State, Pentagon, and more potential appointments.

Names: State, Pentagon, and more
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 6:48pm
Andrew Shapiro, a former Senate policy advisor to Hillary Clinton, is slated to become the new head of the State Department's bureau of political-military affairs, sources tell The Cable. The office is one of the bureaus under the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) confirmed reports this week that Secretary Clinton has asked her to serve as the undersecretary, and she has accepted.

A nonproliferation hand says that Ted Warner will serve as the DoD rep. to the START treaty renegotiation talks. Warner is a former Pentagon Soviet military expert recently with the Rand Corporation.

Undersecretary of defense for policy Michèle Flournoy is fulfilling previously reported plans to restructure her policy shop. Among the changes: she is preparing to name an assistant secretary of defense for global security affairs, a rejiggered portfolio that will now include cyber, space, nuclear, and counterproliferation issues. Some former=2 0Bush appointees from that shop have recently been given notice. Meantime, Washington Russia hands say they expect Flournoy to name Georgetown University professor Celeste Wallander as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia and Eurasia, reporting to Alexander Vershbow, the recently nominated assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Wallander served as a Russia advisor to the Obama campaign.

Obama intends to nominate Susan Burk as a U.S. special representative of the president to the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, with the rank of ambassador, the White House said in an announcement this week. In this role, Burk will serve as the chief U.S. envoy to the key multilateral talks viewed by some as a make-or-break moment for the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Burk currently serves as the deputy coordinator for homeland security in the State Department office of the coordinator for counterterrorism. She would succeed Chris Ford, who held the job until September 2008.

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration intends to nominate former U.S. ambassador to Egypt Francis Ricciardone as deputy U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, former U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith as deputy to the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Norwegian Kai Eide (Galbraith's wife is Norwegian),=2 0and former diplomat Timothy Carney to head a U.S. team preparing for Afghanistan's elections.