Rose Gottemoeller, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2006 to 2008, has been nominated as assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance. In particular, she will be responsible for negotiating a follow-on to the START Treaty expiring next December. Gottemoeller’s appointment must be approved by the U.S. Senate.

Gottemoeller is a leading international expert on nuclear security, strategic stability, nonproliferation, arms control, Russian-American relations and nuclear issues in post-Soviet territories. As director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, she was simultaneously co-chair of the Center’s Nonproliferation program, initiated and led the Forum on Energy Security and ran a series of seminars and roundtables on the Iranian Nuclear Problem with participation of key Russian and international experts, political and public figures. With her as director, the Carnegie Moscow Center was named the Best Think Tank in Russia and Eastern Europe in the area of public policy, economics, social issues, security and ecology.

From October 2000 to December 2005, Gottemoeller served as senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, where she held a joint appointment with the Russian and Eurasian program and the Global Policy program.

Before coming to work for Carnegie Endowment, Gottemoeller was deputy undersecretary for nuclear nonproliferation in the U.S. Department of Energy. Previously, she had served as the Department’s assistant secretary for nonproliferation and national security, with responsibility for nonproliferation cooperation with Russia and the Newly Independent States.

President Obama said: "Turning the tide on the threat of nuclear weapons and strengthening the international nonproliferation regime is one of the great and urgent challenges of our time. Rose Gottemoeller’s extraordinary commitment and expertise make her a valuable addition to the State Department and my national security team as we renew American diplomacy to create a more secure world."

Dmitri Trenin, new director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, noted: “The appointment of Rose Gottemoeller to one of the most important positions in the U.S. State Department is great news for Russian-American relations. There is unlikely to be another American expert on disarmament and arms control who knows Russia as well, who can speak Russian so fluently and who holds such high esteem with her Russian colleagues. Rose and her partners do not only face the goal of developing new disarmament agreements, but also contributing to a positive dynamic in Russian-American relations at large. Best of luck!”

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NOTES

• Click here to read the official White House press release.

• Rose Gottemoeller, who served as the director of the Moscow Center from January 2006 to December 2008, is a senior associate in the Carnegie Russia & Eurasia Program in Washington, D.C., where she works on U.S.–Russian relations and nuclear security and stability. Formerly deputy undersecretary for defense nuclear nonproliferation in the U.S. Department of Energy, she has been with the Endowment since 2000.

• Dmitri Trenin has been with the Moscow Center since its inception. He retired from the Russian Army in 1993 after a military career that included participation in the Geneva strategic arms control negotiations. From 1993 to 1997, Trenin held posts as a senior research fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome and a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe in Moscow.

• The Carnegie Moscow Center was established in 1993 and accommodates foreign and Russian researchers collaborating with Carnegie’s global network of scholars on a broad range of contemporary policy issues relevant to Russia—military, political, and economic.

• The Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Program has, since the end of the Cold War, led the field on Eurasian security, including strategic nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, development, economic and social issues, governance, and the rule of law.

• Press Contact: Trent Perrotto, 202/939-2372, tperrotto@ceip.org