David L. Aaron | |
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11th United States Ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development | |
In office August 2, 1993 – 1997 |
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President | Bill Clinton |
Preceded by | Alan Larson |
Succeeded by | Amy L. Bondurant |
Personal details | |
Born |
David Laurence Aaron August 21, 1938 Chicago, Illinois |
Political party | Democratic |
David Laurence Aaron (born August 21, 1938) is an American diplomat, and international expert and writer who served in the Jimmy Carter administration. He graduated from Occidental College with a BA, and from Princeton University with an MPA. He later received an honorary Ph.D from Occidental College. He is currently director of the RAND Corporation's Center for Middle East Public Policy.
Aaron was born in Chicago. He entered the U.S. foreign service in 1962, where he served as a political and economic officer in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In 1964 he was assigned to the NATO desk at the Department of State. He subsequently served as a political officer to NATO where he worked on the Nuclear Planning Group and on the Non Proliferation Treaty. He then joined the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency where he served as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT, during which Aaron was a key negotiator of an agreement with the Soviet Union to reduce the risk of nuclear weapon accidents. He was then recruited to serve on Henry Kissinger's National Security Council staff during the Nixon administration, from 1972 to 1974. During that time, Aaron drafted NSSM 242 on Nuclear Strategy, which came to be known as the Schlessenger Doctrine.
In 1974, on the recommendation of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Aaron became Senator Walter Mondale's legislative assistant. The following year, Aaron was task force leader of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence. He was the principal architect of the Committee's recommendations. Aaron would later follow Mondale to the Jimmy Carter Presidential campaign.