Robert L. Suettinger

About

Robert L. Suettinger currently is a consultant in private practice. Previously, he has been Director of Research for MBP Consulting Limited LLC, a Senior Policy Analyst at RAND and a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Suettinger retired from federal government service at the end of 1998, having served for nearly 25 years in the intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracies. A China specialist by academic training (Columbia University M.A.), he joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1975. After several years as an analyst and manager in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, he was assigned as Director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Subsequently, he served for five years as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia on the National Intelligence Council (NIC).

Beginning in March 1994, Suettinger was Director of Asian Affairs on the National Security Council, where he assisted National Security Advisors Anthony Lake and Samuel R. Berger in the development of American policy toward East Asia. He returned to the NIC as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia in October 1997.

Suettinger is the author of Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of US-China Relations, 1989–2000, published in June 2003 by The Brookings Institution.