Dan Baer is senior vice president for policy research and director of the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was a diplomatic fellow at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies from 2017 to 2019. He served in former governor John Hickenlooper’s cabinet as executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education from 2018 to 2019. Under President Obama, he was U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from 2013 to 2017. Previously, he was a deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2009 to 2013. Before his government service, Baer was an assistant professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, a faculty fellow at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, and a project leader at the Boston Consulting Group.
He has appeared on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, BBC, PBS Frontline, Al Jazeera, Sky, and the Colbert Report. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Foreign Affairs, Politico, the Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Westword, the Denver Post, and other publications. He holds a doctorate in international relations from Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a degree in social studies and African American studies from Harvard. He is married to Brian Walsh, an economist at the World Bank.
The political and security situation in the Caucasus has changed, and it would be a mistake to not ask ourselves, in a dynamic moment like this, whether there are any new opportunities to build a more promising future in the wake of a tragic past.
The South Caucasus's geography—the borders the region shares with Russia— has long overshadowed its politics. But with Moscow occupied with its war against Ukraine, countries in the region are developing alternative foreign policy priorities and recalibrating relations with the West. As Armenia moves closer to the United States and Europe, the government in Georgia is lurching towards Moscow – despite opposition from its society. Meanwhile, Armenia and Azerbaijan are in talks for a historic chance for a peace treaty which could serve as the bedrock of a new regional order.
What is the significance of the South Caucasus for the West? How likely is a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan? What can the U.S. do to encourage regional cooperation and reconciliation? And how should the U.S. support democratic aspirations of Georgian society?
Join the Carnegie Endowment’s Europe program to discuss the U.S. role for a new order in the South Caucasus with Ambassador Yuri Kim, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs;, Marie Yovanovitch, former Ambassador to Armenia and Ukraine and senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program; and Dan Baer, director of the Europe Program at Carnegie and former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
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