People in the news

Michael Nacht

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs (since May 2009)

(Defense Department)

Why He Matters

A former NASA missile aerodynamicist turned academic, Nacht has leveraged his colorful career into an influential position in the post-9/11 Pentagon. As assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs, he serves at the helm of an office that develops policy directly for Defense Secretary Robert Gates on issues ranging from weapons of mass destruction to cyberthreats.

Nacht worked in the Clinton administration as assistant director for strategic and Eurasian affairs in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (since integrated with the State Department). He returns to government from the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy. He is considered an expert on U.S. national security as well as on America's strategic relations with both Russia and China.

Read more

Background

At a Glance

Career History: Dean and professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy (1998-2008); Dean and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park's School of Public Affairs (1984-1998); Assistant director for strategic and Eurasian affairs at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Washington D.C. (1994-1997); Various positions at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1973-1984)
Birthday: 1942
Hometown: New York City, New York
Alma Mater: Columbia University, Ph.D. in political science, 1973; New School for Social Research, M.A. in political science, 1970; New York University, M.S. in operations research, 1969; Case Western Reserve University, M.S. in statistics, 1966; New York University, B.S. in aeronautics and astronautics, 1963

Office: 1400 Defense Pentagon, Washington DC, 20301
Email
Web site

Path to Power

A New York City native with grandparents hailing from Romania and Lithuania, Nacht attended public schools as a youth then studied aeronautical engineering at New York University.

NASA

He graduated in 1963 at the relatively young age of 20, then moved to Ohio to work at a NASA lab outside Cleveland as an aerospace engineer. Speaking of his time with NASA, where he worked on the stability of launch vehicles, Nacht told a Berkeley alumni newspaper: "I was one little ant in the army that put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s."

Read more

Nacht left Ohio in 1966 to join a consulting firm in Connecticut that tested low-level airdrop systems for use in Vietnam. He stayed until 1970, during which time he obtained two master's degrees: one in statistics in 1966, the other in operations research in 1969.

Then intrigued by an ad in The New York Times about a liberal studies program -- "something I had never heard of," he said -- he decided to move beyond the technical realm to the broader world of international affairs. This move prompted him to pursue a third master's, this one in political science, and then a Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he wrote a dissertation on decision making in Vietnam and definitively launched his new career.

The Academic Years

The switch to international affairs was a dramatic one for Nacht. "I was trained as an engineer, where, at least in school, the answers are given at the back of the book," he said in 2000. "In foreign policy, not only are the answers not given, there is no book."

Nonetheless, Nacht credits his engineering background for helping him develop successful problem-solving skills. "In engineering, you're forced to brush aside a lot of the complexity and isolate a core problem area, and then try and develop a set of tools and techniques to solve a problem. It lends to a clear, logical way of thinking about things ...", he said in a 2003 radio interview.

Nacht used this clear thinking to construct his new career, starting at Harvard University. He served first as a lecturer then associate professor of government and public policy, eventually working up to the position of associate director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. One of Nacht's most notable achievements at Harvard was becoming a founding co-editor of the scholarly journal International Security, which takes an analytical approach to security and arms-control issues.

Tenure at Harvard was not in the stars for Nacht, however, and in 1984 he moved on to the University of Maryland, College Park. He worked as a professor and then became dean of the School of Public Affairs in 1987. During the next seven years, he more than tripled the population of the student body, added new programs and staged the university's first-ever televised presidential debate. Among those debating was then-presidential contender Bill Clinton, who would later name Nacht to his first Washington job.

From Washington to California, and Back

Nacht, who had been active in the 1992 Clinton campaign, was selected as assistant director for strategic and Eurasian affairs at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he served from 1994 to 1997. During this time he "led the agency's work on nuclear weapons reductions and missile defense negotiations with Russia and helped establish the first nuclear weapons policy dialogue with China," participating in four Clinton presidential summits with then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin and one summit with then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Though he was asked to remain, Nacht returned to the University of Maryland during Clinton's second term,"where he assumed he would complete his career." But in 1998, Berkeley offered the iob of Goldman School of Public Policy dean, and he instead headed west to California, where he spent the next decade helping the school flourish. After 9/11, he also chaired advisory panels of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency on counterterrorism and counterproliferation.

