Venkateshwaran Lokanathan is a nonresident senior fellow on India at the Atlantic Council and a national security and foreign policy scholar with more than two decades of experience spanning government service, academia, and policy research. He served in India’s National Security Council Secretariat from 2014 to 2020, where he contributed to strategic policy formulation, interministerial coordination, bilateral engagements, and national security assessments, with a particular focus on India’s strategic relationships and national security policymaking.
Lokanathan has held senior academic leadership positions at Rashtriya Raksha University, including founding director of the School of International Cooperation, Security and Strategic Languages and dean of research and publications. He has also taught and supervised graduate research at universities across India.
His international policy experience includes fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei. His research focuses on national security strategy, Indo-Pacific security, and India’s relations with the United States and China, and he has published and spoken extensively on these issues in academic and policy forums.