Julianne Smith

Julianne (“Julie”) Smith is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and is currently serving as a Weizsäcker Fellow at the Bosch Academy in Berlin. She is the former Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. She serves as a contributing editor to Foreign Policy, where she coedits “Shadow Government.”

From 2012-2013, she served as the Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States. In addition to advising the Vice President on a wide range of foreign and defense policy issues, she represented him in Cabinet and Deputies level interagency meetings. During March and April of 2013, she served as the Acting National Security Advisor to the Vice President.

Before her post at the White House, she served for three years as the Principal Director for European and NATO Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon. In that capacity, Ms. Smith acted as the principal advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs for all matters falling within the broad spectrum of NATO and European policy. Her office managed the Department’s bilateral relationships with 31 European countries. In January 2012, she was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Ms. Smith directed the CSIS Europe Program and the Initiative for a Renewed Transatlantic Partnership, where she led the Center’s research and program activities on U.S.-European political, security, and economic relations. She authored or contributed to a number of CSIS books and reports, including Alliance Reborn: An Atlantic Compact for the 21st Century (2009), Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change (2008), Transforming NATO (…again) (2006), and America and the World in the Age of Terror (2005). She co-directed the Transatlantic Dialogue on Terrorism, which examined U.S.-European disagreements over the root causes of terrorism.

Earlier, Ms. Smith served as deputy director and senior fellow in the CSIS International Security Program, where she oversaw the management of more than 30 security-related projects and focused on a range of European security issues, including European defense integration, transatlantic cooperation on climate change, and EU-U.S. counterterrorism cooperation.

Ms. Smith has also worked at the German Marshall Fund, the Association of the U.S. Army on the Project on the Role of American Military Power, and the British American Security Information Council. In 1996/97, she worked in Germany at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow.

Ms. Smith is a recipient of the American Academy in Berlin Public Policy Fellowship and the Fredin Memorial Scholarship for study at the Sorbonne in Paris. She received her B.A. from Xavier University and her M.A. from American University. She spent a year learning German at the University of Munich. Ms. Smith serves on the Advisory Council of the Alliance for Security Democracy; the Board of Advisors of the Truman National Security Project; and the Board of Trustees of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. She is an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies. She is currently an Associate Fellow with Chatham House, home of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, in London, and a Senior Associate with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.