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Matt Pottinger

Senior Advisor


Matt Pottinger is a Senior Advisor at the Marathon Initiative and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Pottinger previously served at the White House for four years in senior roles on the National Security Council staff, including as Deputy National Security Advisor from 2019 to 2021.  In that role, he coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. Before that he served as Senior Director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on Asia, and in particular its shift on China policy.

“Matt Pottinger conceptualized and drove the most important shift in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War,” said former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster about Matt’s role in helping reorient the United States toward great-power competition with China.

Before his White House service, Matt spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.  He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010.  Following active duty, Matt founded and led an Asia-focused risk consultancy and ran Asia research at a multi-strategy investment fund in New York.

 


Work

Strategic Sequencing, Revisited

Internasjonalt Forum | Interview with Elbridge Colby: An exclusive interview that the head of the editorial committee, Ciwan Can, conducted with Elbridge Colby about how a possible victory for Donald Trump could affect the war in Ukraine and security in Europe. ........

CSDS Brussels: Roundtable

Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy | Dr. Mitchell spoke at the Brussels School of Governance about how great powers use diplomacy throughout history in a talk titled "Skillful Statecraft Across the Ages."....

Wess Mitchell Interviewed on WBUR

WBUR | "It's startling the change in public outlook in these countries," Wess Mitchell, former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, says. "And the calculation is that if they don't come into NATO, they're worried that they could be a tempting target."..........

Wess Mitchell Interviewed in Echo24

Echo24 | nder Donald Trump, Wess Mitchell was the top official in Europe at the State Department. Today, he works in a think-tank that profiles itself on the turn to Asia. But now war has broken out in Europe in the terrain he knows........

Wess Mitchell Quoted in Bloomberg

Bloomberg Quint | “For all of Biden’s rhetoric about not being Trump, once he gets into office the reality is we have to make decisions that our allies may not like, and that doesn’t go away just because he shows up and proclaims this nirvana moment,”......

Panel: Wilson Center – Wess Mitchell

Wilson Center | Former German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell in conversation with Dan Hamilton about their independent Reflection Group report "NATO 2030: United for a New Era."...

Wess Mitchell Quoted in Washington Post

Washington Post | “Most Europeans know that beneath the headlines of European euphoria on Biden, the U.S. and Europe still have significant differences of interest that cannot be waved away,” said A. Wess Mitchell, a former assistant secretary of state for European Affairs. He cited long-standing U.S. opposition to a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, the U.S. push for Europeans to spend more on defense and an uneven playing field in trade....

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The Wall Street Journal

Wall Street JournalThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization should devote much more of its time and resources to security threats posed by China even while seeking to deter Russian aggression, a high-level assessment of the alliance’s future says in a report to be made public Tuesday....

Additional Articles

Books

Book Chapters and Reports