Alumni Confidential: Mira Rapp-Hooper

Tell us how your career started. What drew you to global affairs and the Indo-Pacific region?

In high school, I became obsessed with European history and the question of why countries go to war when it is so destructive and costly. This drew me toward international relations.

But the most formative moment for me happened in my senior year. My high school was a few blocks from the World Trade Center, giving me a horrifying front-row seat to a historic tragedy on September 11. I wanted to help ensure that fewer people around the world experience events like that day.

I enrolled at Columbia University to get my Ph.D. in international relations with a focus on security and nuclear weapons. My dissertation focused on extended deterrence and how alliances backed by nuclear weapons are different than other alliances. I came to understand that many of the international relations theories based on 20th century Europe were now taking shape in Asia. That drew me to the Indo-Pacific.

You attended IGCC’s PPNT Boot Camp in 2012. How did that impact your academic and career goals?

Being in a political science Ph.D. program, I was a unique type of nerd—in any given university only a couple of people might be interested in nuclear weapons. But PPNT brought together a cornucopia of nuclear nerds.

It was delightful to connect with Ph.D. students and national lab staff who brought a hard sciences perspective to nuclear issues. That gave me a much more holistic understanding of how the nuclear enterprise functions and what that means for foreign policy. I also got to spend three weeks with folks at similar stages of their careers, many of whom I’ve stayed in touch with ever since.

You’ve had an incredible career in academia, in the Washington, D.C. think tank space, and now in government. How are these environments different?

PPNT was instrumental in helping me move between these worlds. I met current and former policymakers including Brad Roberts, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense at the time. Brad and I stayed in touch. He was supportive throughout my dissertation and as I moved to Washington. The program is an invaluable resource for folks who want to bring their academic expertise to the policy world.

I found it refreshing after graduate school to work at a think tank where I could collaborate with peers who were interested in similar types of policy questions. At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I ran a program focused on promoting maritime transparency in the Indo-Pacific at a time when China was becoming increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea. At places like the Center for a New American Security, Yale Law School, or the Council on Foreign Relations, I had more space to develop my own research and publish books and articles in the direction of my choosing.

But government service has been the best chapter of my career by far. I began at the National Security Council (NSC), where I was the director of Indo-Pacific strategy for the first two-and-a-half years of the Biden administration. I was the lead author on the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy and managed the Quad alliance with Australia, Japan, and India, and trilateral relations with South Korea and Japan—two incredibly important new partnerships. Serving in government has brought to life many of the ideas that I worked on in academia and think tanks.

At the NSC, I lead an incredible team of experts covering the whole waterfront of Asia. This region presents many challenges, but just as many—if not more—opportunities. When we came into office in 2021, there was so much work to be done in the Indo-Pacific. Our regional strategy has succeeded beyond our expectations because we formulated it around our allies and partners, who in turn stepped up bigger and better than we could have anticipated. That has led to more dynamism and partnerships in the region. We’re building a new regional architecture that we hope will last for many years to come.

That’s a lot to do in like a decade. Are you just like, really, really tired?

[Laughs] Yeah. I’m super tired. I’m also the mom of two young girls. So that adds to the exhaustion. But it’s an energizing form of exhaustion.

Engaged scholars often wonder how research can influence policy. As someone who works in government, what kinds of academic research do you find most useful?

Policymakers have very little time to read. I mostly read classified intelligence or memos that have been written elsewhere within the U.S. government, and have almost no time to digest outside research. For scholarship to reach policymakers, it has to produce unique insights that can’t be found elsewhere.

Two different types of work succeed in doing that. The first is based on on-the-ground and specialized knowledge that competes with what government intelligence might tell you. I have relied on such outside expertise for Burma [Myanmar], where the conflict took a surprising turn last fall and has proceeded in almost unimaginable ways since. Scholars who’ve been studying Myanmar for years have unique insights that no one else can provide.

