Ronald D. Asmus, 1957–2011

NATO had few better friends than Ronald Asmus. In 1993, when many felt the end of the Cold War meant the end of the alliance, Asmus—then an analyst with the Rand Corporation—argued that NATO was more important than ever. Allowing formerly communist states like Poland and Hungary to join the organization, he wrote in Foreign Policy, would finally make Europe “whole, free, and at peace.” Four years later, as deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, Asmus helped make the alliance’s eastward expansion a reality.

Ronald Dietrich Asmus was born in Milwaukee to German immigrants who had fled their homeland “after surviving the horrors of World War II,” said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. While studying at the University of Wisconsin, Asmus traveled to Berlin and was horrified by the wall separating the communist-controlled east from the democratic west. Looking at the barbed wire and “armed towers manned by soldiers with guard dogs,” he decided that he had to do something to end that division. On returning to the U.S., he switched his major from engineering to history and international relations.

Asmus achieved his youthful goal. In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO, and over the next decade another nine ex-communist nations—including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—signed up with the alliance. He “directly assisted many of those countries with their negotiations over NATO membership,” said The Washington Post. After leaving the State Department in 2000, Asmus headed the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington-based think tank.