Ambassador Priscilla A. Clapp

Ambassador Clapp is a retired Minister-Counselor in the U.S. Foreign Service.  She is currently engaged in foreign policy analysis and community service with several institutions.

During her 30-year career with the U.S. Government, Ambassador Clapp served as Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Burma (1999-2002), Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy in South Africa (1993-96), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Refugee Programs (1989-1993), Deputy Political Counselor in the US Embassy in Moscow (1986-88), and chief of political-military affairs in the US Embassy in Japan (1981-85).  She also worked on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, in its East Asian, Political Military, and International Organizations Bureaus, and with the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.  She speaks Russian, Japanese, French, and some Burmese.

Prior to government service, Ambassador Clapp spent ten years in foreign policy and arms control research, under contract to the MIT Center for International Studies and as a research associate at the Brookings Institution.  She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.  Her books include:  with Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2006), with I.M.Destler et al., Managing an Alliance: the Politics of U.S.-Japanese Relations (Brookings, 1976), with Morton Halperin, U.S.-Japanese Relations in the 1970's (Harvard, 1974).  She is the author of numerous publications on Burma and U.S. Burma policy with the US Institute of Peace, the Brookings Institution, the East-West Center, Australia National University, and others.  She was a major contributor to the Asia Society’s 2010 Task Force Report on Options for U.S. Burma Policy.