February 1, 2005

Speaker Biographies

Daniel Blumenthal joined AEI in November 2004 as a resident fellow in Asian studies. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the first George W. Bush administration. In that capacity, he led a team that formulated and implemented defense policies and programs toward and for these portfolio countries. Before his service at the Department of Defense, he was a lawyer practicing in New York and a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Ellen Bork is deputy director at the Project for the New American Century, a foreign policy organization based in Washington, D.C. From 1996 to 1998, she was the senior professional staff member for Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. From 1998 to 1999, she served as counsel to Martin Lee, chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, and from 2001 to 2002, she was a fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels. In the mid-1980s she served in the Department of State and Department of Education. Ms. Bork earned a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University and a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. She has served as an election observer in Cambodia and Indonesia. Ms. Bork's articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Asian Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Humanitarian Affairs Review, and the Forward. She writes a column for the New York Sun.

Richard Fisher is vice president of the International Strategy and Assessment Center and director of the Center’s Project on Asian Security and Democracy. Mr. Fisher is a recognized authority on the PRC military and the Asian military balance and their implications for Asia and the United States. Fisher has worked on Asian security matters for over twenty years in a range of critical positions — as Asian Studies director at the Heritage Foundation, senior analyst for Chairman Chris Cox’s Policy Committee in support of the report of the Select Committee for U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, and a consultant on PLA issues for the congressionally chartered U.S. China Security & Economic Review Commission. The author of nearly 200 studies on challenges to American security, economic and foreign policy in Asia, Fisher is a frequent commentator on Asian issues for radio and television and has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House International Relations Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the U.S. China Security Commission, on the modernization of China’s military

Robin Niblett was appointed executive vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2001 and is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Center's management and performance and for developing strategies and programs to sustain the Center. In addition, Mr. Niblett was named director of the CSIS Europe Program in July 2004, having long served as a senior fellow, directing the CSIS Atlantic Partnership project and specializing in U.S.-European security and economic relations and the ongoing process of European political and economic integration. Mr. Niblett is the author or contributor to a number of books and reports, including The Atlantic Alliance Transformed (CSIS, 1992) and From Shadows to Substance: An Action Plan for Transatlantic Defense Cooperation (CSIS, 1995), and coeditor with William Wallace of Rethinking European Order: West European Responses, 1989-97 (Palgrave, 2001).

David Shambaugh is professor of political science and international affairs, director of the China Policy program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University (1996 to present), and nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution (1998 to present). He has authored four and edited twelve books. His newest study, Modernizing China’s Military, was published by the University of California Press in 2003. He has also published articles in Foreign Affairs, International Security, Survival, The China Quarterly, The China Journal, Washington Quarterly, World Policy Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, Asian Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, and other periodicals. He is also a frequent commentator in international media. He has been a visiting scholar at numerous institutions in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States. Most recently, he was selected as a 2002~2003 Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Radek Sikorski is the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative and resident fellow at AEI. He was Poland’s deputy minister for foreign affairs from 1998 to 2001. As the country’s deputy minister for defense in the first democratically elected government after the fall of Communism, he spearheaded Poland’s drive to join NATO. From 1986 to 1989, Mr. Sikorski was a war correspondent to Afghanistan and Angola, contributing to the Spectator (London) and National Review. He is the author of Dust of the Saints—a Journey to Herat in Time of War (1989) and The Polish House—an Intimate History of Poland (1997). His photograph from Afghanistan received the World Press Photo Award in 1988. From 1981 to 1989, Mr. Sikorski was a political refugee in the United Kingdom.

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