The Donald Trump administration on Thursday nominated current White House counterproliferation adviser Christopher Ford to be assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation.
If confirmed by the Senate, Ford would lead State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation: the arm of Foggy Bottom tasked with preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. The Trump administration wants to cut the bureau’s budget to about $15 million in the current fiscal 2018 from roughly $17 million in the last budget year. Ford would report to the undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs — another position the White House has not yet filled.
It would be the second tour of duty at State for Ford: a Yale-educated lawyer and longtime Senate aide who since January has worked at the White House as director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation at the National Security Council. In that role he has been a public face for the Trump administration on nonproliferation matters, including making the case against the United Nations nuclear-weapon ban treaty.
Before joining the Trump administration, the occasionally blunt Ford was a legislative aide for several Senate committees. According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked in the Senate from 2013 to 2016, most recently as chief legislative counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Prior to that stint in the Senate, Ford spent five years at the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning Washington-based think tank founded by Cold War-era nuclear strategist and scientist Herman Kahn.
Before the Hudson Institute, Ford worked five years in George W. Bush administration’s State Department, where he was principal deputy assistant secretary of state and the U.S. special representative for nuclear nonproliferation.
