NDU - Leadership - Ambassador Richard A. Roth

Ambassador Richard A. Roth joined the National Defense University as Senior Vice President in August 2007. Previously he was the Political Advisor to the U.S. Central Command (August 2005-07). Before that assignment, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Senegal and to the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (2002- 05). Ambassador Roth is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and has had extensive experience in the Middle East and Africa. He has held several senior positions at the Department of State in Washington and abroad.

Ambassador Roth served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel (1996-2000) where he was deeply involved in the Middle East Peace Process, including the negotiation of various accords between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon. He returned to Washington as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA). Ambassador Roth was the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for NEA in May and June 2001. In August and September of that year he served as Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe and then became the Special Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

Ambassador Roth began his career in the U.S. Government as a Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina Faso (1969-72) and then joined the State Department in 1973. His first overseas assignment was to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was a political officer at the U.S. Embassy at the beginning of the Ethiopian revolution (1976-78). He subsequently completed a two-year tour as a political and economic officer at the U.S. Consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa during the apartheid regime (1978-80). After a posting to the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs (AF), where he was the desk officer for Kenya and the Seychelles, Ambassador Roth served at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers, Algeria (1984-86) as the chief of the Political Section.

Following Algeria, he was the Deputy Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal (1987-90) followed by a tour as the Deputy Director for Southern African Affairs (1990-93) at the State Department. During this period, Ambassador Roth was a member of the U.S. negotiating teams that led the international effort to reach peace agreements in Angola and Mozambique. He then became Deputy Director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs (1993-95) and served a third year as Director of that office (1995-96).

Ambassador Roth has a BA degree in literature from the University of Michigan and speaks French, Portuguese, Amharic, Arabic, and the West African languages, Moré and Bissa. He is married to Carol Kinsman Roth and they have two sons, Aaron and David.