Ronald D. Asmus is the Executive Director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Center and is also responsible for strategic planning at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). Asmus has played a key role in expanding GMF’s operations in Brussels, as well as its recent overall growth and expansion. A leading policy entrepreneur in US-European relations for over two decades, Asmus served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs from 1997-2000 and has been a senior analyst and fellow at Radio Free Europe, RAND, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Asmus has been a pioneering voice in the debate over post-Cold War European security and NATO's transformation and has published widely on the subject, including his recent books Opening NATO's Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (Columbia, 2002), and A Little War that Changed the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West (Palgrave Macmillan, January 2010). Asmus’s diplomatic accomplishments have been recognized by the US Department of State and the governments of Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden. He holds a PhD in European Studies, a Master’s degree in Soviet and East European studies from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University, and a BA in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.