Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1987 - 1991). He had previously been Director of Soviet Affairs for the National Security Council staff (1983 - 1987). Professor in the Practice of International Diplomacy at Columbia University, in 1996 he wrote an account of his first-hand experience of the collapse of the Soviet Union: “Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union”.