Over the years Nacht has published dozens of articles and authored or co-authored five books, including "Challenges to American National Security in the 1990s" and "Beyond Government: Extending the Public Policy Debate in Emerging Democracies."

Nacht's path took him back to government when Barack Obama nominated him in April 2009 for his new post in the Defense Department. He stepped into his latest role in May 2009 after Senate confirmation.

The Issues

Nacht's Pentagon office for global strategic affairs is emblematic of the U.S. shift from reactive, post-9/11 policy to more long-term strategy for countering current and future emerging threats. Enhanced cybersecurity, more mature missile-defense systems and improved readiness for chemical and biological warfare are among some of the department's goals.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Among numerous security challenges, the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to be a daunting priority.

Read more

In July 2009, Nacht addressed the risks of WMD in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee. "Today's challenges range from unprotected nuclear weapons and materials in established nuclear states, to the capacity for extremist groups in unstable or failing states to develop lethal chemical or biological agents, to the capabilities of organized networks to transfer WMD building blocks across unsecure regions," he said.

Nacht highlighted the Pentagon's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program as a success, saying it has evolved over the years from a "nuclear-centric effort focused on the former Soviet Union to a more expansive effort to counter WMD threats throughout the world," Nacht said. The Pentagon must now react to new security risks including "genetically engineered pathogens or established actors looking to acquire new weapons types" as it works to support President Barack Obama's goal of "securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years."

Nacht also highlighted U.S. efforts to help other countries reduce their weapons arsenals, including the destruction of chemical munitions in Shchuch'ye in central Russia and the installation of a comprehensive surveillance system in major shipping lanes of the Caspian Sea to help Azerbaijan's Coast Guard interdict WMD smuggling.

Regarding dangerous pathogens that can be easily weaponized, Nacht said both Afghanistan and Pakistan have asked for assistance with biological threat-reduction efforts. He concluded that international cooperation will be essential for successfully combating the wide range of dangers.

Missile Defense and 21st Century Threats

In April 2009, Nacht highlighted the need for "an appropriate mix of short-, medium-, and long-range ballistic missile defense capabilities."

He said that strengthened relations with Russia would be one of his top priorities at the Pentagon, given that "having the Russians on board with missile defense could not only help ease tensions in the region, but potentially also lead to the creation of a better system with a larger protective umbrella." Critics accused the Obama administration of caving in to Russian pressure with his September 2009 decision to scrap his predecessor's proposed antiballistic missile shield -- including 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and a radar facility in the Czech Republic -- in favor of a new program focused on shorter-range threats from Iran. The two countries are nonetheless being offered roles in the new program, which will "use ship-based Aegis radars and their related Standard missile interceptors."

Regarding cybersecurity, the Pentagon is pursuing collaboration with other government agencies and the private sector.

At an event to kick off Cyber Security Awareness Month in October 2009, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said "no one can do this alone," highlighting the multiple sources of cyber attacks -- "from teenage hackers to hacker activists, to organized crime to industrial spies, to foreign intelligence services" -- and the "astonishing speed" of the attacks, "not in hours or minutes, or even seconds, but in milliseconds."

The Network

Nacht served in Bill Clinton's first administration, and has likely reunited with others from that era now back in government as Obama appointees. He also shares a Harvard Kennedy School background with others currently at the Defense Department, including Ashton Carter, now under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and James N. Miller, the principal deputy under secretary for policy.

Campaign Contributions

Nacht has regularly rooted for Democrats over the years, supporting Bill Clinton with $1,000 in 1996 and John Kerry in his 2004 bid for president with two donations of $1,000 each. In 2006, he gave $1,000 in support of Harris N. Miller's unsuccessful attempt to become a Virginia senator, and pledged at least $4,600 in three donations to Barack Obama's presidential run in 2007 and 2008.

Additional Resources