Robert Bruce Zoellick (born July 25, 1953) is the current United States Deputy Secretary of State. Before his present position, he served as United States Trade Representative from February 7, 2001 until February 22, 2005.
Zoellick was raised in Naperville, Illinois. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1975 from Swarthmore College and received his J.D. from the Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 1981.[1][2]
Zoellick served in various positions at the Department of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988, including Counselor to Secretary James Baker, Executive Secretary of the Department, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Policy.
"During President [George H. W.] Bush's Administration, Bob Zoellick served with Secretary of State James Baker as Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, as well as Counselor to the Department (Under Secretary rank). In August 1992, Ambassador Zoellick was appointed White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President."[3] Zoellick was also appointed the President's personal representative, or Sherpa, for the G-7 Economic Summits in 1991 and 1992.
After leaving government service, Ambassador Zoellick was appointed an Executive Vice President at Fannie Mae (1993–1997).[4][5] Zoellick served as the John M. Olin Professor of National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy (1997–1998), Research Scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and Senior International Advisor to Goldman Sachs.[6][7]
Named U.S. Trade Representative at the beginning of President George W. Bush's first term, Zoellick was a member of the Executive Office, with the rank of Ambassador. According to the U.S. Trade Representative web site, Zoellick completed negotiations to bring China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization (WTO), developed a strategy to launch new global trade negotiations at the WTO meeting at Doha, shepherded Congressional action on the Jordan Free Trade Agreement and the Vietnam Trade Agreement, and worked with Congress to pass the Trade Act of 2002, which included new Trade Promotion Authority.[8]
On January 7, 2005, President George W. Bush nominated Zoellick to be Deputy Secretary of State. [9] Zoellick assumed the office on February 22, 2005.
Zoellick's approach to public policy to date appears to be more that of a committed nationalist than that of a free-trader, according to Tom Barry, the policy director of the International Relations Center, who has written that Zoellick "regards free trade philosophy and free trade agreements as instruments of U.S. national interests. When the principles of free trade affect U.S. short-term interests or even the interests of political constituencies, Zoellick is more a mercantilist and unilateralist than free trader or multilateralist."[10]
While not usually considered a neoconservative, Zoellick has strong affinities with them. In a January 2000 Foreign Affairs essay entitled "Campaign 2000: A Republican Foreign Policy," he was one of the first of those now associated with George W. Bush's foreign policy to invoke the notion of "evil," writing: "[T]here is still evil in the world — people who hate America and the ideas for which it stands. Today, we face enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them. The United States must remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat its enemies. People driven by enmity or by a need to dominate will not respond to reason or goodwill. They will manipulate civilized rules for uncivilized ends." The same essay praises the "idealism" of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Two years earlier, Zoellick was one of the signatories (along with Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, William Kristol, and others) of a Jan. 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton drafted by the Project for a New American Century calling for "removing Saddam's regime from power."[11]
Robert Zoellick also serves or has served as a board member on a number of private and public organizations: Alliance Capital , Said Holdings , and the Precursor Group ; a member of the advisory boards of Enron and Viventures , a venture fund; as a Director of the Aspen Institute's Strategy Group, Council on Foreign Relations, the German Marshall Fund of the United States , and the World Wildlife Advisory Council ; and a member of Secretary William Sebastian Cohen 's Defense Policy Board .[12][13] He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
