Christopher Ford

Background

About Christopher Ford

Dr. Christopher Ford, CStJ, FRSA, is a Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies in the School of Defense and Strategic Studies at the Virginia campus of Missouri State University and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the Pharos Foundation at Oxford. He is also an Advisory Board member at the American Foreign Policy Council, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Center for Global Security Research (CGSR), and a Distinguished Fellow at the Scalia Law School's National Security Institute (NSI). From February 2021 until January 2023, he worked in various capacities at the MITRE Corporation, including as a MITRE Fellow and the founding Director of the Center for Strategic Competition. From 2021 to 2024, he was a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In previous government service, Dr. Ford was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, and served in that role from January 2018 until January 2021, for the last 15 months also fulfilling the duties of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. Before that, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for WMD and Counterproliferation at the National Security Council, and before that on the staffs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Banking Committee, and the Appropriations Committee, and as Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute. He has also served as U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, General Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Staff Director of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. A graduate of Harvard (summa cum laude), Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and Yale Law School, Dr. Ford was ordained by Roshi Joan Halifax of the Upaya Zen Center as a lay chaplain in a lineage Soto Zen Buddhism. In 1994-2011, he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Dr. Ford is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of the arts. He is the author of the books "China Looks at the West: Identity, Global Ambitions, and the Future of Sino-American Relations,""The Mind of Empire: China's History and Modern Foreign Relations"​ (2010) and "The Admirals'​ Advantage: U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War"​ (2005). Full publications list: newparadigmsforum.com.