Statement About F. Stephen Larrabee

RAND researcher helped lay the groundwork for NATO expansion and adaptation

RAND notes with profound regret the death of F. Stephen Larrabee, a specialist in European affairs and transatlantic security and one of several RAND analysts whose research is credited with laying the foundation for the U.S. approach to the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe in the 1990s. He was 79.

“Stephen Larrabee's trailblazing research helped set the stage for the NATO the world knows today,” said Jason Matheny, president and chief executive officer of RAND, a research institute based in Santa Monica, California. “During a long RAND career, he distinguished himself as a perceptive analyst of European political and security issues.”

Larrabee and two RAND colleagues, Ronald D. Asmus and Richard L. Kugler, outlined a pro-expansion argument in 1993 in Foreign Affairs magazine. The essay came to be seen as highly influential. “Nationalism and ethnic conflict have already led to two world wars in Europe,” they wrote. “Whether Europe unravels for a third time this century depends on if the West summons the political will and strategic vision to address the causes of potential instability and conflict before it is too late.”

That article and other published analysis by Larrabee and his colleagues helped set the stage for the NATO expansion to take place. In 1994, NATO's leaders decided to open membership to former Eastern bloc members, and RAND research underpinned and built support for the 1997 NATO decision to invite Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to join the alliance. It was the first in a series of expansions.

After joining RAND in 1990, Larrabee remained affiliated with the research institute for the rest of his life. Most recently, he was a senior political scientist based at RAND's Washington, D.C., office and often focused on U.S. policy toward Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and the Eastern Mediterranean. He was also on the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty.

Previously, Larrabee had been vice president and director of the Institute of East-West Security Studies in New York from 1983 to 1989. He also served on the U.S. National Security Council staff in the White House as a specialist on Soviet–East European affairs and East-West political-military relations, and earlier as an analyst and deputy head of Soviet research at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich.

He received a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1966, and a master's in international affairs in 1969 and doctorate in 1978 from Columbia University. Larrabee also attended the University of Munich from 1970 to 1971.

Topics

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization