Primary Job Title Senior Advisor & Consultant Primary Organization 
Stimson Center
Location Washington, District of Columbia, United States Regions Washington DC Metro Area, Southern US Gender Male
Robert Suettinger currently is a Senior Advisor and Consultant at the Stimson Center, working on issues pertaining to Chinese politics. Prior to joining Stimson, he was an Analytic Director at CENTRA Technology, Inc. for nine years. Previously, he had been Director of Research for MBP Consulting Limited LLC, a Senior Policy Analyst at RAND and a
Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Suettinger retired from federal government service in 1998, after nearly 25 years in the intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracies. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1975, and spent his entire career in the analysis of Asian affairs. After several years as an analyst and manager in CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, he was assigned as Director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Subsequently, he served for five years as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia on the National Intelligence Council (NIC).
Beginning in March 1994, Suettinger was Director of Asian Affairs on the National Security Council, where he assisted National Security Advisors Anthony Lake and Samuel R. Berger in the development of American policy toward East Asia. He returned to the NIC as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia in October 1997.
Suettinger holds an M.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He served in the U.S. Army in the then Republic of Vietnam in 1969-70.
