Richard D. Hooker, Jr.

Dr. Richard D. Hooker, Jr. is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He held The Theodore Roosevelt Chair in National Security Affairs at the National Defense University and previously served as the Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies at NDU and as Dean of the NATO Defense College in Rome. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council Institute and a Senior Associate with the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center. A former White House Fellow, Dr. Hooker taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point and held the Chief of Staff of the Army Chair at the National War College in Washington, D.C. As a military officer and senior defense official, he served in the White House in the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump in the Executive Office of the President and National Security Council, most recently as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia.

Dr. Hooker graduated with a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy in 1981 and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in International Relations from the University of Virginia. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. National War College, where he earned an M.S. in National Security Studies. He has authored more than eighty articles and eight books on security and defense-related topics. Dr. Hooker has lectured extensively at leading academic and military institutions in the United States and abroad, including Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Georgetown. Prior to his retirement from active duty, Dr. Hooker served for 30 years in the United States Army as a parachute infantry officer in the United States and Europe. While on active duty he participated in military operations in Grenada, Somalia, Rwanda, the Sinai, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, including command of a parachute brigade in Baghdad from January 2005 to January 2006. His military service also included tours in the offices of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army. He has been decorated by the Secretary General of NATO and the Polish and Lithuanian Governments.