Ivo H. Daalder

Ivo H. Daalder was appointed the United States Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by President Barack Obama in May 2009. He was a Director for European Affairs on President Clinton's National Security Council staff from 1995 to 1997, where he was responsible for coordinating U.S. policy toward Bosnia.

Prior to being appointed to his current position, Ambassador Daalder was a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, specializing in American foreign policy, European security and transatlantic relations, and national security affairs. He is the author of twelve books, including most recently In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the National Security Advisers and the Presidents they Served—From JFK to George W. Bush (with I. M. Destler) and the award-winning America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (with James M. Lindsay). Other books include Beyond Preemption: Force and Legitimacy in a Changing World (2007); Crescent of Crisis: U.S.-European Strategy for the Greater Middle East (2006); Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (2000); and The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response: NATO Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces since 1967 (1991).

Ambassador Daalder was educated at Oxford and Georgetown Universities, and received his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is married to Elisa D. Harris, and they have two sons, Marc and Michael.