Susan A. Thornton
Last Name: Thornton
First Name: Susan
Middle Name: Ann
ACNSL Offices and Committees: Indo-Pacific Committee
Rank: Assistant Secretary of State (Acting)
Service/Department: Senior Foreign Service, Department of State
Last or Significant Assignment: Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
Areas of Experience: Russian, China, Korea, East Asian, Turkmenistan, Armenia
Articles, Books and Publications
“On Hong Kong, the U.S. Must Find Its Voice,” Lawfare , August 2, 2019 (co-authored with Ryan Hass).
Susan A. Thornton is a former American diplomat. She served as acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from March, 2017 through August, 2018. She is a career diplomat who has worked at the U.S. Department of State since 1991. Prior to joining the State Department, she worked at the Foreign Policy Institute, analyzing and writing about Soviet politics and contemporary Russia. She speaks Russian and Mandarin Chinese.
Susan Thornton’s assignments include serving as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs (EAP) and Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. She has also served as Deputy Director of the EAP Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs and Economic Unit Chief of the EAP Office of Korean Affairs. Before these responsibilities, she was the First Secretary in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Political/Economic Section Chief of the Consulate General in Chengdu, China, and also assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Armenia and the Consulate General in Kazakhstan.
She received her education at Bowdoin College, majoring in Economics and Russian, and she received her Master’s Degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. She received a Masters from the Eisenhower School for National Resource Studies from the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.
In addition to serving as a Fellow of the American College of National Security Leaders, she is a board member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Camden Conference.