Suzanne Nossel

Suzanne Nossel became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in 2009. She is former Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch. Earlier, she has been Vice President of Strategy and Operations for the Wall Street Journal, from 2005 to 2007. After leaving the UN, she worked in business development for Bertelsman Media (2001-2005).

In a 2004 essay, she wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, addressing the reclaiming of liberal internationalism by American progressives, especially to counter neoconservatism.

To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war. Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership -- diplomatic, economic, and not least, military -- to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Unlike conservatives, who rely on military power as the main tool of statecraft, liberal internationalists see trade, diplomacy, foreign aid, and the spread of American values as equally important.

From 1999 to 2001, she was Deputy to the Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, reporting to Richard Holbrooke.

She is the founder of the weblog www.democracyarsenal.org.