Philip Gordon

Dr. Philip Gordon was the most senior official focused on the Middle East when he served as the special assistant to the president and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region. With an extensive track record in Washington and at the National Security Council, he worked on issues like the Iranian nuclear program, Middle East peace negotiations, the conflict in Syria, security in Iraq, the democratic transitions in Egypt and North Africa, and bilateral relations with Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Gordon has high-level White House and State Department experience and worked closely with President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and National Security Advisors Susan Rice and Tom Donilon. Called “one of the premier scholar-practitioners of his generation,” by the Council of Foreign Relations and exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Gordon shares insights on the state of geopolitics and the U.S.’s relationship with the Middle East, including the three factors causing the region’s chaos and the four things our nation should be doing about it.

A History of Successful Diplomacy. As assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2009–2013, Gordon was responsible for 50 countries as well as NATO and the European Union, and worked closely with Secretary Hilary Clinton on U.S. policy toward Western and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus, Turkey, and Russia. From 2000–2008, he served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He founded its Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE), a program devoted to transatlantic cooperation, and in 2006, he became a senior fellow there, focusing on U.S. foreign policy regarding Europe and the Middle East.

From 1998–1999, Gordon was director for European affairs at the National Security Council in the administration of President Bill Clinton, where he specialized in NATO, the European Union, Western Europe, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus. From 1994–1998, he was a senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, and editor of its journal, Survival.