Geoffrey Kemp is Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center.

His current areas of interest focus on U.S. policy in the greater Middle East including the geopolitics of energy in the Caspian Basin and Persian Gulf, the Arab-Israeli peace process, and U.S. relations with Iraq and Iran. He received his Ph.D. in political science at M.I.T. and his M.A. and B.A. degrees from Oxford University.  He served in the White House during the first Reagan administration and was Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Near East and South Asia on the National Security Council Staff. 

Prior to his current position, he was a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he was Director of the Middle East Arms Control Project.  In the 1970s he worked in the Defense Department in the Policy Planning and Program Analysis and Evaluation Offices and made major contributions to studies on U.S. security policy and options for South West Asia. 

From 1970 to 1980, he was a tenured member of the faculty of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.  He presently teaches a seminar on U.S. Middle East policy with Professor Fouad Ajami at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He frequently comments and writes on US foreign policy in the US, European, Middle East, and East Asian media.

He is the author or co-author of many books and monographs on regional security, including Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East, 1997; Point of No Return: The Deadly Struggle for Middle East Peace, 1997; Energy Superbowl:  Strategic Politics and the Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin (1997); America and Iran: Road Maps and Realism (Washington, DC: The Nixon Center, 1998); Iran’s Bomb: American and Iranian Perspectives (editor), (Washington, DC: The Nixon Center, 2004); U.S. and Iran, The Nuclear Dilemma: Next Steps (Washington, DC: The Nixon Center, 2004), and Iran and Iraq: The Shia Connection, Soft Power, and the Nuclear Factor (Washington, DC: USIP, 2005). 

His current work is focused on the growing role of the major Asian countries in the Middle East and what this means for American foreign policy. His book on the topic, The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East was published by the Brookings Institution Press in April 2010.