Caucasus Experts in Key Administration Roles
Fiona Hill, a widely respected analyst of post-Soviet countries at Washington’s Brookings Institution, will serve as senior director for Russia and Eurasia in the Trump Administration’s National Security Council. Originally from northern England, from 2006 to 2009 Dr. Hill was a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, a ‘think tank’ of the U.S. intelligence community that focused on strategic global trends.
While most of Dr. Hill’s work has in recent years focused on U.S.-Russia relations, in May 2015, her center organized a conference on “Armenians and Legacies of World War I” that discussed the history of the Armenian genocide and contemporary Armenian-Turkish relations and in July 2015, and in July 2015, a co-authored a paper on the U.S. Caucasus policy.
At the State Department, where many senior positions remain unfilled, John Heffern stepped up as acting Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, serving as lead advisor to Rex Tillerson in his first talks as secretary of state with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. From 2011 to 2014, Heffern was U.S. ambassador to Armenia and worked actively to promote bilateral relations.