The German Marshall Fund Adds Zachary Hosford as Deputy Director of its Asia Program

Now under leadership of foreign policy veteran Julie Smith, program focuses on U.S.-Europe-Asia Relations and Transatlantic Approaches to China

December 18, 2019—Zachary M. Hosford has joined the German Marshall Fund as the Deputy Director of the Asia Program. Hosford comes to GMF from the office of Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) where he was Senior Foreign Policy Advisor. He was previously the Senior Advisor for Asia-Pacific Strategy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian & Pacific Security Affairs. In this role, Hosford advised the Assistant Secretary on U.S. defense policy in the Indo-Pacific, and served as the lead author of the Department’s first-ever Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy. Prior to joining DoD, Hosford was a Fellow in the Asia program at the Center for a New American Security.

China’s rise has increasingly become a transatlantic issue. Challenges posed by the development of 5G, AI, and other frontier technologies;  Beijing’s expansive set of Belt and Road Initiative projects, and differing views on norms and values are only a few of the elements that Europe and the United States will need to confront together. An innovative player at the intersection of US-Europe-Asia policy debates, GMF’s Asia program provides analysis of developments in China and across the Indo-Pacific region, convenes policymakers and scholars at events around the world, and produces original research on the issues driving the transatlantic agenda on Asia.

In September, Julie Smith re-joined GMF as Director of both the Asia and Future of Geopolitics programs. Smith returned to Washington after spending a year in Berlin as a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Bosch Academy. Smith previously directed the Transatlantic Security Program and the Strategy and Statecraft Program at CNAS. She served as the Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden; and before that, she spent three years at the Department of Defense as the Principal Director for European and NATO Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

For the past ten years, the Asia Program has been bringing together Europeans, Americans, and Asians in a series of unique trilateral engagements designed to give participants the chance to discuss an array of economic, political, and security issues. Its signature trilateral is the Stockholm China Forum. Other annual events include the Japan Trilateral Forum and the India Trilateral Forum.