September 2018

David Santoro is Director and Senior Fellow of Nuclear Policy Programs at Pacific Forum CSIS. He specializes in strategic and deterrence issues, as well as nonproliferation and nuclear security, with a regional focus on the Asia Pacific and Europe. Santoro’s current interests focus on cross-regional deterrence and assurance, especially between Northeast Asia and Europe, and on nonproliferation and nuclear security in Southeast Asia. He also manages the Forum’s track 1.5/2 nuclear policy dialogues. They include U.S.-China strategic nuclear dialogues; U.S.-Japan, U.S.-South Korea, and U.S.-Japan-South Korea extended deterrence dialogues; U.S.-Myanmar nonproliferation and nuclear security dialogues; and Asia-Pacific multilateral meetings on nonproliferation and nuclear security. Before joining Pacific Forum CSIS, Santoro worked on nuclear policy issues in France, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In spring 2010, he was a visiting research fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, and in 2010-2011, he was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Santoro is co-editor, with Tanya Ogilvie-White, of Slaying the Nuclear Dragon (University of Georgia Press, 2012) and author of Treating Weapons Proliferation (Palgrave, 2010). His essays have been published in several monograph series and academic journals, such as Nonproliferation Review, Proliferation Papers, and Survival, and his op-eds have appeared in the Bangkok Post, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Japan Times ,PacNet, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Santoro holds degrees in languages, literature, history, and international relations from various universities, including a Ph.D. from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.