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Meghan L. O'Sullivan

Adjunct Senior Fellow

Expertise

U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy; counterinsurgency; nation-building; the geopolitics of energy; Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

Programs

Program on Energy Security and Climate Change

Bio

Meghan L. O'Sullivan is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), while also serving as the Evron and Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. Her expertise includes nation-building, counterinsurgency, the geopolitics of energy, decision making in foreign policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

From July 2004 to September 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and also held the position of deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan for the last two years of this tenure. She spent two of the last five and a half years in Iraq, most recently in fall 2008 at the request of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Raymond Odierno to help conclude the security agreement and strategic framework agreement between the United States and Iraq. As deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, Dr. O'Sullivan led a team of military and diplomatic personnel, lawyers, economists, and political appointees in the Iraq and Afghan directorates at the National Security Council. In this capacity, she staffed the president and national security advisor on Iraq and Afghanistan and coordinated the efforts of U.S. government agencies working there. Dr. O'Sullivan also held the positions of senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia at the NSC; political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator and deputy director for governance in Baghdad; chief adviser to the presidential envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process; and fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Her publications include Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism (2003) and an edited volume with Richard N. Haass, Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy (2000). Dr. O'Sullivan is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the Aspen Strategy Group, and the Trilateral Commission. She is an editorial board member of the Washington Quarterly and a board member of TechnoServe, a non-profit organization using business solutions to help alleviate poverty in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She has been awarded the Defense Department's highest honor for civilians, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, and three times been awarded the State Department's Superior Honor Award. In October 2008, Esquire magazine named her one of the most influential people of the century. Dr. O'Sullivan holds a DPhil in Politics and an MSc in Economics from Oxford University and a BA from Georgetown University.