Assistant Secretaries of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
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Notice posted on January 12, 2024.
Last
updated March 14, 2024.
The Department of State established the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1949, after the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government (Hoover Commission) recommended that certain offices be upgraded to bureau level and after Congress increased the number of Assistant Secretaries of State from six to ten (May 26, 1949; P.L. 81-73; 63 Stat. 111). On Nov 1, 1966, the Department by administrative action changed the incumbent’s designation to Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. The Division of Far Eastern Affairs, established in 1908, was the first geographical division to be established in the Department of State.
- David Dean Rusk (1950–1951)
- William Walton Butterworth (1949–1950)
- John Moore Allison (1952–1953)
- Walter Spencer Robertson (1953–1959)
- James Graham Parsons (1959–1961)
- Walter Patrick McConaughy Jr. (1961)
- William Averell Harriman (1961–1963)
- Roger Hilsman Jr. (1963–1964)
- William Putnam Bundy (1964–1969)
- Marshall Green (1969–1973)
- Robert Stephen Ingersoll (1974)
- Philip Charles Habib (1974–1976)
- Arthur William Hummel Jr. (1976–1977)
- Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (1977–1981)
- John Herbert Holdridge (1981–1982)
- Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (1982–1986)
- Gaston Joseph Sigur Jr. (1986–1989)
- Richard H. Solomon (1989–1992)
- William Clark Jr. (1992–1993)
- Winston Lord (1993–1997)
- Stanley Owen Roth (1997–2001)
- James Andrew Kelly (2001–2005)
- Christopher Robert Hill (2005–2009)
- Kurt M. Campbell (2009–2013)
- Daniel R. Russel (2013–2017)
- David Stilwell (2019)
- George McMurtrie Godley II (Not commissioned; nomination withdrawn before the Senate acted upon it.)
- Richard Lee Armitage (Nomination withdrawn.)
- Susan A. Thornton (Not commissioned; nomination of December 19, 2017 withdrawn by the president on August 16, 2018.)