Jack F. Matlock

Jack F. Matlock is a career diplomat who served on the front lines of American diplomacy for 35 years (1956-1991). He served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for European and Soviet Affairs on the National Security Council Staff from 1983 to 1986, and as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1983. Before his appointment as Ambassador to Moscow, he served three tours at the American Embassy in the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1981. His other Foreign Service assignments were in Vienna, Munich, Accra, Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam, in addition to tours in Washington as Director of Soviet Affairs in the State Department (1971-74) and as Deputy Director of the Foreign Service Institute (1979-80). Since he retired from the Foreign Service in 1991, he has held academic posts at Columbia University, Princeton University, Hamilton College, Mt. Holyoke College, and the Institute for Advanced Study, where he was George F. Kennan Professor from 1996 to 2001. He is the author of Looking Back to Look Ahead: Thoughts of a Nonagenarian Halfway through His Tenth Decade (Hipploclides Press, 2024); Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray--And How to Return to Reality (Yale University Press, 2010); Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (Random House, 2004, paperback edition 2005); and Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Random House, 1995).