Robert Suettinger

Robert L. Suettinger is an American international relations scholar currently serving as a senior advisor at The Stimson Center and an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). He was national intelligence officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) from 1997 to 1998 during the Clinton administration. While there, he oversaw the preparation of national intelligence estimates for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. His areas of specialty are the People's Republic of China and the North Korean nuclear weapons program.

Education Suettinger holds a BA from Lawrence University and a MA in comparative politics from Columbia University.

Career Suettinger served as Director for Asian Affairs on the National Security Council from March 1994 to October 1997, where he assisted National Security Advisers Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger in the development and implementation of U.S. policy toward the Asia-Pacific region.

He also served as deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia at the NIC from 1989 to 1994, and from 1987 to 1989 was President George H. W. Bush's director of the office of analysis for East Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

After working in the Clinton administration, Suettinger joined the Brookings Institution as a senior analyst.

Publications

Books

Beyond Tiananmen – The Politics of U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000 (Brookings Institution Press, 2003). The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China's Communist Reformer (Harvard University Press, 2024).

Reports

“American ‘Management’ of Taiwan Strait ‘Crises:’ 1954, 1958 and 1996” in Michael D. Swaine, ed., Managing Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analysis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2006 “Tough Engagement: U.S.-China Relations” in Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan, editors, Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions and Foreign Policy, Brookings Institution, 2000

Articles

Leadership Policy toward Taiwan and the United States in the Wake of Chen Shui-bian's Reelection, Hoover Institution, July 30, 2004