Peter Rodman

Peter Warren Rodman (November 24, 1943 – August 2, 2008) was a lawyer, government official and foreign policy expert.

Born in Boston, he was educated at The Roxbury Latin School, and later at Harvard College (A.B. summa cum laude), Oxford University (B.A., M.A.), and Harvard Law School (J.D.). In March 2007 he left his position as United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs to become a Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution . He was the author of More Precious Than Peace, a book on the Cold War in the Third World in which he praises the Reagan administration for warding off communism in places like Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia. He was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, Project for the New American Century letter sent to the U.S. President Bill Clinton. He worked extensively with Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, amongst other things helping him write his memoirs. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC, and a Fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of SAIS.

He died from complications of leukemia.

Career

 * 1969–1977: National Security Council staff member, Special Assistant to Dr. Henry Kissinger
 * January 1977 – March 1983: Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
 * April 1984 – March 1986: Director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.
 * March 1986 – January 1987: Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
 * 1987–1990: Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and National Security Council Counselor.
 * 1991–1999: senior editor of National Review
 * 1995–2001: Director of National Security Programs, Nixon Center.
 * July 16, 2001 – March 2007: Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
 * March 5, 2007 – August 2008: Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution

Quotes

 * “the key to multilateralism is not what one thinks of the United Nations but what one thinks of the United States. Those who believe the United States guilty of too many sins in the past—and these include some Americans—will be eager to see restraints on American unilateral action. Those who believe that global freedom and peace and the cause of human rights have more often than not been advanced if not sustained by the United States, acting out of some combination of its own self-interest and a general interest, will find multilateralism a potential source of paralysis.” 1