Derek Chollet discusses his contribution to the foreign policy of the Obama administration, in which he served as State Department deputy director of policy planning from 2009 to 2011, special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council (NSC) staff from 2011 to 2012, and U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 2012 to 2015. Chollet outlines the responsibilities of each of his positions, and describes his efforts to reform and expand the capacity of the interagency bureaucracy to effectively advance U.S. foreign policy objectives. He speaks broadly about the range of major foreign policy events and initiatives with which he was closely involved throughout the period of his service, providing details about the Afghanistan strategy review and development of the administration's integrated policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan; the State Department's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review; the administration's Asia rebalance, in which state resources and attention were redirected from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific region; Obama's major introductory foreign policy speeches in 2009; the Arab Spring; the administration's internal deliberations about the possibility of military intervention in Libya and Syria; the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons; and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Also discussed are Chollet's impressions of Obama and Hillary Clinton's visions of the role of the United States in the international system, the difficulty of balancing both pursuing the administration's affirmative policy agenda and responding to urgent crises, Clinton's emphasis on interactions with ordinary people and engagement with civil society organizations, and the professional networks of foreign policy experts and operatives of which Chollet was part prior to the Obama presidency
Presidents--United States; Arab Spring, 2010-; United States Foreign relations Afghanistan; United States Foreign relations Pakistan; United States Foreign relations Asia; United States Foreign relations; Libya History Civil War, 2011-; Syria History Civil War, 2011-; Crimea (Ukraine) Annexation to Russia (Federation); Chollet, Derek H; Obama, Barack; National Security Council (U.S.); Columbia University Faculty; United States. Department of State
Format
oral histories
Genre
Interviews
Date
2022
Physical Description
118 pages
Note (Biographical)
Derek Chollet served in several roles within the Obama administration, including deputy director of policy planning at the State Department from 2009 to 2011, special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning on the Nationa l Security Council staff from 2011 to 2012, and U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 2012 to 2015. Prior to the Obama years, Chollet served in a number of policy positions inside and outside government, including chief speechwriter for the United States ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration, Richard Holbrooke, special advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, and foreign policy advisor to Senator John Edwards from North Carolina. Chollet has also authored and edited a number of books on the history of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. foreign relations, including "The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America's Role in the World," which was published in 2016. At the time of the interview, Chollet was an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and a member of the advisory board for the Obama Presidency Oral History project
Note
Interviewed by Evan D. McCormick on May 29 and September 24, 2020, and August 25, 2022. This interview is part of the Columbia University: Obama Presidency Oral History
Note (Provenance)
Derek Chollet, Gift, transferred from Columbia Center for Oral History Research 2023