Biography for Victoria Nuland

First Name: Victoria

Last Name: Nuland

Title: U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO

Organization: NATO

Country: United States

Spouses: Married to Robert Kagan, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a monthly columnist for The Washington Post.

Children: Two children, Elena and David

Education: She has a B.A. from Brown University

Languages: She speaks Russian and French, and smattering of Chinese.

CV: Victoria Nuland was sworn in as the 18 th United States Permanent Representative to NATO on July 13, 2005. A career Foreign Service Officer, she was Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney from July 2003 until May 2005 where she worked on the full range of global issues, including the promotion of democracy and security in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Lebanon and the broader Middle East. She was United States Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO in Brussels, Belgium from July 2000 to July 2003. She was instrumental there in NATO’s historic invocation of Article 5 of its charter – “an attack on one ally is an attack on all” – in support of the U.S. after September 11, 2001. She also worked intensively on the enlargement of the Alliance to include 7 new members, the creation of the NATO-Russia Council, NATO’s first deployment “out of area” to Afghanistan and its defense of Turkey during Operation Iraqi Freedom. She was awarded the State Department’s Superior Honor award for this work and the Cross of Merit from the Government of Lithuania. From 1997-1999, she was Deputy Director for former Soviet Union affairs at the Department of State, with primary responsibility for U.S. policy towards Russia and the Caucasus countries. In that capacity, she was awarded the Secretary of Defense’s Distinguished Civilian Service medal for her work with the Russians during the Kosovo air campaign. She has twice been a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In 1999-2000, she looked at the effect of anti-Americanism on U.S. relations with other major world powers as a “Next Generation” Fellow at the Council, and in 1996-1997, as a State Department Fellow, she directed a CFR task force on “Russia, its Neighbors and an Expanding NATO,” which was chaired by Senator Richard Lugar. From 1993-1996, she was Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of State where she worked on the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, Bosnia and Kosovo policy and the U.S. intervention in Haiti, among other issues. From 1991-1993, she covered Russian internal politics at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow focusing on Boris Yeltsin and his government. She has also served on the Soviet Desk (1988-90), in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia where she helped open the first U.S. Embassy (1988), in the State Department’s Bureaus of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1987) and in Guangzhou, China (1985-86).