Profile

Biography

The Hon. Christopher Ford, CStJ, FRSA, teaches International Relations and Strategic Studies in the DSS program, and is also a Senior Associate in the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Principal of the consultancy Two Ravens Policy & Strategy LLC.

Before joining Missouri State University, he worked as a MITRE Fellow at the MITRE Corporation, where he was founding Director of the Center for Strategic Competition. In 2021-24, he was also a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2018 until 2021, following his unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Dr. Ford served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, also performing the duties of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security from October 2019. Before that, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for WMD and Counterproliferation at the U.S. National Security Council. Dr. Ford has also served on the staffs of the U.S. Senate’s Committees on Foreign Relations, Banking, Appropriations, Governmental Affairs, and Intelligence, as well as serving as staff director of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In other prior government service, he has also been Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation, and (from 1994-2011), an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. A summa cum laude Harvard graduate with a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a law degree from Yale, Dr. Ford is the author of three books and many other publications, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Details

Education

• DPhil in International Relations, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar), 1992
• J.D. in law, Yale Law School, 1995
• A.B. in Government/International Relations, Harvard University, 1989

Teaching

• DSS 725 Instruments of State Power
• DSS 840 Seminar on National Security Strategies
• DSS 601 Seminar on Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control

Professional experience

• Council on Foreign Relations
• International Institute for Strategic Studies
• Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House)
• Royal Society of Arts
• American Society of International Law
• American Bar Association
• District of Columbia Bar Association
• Commonwealth of Virginia Bar Association
• American Association of Rhodes Scholars

Research and professional interests

• Great power strategic competition
• Chinese strategic culture
• Arms control, nonproliferation, disarmament, and nuclear weapons policy and strategy
• Military and diplomatic history
• International relations theory

Awards and honors