The US Senate has approved a new US envoy to NATO, after criticism there were not enough academics working with the alliance. The new appointment, Ivo Daalder, was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, a non-profit public policy organisation which conducts research in areas aimed at strengthening American democracy, pushing economic and social welfare and international security. He is known as an top analyst in European security and US foreign policy, having served Director for European Affairs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff, where he was responsible for coordinating U.S. policy toward Bosnia.

He has his doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was also educated at Oxford and Georgetown University. He has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Science and International Affairs and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and was recipient of a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs and an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations. He also worked with the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and has written extensively on transatlantic relations, nuclear weapons or NATO’s role in a global order and he has been inviting responsible to a nuclear programme-dialogue with Iran.