Dimitri Simes

Who is Dimitri Simes?

Dimitri K. Simes is a foreign policy analyst and author who serves as president of The Center for the National Interest and publisher of the foreign policy journal The National Interest. Simes served as an informal policy adviser to Richard Nixon, who appointed him to lead the center in 1994.

Simes has chaired the Center for Russian and Eurasian Programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was the director of a Soviet-focused program at Johns Hopkins University. He has also taught at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Simes was born in Moscow to secular Jewish parents and graduated with an M.A. in history from Moscow State University. He immigrated to the United States in 1973. In the 1970s, Simes was a noted Kremlinologist analyzing Soviet politics. In the 1980s he became a frequent fixture on the Public Broadcasting System's MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, now known as PBS NewsHour, where he continues to appear regularly.

Simes's writings include After the Collapse: Russia Seeks its Place as a Great Power, Détente and Conflict: Soviet Foreign Policy 1972-1977, and Soviet Succession: Leadership in Transition. He has also written for newspapers and journals, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy.