Martin Indyk
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Martin Sean Indyk (b. 1951 - ) is Acting Vice President for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Indyk served as United States ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs during the Clinton Administration. He is arguably best known as one of the lead U.S. negotiators at the Camp David talks. He is also known as the framer of the U.S. policy of dual containment which sought to 'contain' Iraq and Iran, which were both viewed as Israel's two most important strategic adversaries at the time.
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[edit] Biography
He was born on July 1, 1951 to a Jewish family in London, England, but grew up and was educated in Australia, growing up in the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag. He graduated from the University of Sydney in 1972 and got a PhD in international relations from the Australian National University in 1977. He immigrated to the United States and later gained American citizenship in 1993. He was formerly married to Jill Collier Indyk with whom he had two children, Sarah and Jacob.
[edit] Political and diplomatic career
In 1982, Indyk began working as a deputy research director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington.[1][2] In 1985 Indyk served eight years as the founding Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research institute specializing in analysis of Middle East policy. He has also been an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies where he taught Israeli politics and foreign policy.
He has taught at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, and the Department of Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Indyk has published widely on U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli peace process, on U.S.-Israeli relations, and on the threats of Middle East stability posed by Iraq and Iran.
He served as special assistant to U.S. President Bill Clinton and as senior director of Near East and South Asian Affairs at the United States National Security Council. While at the NSC, he served as principal adviser to the President and the National Security Advisor on Arab-Israeli issues, Iraq, Iran, and South Asia. He was a senior member of Secretary of State Warren Christopher's Middle East peace team and served as the White House representative on the U.S. Israel Science and Technology Commission.[3]
He served two stints as United States Ambassador to Israel, from April 1995 to September 1997 and from January 2000 to July 2001[4] and was the first and so far, the only, foreign-born US Ambassador to Israel.
The Weekend Australian of March 22-3, 2008 [5], reported that an Iraqi operative in the Gaza Strip wrote a letter, dated June 30, 2001, to Baath Party officials in Baghdad suggesting the assassination of Indyk, a plot which came to nothing.
He is currently a Senior Fellow and Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in the Foreign Policy Studies program at The Brookings Institution. Indyk's involvement and that of the institution are noted in John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, saying: “Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the Middle East was William Quandt, a former National Security Council official with a well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings’s coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre’s director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk.
In his video interview with Leadel.NET, Martin Indyk speaks of the path he followed from a young int’l relations student and volunteer in a kibbutz during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, until he was made the first (and second) Jewish American ambassador to Israel.
In a January 8th 2009 Democracy Now! interview, Indyk said he was "unprepared" to discuss current Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations with Norman Finkelstein regardless of the fact that these were mentioned in his book, Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy. Indyk said that he had been "sandbagged" because he claimed he had only agreed to talk about Innocent Abroad. Finkelstein challenged Indyk's book and statements nevertheless. [6]
[edit] References
- ^ Clinton's Indyk Appointment One of Many From Pro-Israel Think Tank
- ^ News from the USIA Washington File
- ^ U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Commission, Office of International Technology, Technology Administration
- ^ Israel
- ^ Saddam ordered Australian's death - National - smh.com.au
- ^ Former Amb. Martin Indyk vs. Author Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel’s Assault on Gaza and the US Role in the Conflict
[edit] Select Publications
- Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East. 2009. Simon & Schuster
[edit] External links
- Brookings Institution profile
- U.S. State Department Archives (People)
- http://www.leadel.net/talks/society-politics/the-roadmap-to-peace
- Indyk in a dual interview with political scientist Norman Finkelstein, discussing the US Role in Israel’s 2008-09 Assault on Gaza on Democracy Now, January 8, 2009.
| Diplomatic posts | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Edward Djerejian |
U.S. Ambassador to Israel 1995–1997 |
Succeeded by Edward Walker |
| Preceded by Edward Walker |
U.S. Ambassador to Israel 2000–2001 |
Succeeded by Daniel Kurtzer |
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