Expert Bio

Robert S. Litwak is senior vice president and director of international security studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Dr. Litwak is also a consultant to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He served on the National Security Council staff as director for nonproliferation. He was an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and has held visiting fellowships at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Oxford University. Dr. Litwak is author of Rogue States and U.S Foreign Policy, Outlier States, Managing Nuclear Risks, and most recently, Nuclear Crises with North Korea and Iran and Tripolar Instability: Nuclear Competition Among the United States, Russia, and China. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Major Publications

Tripolar Instability: Nuclear Competition Among the United States, Russia, and China

Nuclear Crises with North Korea and Iran: From Transformational to Transactional Diplomacy

Preventing North Korea's Nuclear Breakout 

Deterring Nuclear Terrorism

Iran’s Nuclear Chess: After the Deal

Outlier States: American Strategies to Contain, Engage, or Change Regimes

Regime Change: U.S. Strategy through the Prism of 9/11

Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War

Nuclear Proliferation after the Cold War (edited with Mitchell Reiss)

Détente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969-1976

Security in the Persian Gulf: Sources of Inter-State Conflict