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Ely Ratner

Dissertation Fellow
UC Berkeley

Ely Ratner serves as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs. Prior to confirmation, he served as the Director, DoD China Task Force and as a Senior Advisor to China to the Secretary of Defense. Before arriving at the Department of Defense, Dr. Ratner was the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where he was a member of the executive team and responsible for managing the Center’s research agenda and staff. His dissertation argues that democratic transitions are an important cause of foreign-policy realignment with the United States and, furthermore, that the nature of that realignment is conditioned by whether the United States supported the previous nondemocratic regime.

Ely Ratner