Department of State, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Department/Agency: Department of State
Position:
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Executive Schedule: Executive Level IV - Presidential Appointment with Senate Confirmation
Major Responsibilities:
Key Competencies and Preferred Qualifications:
Insight:
The diplomat tasked to the world’s most populous region is the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Christopher R. Hill, who held the post during President George W. Bush's second term, highlighted his top priorities in an April 2008 interview with the Seattle Times.
“The China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship we have in the world,” Hill said. “We have some 57 dialogues with Chinese counterparts, ranging from global warming to economic and trade issues." He added, "We spend a great deal of time and attention on things Chinese with the understanding that in the long run we have to have a good working relationship with 1.3 billion people.”
As Hill told the Asia and Pacific subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee: “One of the key challenges before us is how we interact with China as an emerging regional and global power in ways that simultaneously enhance our bilateral relationship and have a beneficial impact on the security and development of our friends and allies.”
Another key player in the region is North Korea. It was Hill who journeyed to Pyongyang in October 2008 and salvaged a disarmament deal under which the authoritarian state agreed once again to abandon work on nuclear weapons.
North Korea had restarted assembly on a nuclear facility that could make plutonium, arguing that the United States failed to make good on an earlier promise to take North Korea off its list of terrorist states. But days after Hill’s mission, with the North Koreans’ promising to stop rebuilding their nuclear sites and agreeing to give access to weapons inspectors, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promptly removed North Korea from that list. It was a dramatic turnaround in relations with a state that President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address had branded part of “an axis of evil.”
The State Department and Hill personally had felt pressure to bring the six-party nuclear disarmament talks talks to a successful resolution before the end of Bush’s final term. “I don't think a next administration, whether it's Republican or Democrat, would really want to have this issue dropped in their laps,” he told the Seattle Times. The remainder of the six parties (China, Japan, South Korea and Russia) must approve the deal. China helped craft it, but Japan has expressed its intent to seek amendments.
Many other East Asian countries also demand U.S. attention, particularly Myanmar, whose military junta has imprisoned thousands of political dissidents and led a growing refugee population to seek asylum in the United States.
The next assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs must juggle evolving relations with China, growing nuclear concerns and the promotion of democracy throughout the region.
A succession of prominent diplomats have served in this post since its creation in 1949. They include Dean Rusk, W. Averell Harriman, Philip C. Habib, Richard C. Holbrooke, Paul D. Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage and Winston Lord.
Key Relationships – Within the Department or Agency:
Secretary and Deputy Secretary of State
Under Secretary for Political Affairs
Other regional assistant secretaries
Under Secretary for Management
Regional ambassadors
Director of Policy Planning
Key Relationships – Within the Government:
Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, Department of Defense
President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs
Central Intelligence Agency
Department of Commerce
Congressional committees
Key Relationships – Outside the Government:
Asian and Pacific governments
Regional diplomats
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
Asian-American business and cultural associations
Academics who focus on Asia and the Pacific
Nomination Referred to:
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Current Position Profile:
1. Kurt Campbell (Confirmed: June 25, 2009). Former Team Member, Department of Defense Review Team, President-Elect Obama Transition Team, Executive Office of the President and Former Co-Chairman, Executive Fundraising Committee, Pentagon Memorial Fund. Served as Senior Vice President and Director, International Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies (2000-2007).
Recent Position Profiles:
2. Christopher R. Hill, M.A. (2005- 2009). Career Foreign Service. Former ambassador to Korea and head of the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks on North Korean nuclear activities. Former ambassador to Poland and Macedonia. Former special assistant to the president and senior director for Southeast European affairs at the National Security Council. Peace Corps volunteer (Cameroon). Speaks Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian. 3. James Andrew Kelly, M.B.A. (2001-2005). Former president of the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of Honolulu. Former president of Honolulu-based consulting firm EAP Associates, Inc. Former special assistant for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs for the National Security Council. Deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs for East Asia and the Pacific. 4. Stanley O. Roth, M.A. (1997-2001). Former director of research and studies at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Served as special assistant to the president and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council and deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and Pacific affairs. Former director of committee liaison for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and staff director for the House subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs.
| 