Another form of scholarship that can land on policymakers’ desks is more generalist. It’s about strategic issues that we’re all familiar with, but where the framing is fundamentally different. That helps you better understand the work you’re doing, because policymakers also have very little time to step back and understand where they are.

What projects do you and your team prioritize these days? What do you spend most of your time thinking and worrying about?

We worry about the increasingly aggressive foreign policy behavior that China has undertaken in East Asia. Managing the U.S.-China relationship is a big challenge. The Biden administration defines the relationship as one of competition, but we also intend to use diplomacy and other tools to manage it and avoid conflict.

While we’re doing the hard diplomatic work of keeping channels of communication open, Beijing is using pressure and coercion against U.S. allies in the South China Sea. I spend a lot of my time managing the situation there, not only supporting our allies, but encouraging all of the claimants in the South China Sea to work together to preserve international law and freedom of navigation in this critical waterway.

We’re also addressing the challenges posed by North Korea and its illicit nuclear and missile program, which have become even greater this year because Pyongyang has partnered with Moscow in unprecedented ways that reduce North Korea’s isolation and increase its capabilities. When it comes to North Korea, there’s no more important partnership than the trilateral we’ve built with South Korea and Japan. We’re working with them to coordinate policy, share intelligence, and push back against the Moscow-Pyongyang partnership.

The challenges in the region are many, but the opportunities are just as great. Our allies and partners around the world are stepping up to work with us not just on security, but on issues like protecting critical technologies, advancing secure supply chains, and combating climate change. A great deal of positive work is happening in the region, which leaves me very optimistic about the future.

The next presidential election could be consequential for U.S.-China relations. What might a new administration mean for U.S. policy? Should we expect major shifts, or continuity?

It’s hard for me to say, and I won’t characterize the policy of a future administration. What I will say is that our current Indo-Pacific policy has significant bipartisan support, particularly on Capitol Hill. There is a consensus that we need these new partnerships that strengthen our hand in the Indo-Pacific. No matter what, the enthusiasm for those partnerships will endure.

Women are underrepresented in national security. Have you seen that change since you began in this field? What advice do you give to young women who are starting in security careers?

The advice I give is that national security is for girls.

It didn’t used to be. It didn’t feel that way when I started in graduate school. But the picture has changed radically and for the better. There are still a lot of challenges, but they’re newer and better challenges than a decade ago—like achieving gender balance at the highest levels of the administration and throughout the national security community.

That said, it’s not easy to rise in this world. I encourage young women to identify other women who may not be at the highest heights of government, but are five years ahead of where you are, and ask them for their guidance.

Just as you rely on other women to help you along your path, it’s important that young women in national security start paying it forward right away. That means having coffees and going on walks with other women who might be seeking the same career objective, and making sure that you’re sharing your experience in ways that raise them up too.

IGCC invests a lot in supporting the up-and-coming generation of policy professionals in this space. Thinking about them, what’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever gotten?

I had a boss early on who advised me to pick the boss and not the job. She was a superb boss herself—Michèle Flournoy, a leading light in national security, especially for women.

She was totally right. It’s not that the job doesn’t matter. But if you’re given an opportunity with an individual with a wonderful reputation and a great career trajectory, who is invested in mentorship, the mileage that you’ll get out of the position is totally different from one that might look great on paper, but doesn’t have that incredible person at its helm.

I also find that as you’re developing your expertise, it can be tempting to flip between topics or become a generalist. But I advise young people to develop a specific expertise and then branch out as their career goes on.

It is incredibly difficult to cover the breadth of a subject at any point in your career. I watch my boss, Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, do it magnificently every day. But very few of us are that good at it.

Start off with a specific focus, then move to the areas where you’re having the most fun. Whether you’re an academic, a think tanker, or work in government, you should feel motivated every day to solve the problems in front of you. When you feel that way, you’ve found the right topic, and that’s your expertise.

So my advice is to pick the boss, and then follow the fun.