The Policy Planning Staff (sometimes referred to as the Policy Planning Council, as the Office of Policy Planning, or by its in-house initialism S/P) is the principal strategic arm of the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy of the United State ...

. It was created in 1947 by

Foreign Service Officer A Foreign Service officer (FSO) is a commissioned member of the United States Foreign Service. FSOs formulate and implement the foreign policy of the United States. They spend most of their careers overseas as members of U.S. embassies, cons ...

George F. Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly hist ...

at the request of Secretary of State

George Marshall George Catlett Marshall Jr. (31 December 1880 – 16 October 1959) was an American army officer and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army under pres ...

to serve "as a source of independent policy analysis and advice for the secretary of state." Its first assignment was to design the

Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred $13.3 billion (equivalent to $ in ) in economic recovery pr ...

. Early directors include

and

Paul Nitze Paul Henry Nitze (January 16, 1907 – October 19, 2004) was an American businessman and government official who served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Sta ...

. More recently came

Anne-Marie Slaughter Anne-Marie Slaughter (born September 27, 1958) is an American international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, political scientist, and public commentator. From 2002 to 2009, she was the dean of Princeton University's School of Public and Intern ...

Jake Sullivan Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan (born November 28, 1976) is an American attorney who served as the National Security Advisor (United States), U.S. national security advisor from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden. Sullivan previously served as Dire ...

Dennis Ross Dennis B. Ross (born November 26, 1948) is an American diplomat and author. He served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton ...

Gregory B. Craig Gregory Bestor Craig (born March 4, 1945) is an American lawyer and former White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2010. A former attorney at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly, Craig has represented numero ...

Paul Wolfowitz Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and dean of Paul H. Nitze Scho ...

, and Richard Haass. Past members include

Zbigniew Brzezinski Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński (, ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), known as Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was Jimmy Carter's National Securi ...

Sandy Berger Samuel Richard "Sandy" Berger (October 28, 1945 – December 2, 2015) was a Democratic attorney who served as the 18th US National Security Advisor for U.S. President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 after he had served as the Deputy National Secu ...

Kori Schake Kori N. Schake ( ; born 1962) is an American international relations scholar currently serving as Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high-level positions in the U.S. Defense and State ...

Michael Armacost Michael Hayden Armacost (April 15, 1937 – March 8, 2025) was an American diplomat and a fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute, who was acting United States Secretary of State during the early days of the administration of P ...

, and

Peter Berkowitz Peter Berkowitz (born 1959) is an American political scientist and legal scholar. In 2019–2021, he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State. He currently serves as the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fello ...

. At least fourteen past members of the Policy Planning Staff have served as ambassadors. The Staff is headed by the

director of policy planning The director of policy planning is the United States Department of State official in charge of the department's internal think tank, the policy planning staff, with a rank equivalent to assistant secretary. The position has traditionally been he ...

. Since January 2025, its director is

Michael Anton Michael Anton (born 1969) is an American conservative essayist, speechwriter and former private-equity executive who is currently the director of policy planning in the second Trump administration since January 2025. Previously, he was a se ...

References

External links

Official website
United States Department of State agencies United States diplomacy 1947 establishments in the United States {{US-gov-stub

See also

References

External links