WASHINGTON, DC – The Atlantic Council today announced that Ambassador Daniel Fried has been named a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative and Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center.
During his forty-year career with the Foreign Service, Ambassador Fried served in key postings around the world, including assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, special assistant and NSC senior director for Presidents Clinton and Bush, US ambassador to Poland, and State Department coordinator on sanctions policy.
“I am delighted to welcome Ambassador Fried to the Atlantic Council as a distinguished fellow,” said Atlantic Council President and CEO Fred Kempe. “Ambassador Fried witnessed firsthand the fall of the Soviet Union and played a key role in developing and implementing US policy toward Europe in the post-Soviet era. He dedicated his career to advocating a Europe whole, free, and at peace, and we look forward to drawing on his deep expertise at this critical moment for Europe.”
Ambassador Fried became one of the US government’s foremost experts on Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. As Polish desk officer in the late 1980s, Fried was one of the first in Washington to recognize the impending collapse of Communism in Poland and helped develop the immediate response of the George H.W. Bush Administration to these developments. He served as political counselor at the US Embassy in Warsaw from 1990 to 1993 and witnessed Poland’s difficult but ultimately successful free market, democratic transformation.
Ambassador Fried crafted the policy of NATO enlargement to Central European nations and, in parallel, NATO-Russia relations. He helped lead the West’s response to Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine starting in 2014; as State Department coordinator for sanctions policy, he crafted US sanctions against Russia and negotiated the imposition of similar sanctions by Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia.
“I am delighted to join the Atlantic Council, an organization committed to the transatlantic alliance,” said Ambassador Fried. “The transatlantic alliance today faces monumental challenges, but there is also enormous opportunity. I look forward to working with the Atlantic Council and continuing to engage with our European allies and partners.”
For more information or to schedule an interview with Ambassador Fried, please email press@atlanticcouncil.org.