Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy at the Center for New American Strategy
Liz Lynch

"Belfer Center Alums Launch Center for New American Strategy (CNAS)"

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Winter 2008-09

While many might think the last thing Washington needs is another think tank, Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy saw a niche no one had filled and decided to challenge this notion. They were right.

“We looked around Washington and there were a number of places that tried to be bipartisan, but it was a very careful, cautious, let’s-not-offend-each-other bipartisanship,” said Flournoy. “Consequently, they didn’t always take some of the toughest issues on directly,” she said. “So we felt there was room to bring those groups together, establish some rules of civility, but then have at it intellectually and see if we couldn’t discuss and debate our way through to some new insights and recommendations.”

The Center for a New American Strategy (CNAS), which Campbell and Flournoy co-founded in February 2007, is a nonpartisan organization focused on national security and defense. In less than two years, it has grown from a “handful” of participants to a full-time staff, a military fellows program, a writers-in-residence program, and an internship program that brings in young people from all over the country.

“We’ve sort of had a ‘Field of Dreams’ experience," Flournoy said. "If you build it, they will come."

Flournoy and Campbell met at Oxford and began their professional relationship in 1989 when she was a research fellow and he was the assistant director at the Belfer Center – then Harvard’s Center for Science and International Affairs (CSIA).

Both agree that their time at the Center influenced how they decided to run CNAS. “The kind of intellectual debate that took place at CSIA is definitely something that stuck with both of us,” Flournoy said. “It was civil and cordial, but the gloves were off intellectually.”

Kurt Campbell

Campbell started out as an International Security Program research fellow at the Center, and later became an associate professor of public policy and international relations at the Kennedy School and assistant director of the Center.

His experience at the Belfer Center, Campbell said, involved “lots of deep thinking” about issues related to security, and “helped broaden my perspective on how to define national security.”

Prior to starting CNAS, Campbell served as senior vice president and director of the International Security Program and Henry A. Kissinger Chair in National Security Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Before that, he served in several positions in government, including as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific in the Pentagon, director on the National Security Council staff, deputy special counselor to the president for NAFTA in the White House, and White House fellow at the Department of the Treasury.

Michèle Flournoy

Prior to founding CNAS, Flournoy was a senior adviser at CSIS. She also held positions as a distinguished research professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and worked in the Pentagon as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction and deputy assistant secretary of defense.

Flournoy was responsible for three policy offices in the Office of the Secretary of Defense: Strategy; Requirements, Plans, and Counterproliferation; and Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasian Affairs.

Flournoy started out as a research fellow for an early CSIA initiative called the Avoiding Nuclear War project. “It was a great opportunity to write and publish,” she said. Also, she said, “It’s hard not to have a great experience when you’re working for Joe Nye, Graham Allison, and Al Carnesale.”

For more information about this publication please contact the Belfer Center Communications Office at 617-495-9858.

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