Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs

 

 
Thomas R. Pickering holds the personal rank of career ambassador, the highest in the United States Foreign Service.  Pickering was sworn in as under secretary of state for political affairs in May 1997.  Prior to becoming under secretary, he served as the president of the Eurasia Foundation, a Washington-based organization that makes small grants and loans in the states of the former Soviet Union in support of democracy and economic reform.

 

Pickering previously served as ambassador to the Russian Federation from 1993 until 1996. He also served as ambassador to India from 1992-1993, permanent representative to the United Nations from 1989-1992, ambassador to Israel from 1985-1988, to El Salvador from 1983-1985, and to Nigeria from 1981-1983. He was assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs from 1978 to 1981. From 1974 until 1978, Pickering was the United States ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. From 1973 to 1974, he was executive secretary of the Department of State and special assistant to Secretary William Rogers and Secretary Henry Kissinger.  Between 1959 and 1961, Pickering served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State, in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and from 1962-1964 in Geneva as political adviser to the U.S. delegation of the 18 Nation Disarmament Conference. Following his assignment to Geneva, Pickering studied Swahili at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington and was assigned in 1965 to Zanzibar.  In 1967, he became deputy chief of mission in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and in 1969, he returned to Washington to become deputy director of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

 

In 1983 and in 1986, Pickering won the Distinguished Presidential Award and in 1996, the Department's Distinguished Service Award. In 1984, he received an honorary doctorate-in-laws degree from Bowdoin College. Subsequently, he has been similarly honored by 10 other universities. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. His foreign languages are French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic and Hebrew. Pickering is currently vice chairman of Hills Co.