Stephen Watts

Biography

Stephen Watts is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation and an adjunct assistant professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. His research has focused on stability and peace operations, insurgency and counterinsurgency, coalition diplomacy, and political development during and after civil wars. At RAND he has assessed strategies for stabilizing failed states, the U.S. Army's capabilities for stability operations and security force assistance, and U.S. security force assistance policies for Afghanistan and Africa. Watts received his Ph.D. in government from Cornell University (where he was awarded the Esman Prize for best dissertation in government), and he has held research fellowships at Harvard University's Belfer Center and the Brookings Institution. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he served as a foreign affairs officer responsible for peacekeeping planning for the Balkans in the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he was twice awarded a Superior Honor Award for his work. He has served in short-term assignments in the State Department's Office of Policy Planning, at U.S. Embassy Sarajevo, and at the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command in Afghanistan.