Steven Pifer on the Elbe River

Steven Pifer, ’76, is an affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. His 27 years as a career Foreign Service officer focused on nuclear arms control, the Soviet Union (later Ukraine and Russia) and European security. His assignments included deputy assistant secretary of state with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council.

He also served on the NATO and Soviet desks at the State Department and at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw and Moscow during Soviet times. He was at the embassy in London when the Soviet Union collapsed (among other things, freeing the Baltic states) and Europe’s post-Cold War transformation began, before returning to Washington to work on the post-Soviet space.