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Derek J. Mitchell

Derek J. Mitchell is senior fellow and director for Asia in the CSIS International Security Program (ISP), having joined the Center in January 2001. Mitchell concurrently serves as director of CSIS''s new Southeast Asia Initiative, which was inaugurated in January 2008 and is the Center''s first initiative dedicated to the study of Southeast Asian affairs. Mitchell is responsible for managing all Asia-related studies conducted in ISP, which currently include projects involving the security of the Taiwan Strait, the future of the U.S.-Japan and U.S.–South Korea alliance, China''s foreign and security policy and U.S.-China relations, and the integration of India into the strategic mix of East Asia. Mitchell was special assistant for Asian and Pacific affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (1997–2001), when he served alternately as senior country director for China, Taiwan, Mongolia, and Hong Kong (2000–2001), director for regional security affairs (1998–2000), senior country director for the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore (1998–1999), and country director for Japan (1997–1998). He was the principal author of the Department of Defense (DOD) 1998 East Asia Strategy Report, and he received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Exceptional Public Service in January 2001. Prior to joining DOD, Mitchell served as senior program officer for Asia and the former Soviet Union at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington, D.C. From 1993 to 1997, he developed the institute''s long-term approach to Asia and worked on democratic development programs in Armenia, Burma, Cambodia, Georgia, Pakistan, and Thailand. In 1989, he worked as an editor and reporter at the China Post on Taiwan. From 1986 to 1988, he served as assistant to the senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Mitchell received a master of arts in law and diplomacy degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1991 and a bachelor''s degree from the University of Virginia in 1986. He studied Chinese language at Nanjing University in China and speaks Mandarin Chinese proficiently. He is the coauthor of China: The Balance Sheet—What the World Needs to Know Now about the Emerging Superpower (PublicAffairs, 2006) and coeditor of China and the Developing World: Beijing''s Strategy for the 21st Century (M.E. Sharpe, 2007).