped found the high-level International Crisis Group, a chief policy designer fro Bosnia and Kosovo. He was omnipresent behind the scenes of the Kosovo drama, both in making policy and in shaping elite business, government, and media opinion. He acted as an advisor to the Kosovo Albanian delegation at the Rambouillet talks, whose programmed breakdown provided the pretext for NATO bombing.

Affiliations

• American Committee for Peace in Chechnya – Board of Directors
• Balkan Action Committee
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – President
• Century Foundation
• Freedom House
• Human Rights Watch
• Intellibridge
• International Crisis Group
• International Rescue Committee
• The National Interest
• National Committee on North Korea
• U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea - Board of Directors
• 2004 Advisory Council for the Women's Foreign Policy Group
• Advisory Board, Carr Center
• Advisory Committee, New Tactics in Human Rights
• Former Advisory Board Member, Center for Preventive Action
• Advisory Board (former member), Coalition for International Justice
• Council Member, US Asia Pacific Council

External links

• "Biography", U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Accessed December 2006.