Expert Bio
Thomas E. Graham is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His book, Getting Russia Right, was published in September, 2023. He is a cofounder of Yale University’s Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies program and sits on its faculty steering committee. He is also a research fellow at Yale’s MacMillan Center. He has been a lecturer in global affairs and political science since 2011, teaching courses on U.S.-Russian relations and Russian foreign policy, as well as cybersecurity and counterterrorism. Graham was special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff from 2004 to 2007, during which he managed a White House-Kremlin strategic dialogue. He was director for Russian affairs on the staff from 2002 to 2004.
Graham served as an advisor to Kissinger Associates from 2008 to 2021. He was a Foreign Service officer for fourteen years. His assignments included two tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the late Soviet period and in the middle of the 1990s, during which he served as head of the political internal unit and acting political counselor. Between tours in Moscow, he worked on Russian and Soviet affairs on the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a policy assistant in the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy.
Graham serves on the advisory board of Russia Matters, a project of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs with the goal of enhancing the understanding of Russia among policymakers and the interested public. He also serves on the editorial board of the U.S.-Canada Journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA-Canada Institute.
Graham holds a BA in Russian studies from Yale University and an MA in history and a PhD in political science from Harvard University.
affiliations
- Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, Belfer Center, Russia Matters, advisory board, member
- Supporters of Civil Society in Russia, advisory board, member
- TEGraham Consultants, LLC
- U.S.-Canada Institute, USA-Canada: Economics, Politics, Culture Journal, editorial board, member
- Wilson Center, Kennan Institute, Kennan council, member
- Yale University, Russia, East European, and Eurasian Studies program, steering committee, member
- Yale University, MacMillan Center, research fellow
Media Inquiries
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Could Russia have put itself on a steady course toward a consolidated democracy in the 1990s? At the time, Russian leaders vowed that was their goal, and Western leaders offered their support. Yet B…
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Russia’s early setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine could have foreclosed on some of President Vladimir Putin’s sweeping war objectives, but he is unlikely to relent given the conflict’s momentum.
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The goal of the workshop is to find new ways for college and university educators to encourage their students to learn about international relations and the role of the United States in the world. It provides an opportunity for educators to explore the wide array of CFR and Foreign Affairs teaching and research resources available to the academic community, participate in substantive briefings with subject experts as well as in group discussions, and share best practices and educational tools for bringing global issues into the classroom. The workshop included an opening night dinner conversation on the role of the United States in the world; plenary sessions on the Middle East, societal implications of AI, and climate policy and implementation; a presentation on CFR Education and fellowship opportunities; and a breakout discussion with a choice among regional topics.
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This month’s vote will be the first conducted while Russia is involved in a major war, and Vladimir Putin is counting on a strong show of national unity and highlighting support in occupied Ukraine.
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Thomas Graham, distinguished fellow at CFR, and Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China studies at CFR, lead the conversation on China-Russia relations. FASKIANOS: Welcome to today…
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After the 2013–14 Revolution of Dignity, which overthrew a deeply corrupt, Russian-backed regime, Ukraine declared its ambition to integrate into the Euro-Atlantic community of free-market democracie…
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Getting Russia Right offers a practitioner’s account of why the great post-Cold War hopes for an enduring U.S.-Russian strategic partnership grounded in free markets and democratic values gave way to a bitter adversarial relationship that puts the United States and Russia on opposing sides of the critical issues in global affairs today.
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When the Soviet Union collapsed more than thirty years ago, American leaders hoped that Russia would embark on a transition to free-market democracy. Shared democratic values, the thinking went, woul…
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