Steven Pifer is a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. He is also an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where he was a William Perry research fellow from 2018-2020, and a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.

Pifer’s writings focus on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia, and European security. He has offered commentary on these issues on National Public Radio, PBS NewsHour, CNN, Fox News and BBC, and his articles have run in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Interest, Politico, Moscow Times, and Kyiv Post, among others.  He is the author of The Eagle and the Trident: U.S.-Ukraine Relations in Turbulent Times (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), and co-author of The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms (Brookings Institution Press, 2012).

A retired Foreign Service officer, Pifer’s more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine (2001-2004), ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia on the National Security Council (1996-1997). In addition to Ukraine, he served at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Moscow, and London, and with the U.S. delegation to the negotiation on intermediate-range nuclear forces in Geneva. From 2000 to 2001, he was a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Institute for International Studies. He was a resident scholar at the Brookings Institution from 2008 to 2017.

Ambassador Pifer is a 1976 graduate of Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in economics.