Diego A. Ruiz Palmer (USA) completed in July 2023 a 30-year long career as a civil servant on the International Staff at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. His last position was that of Special Adviser and Head of NATO’s new Net Assessment Section in the Defence Policy and Planning (DPP) Division. In that position, he led the preparation of net assessments addressing the strategic situation in the Euro-Atlantic area and its implications for the Alliance’s deterrence and defence posture. For this work, he was awarded by Poland in October 2021 the Polish Military Medal.
Prior to net assessment in DPP, Diego held a succession of management positions in the Emerging Security Challenges (ESC), Operations (OPS) and Defence Investment (DI) Divisions. Between 2010 and 2017, he established and was successively Head of the Strategic Analysis Capability and Economics and Security Assessments Unit in the ESC Division. In those capacities, he led NATO’s strategic foresight and economic analysis activities, respectively, in support of the NATO Secretary General.
From 2002-2005, while in OPS Division, Diego was responsible for NATO’s crisis- management arrangements and exercises and for the NATO HQ Situation Centre. From 2005-2010, as Head of the Planning Section, he led the development of the first political-military strategy to guide NATO’s engagement in Afghanistan, which was approved at the Bucharest Summit in April 2008. From 1991-2000, in DI, he led the development and implementation of NATO’s first armaments planning system.
From 2000-2002, Diego was Vice-President, European Region, Northrop Grumman International, dealing with transatlantic cooperation programmes and technologies with governments and industrial partners in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
From 1980-1991, he was an analyst on the National Security Study Memorandum 186 task force, led by the Director of Net Assessment in the U.S. Department of Defense, and established to develop net assessments of the NATO-Warsaw Pact balance of forces and associated operational concepts for the Secretary of Defense.
Diego has published widely, including most recently “Trying to break NATO apart: The Baltic Sea Region in Soviet and Russian Military Strategy”, in Mark Voyger (ed.) NATO at 70 and the Baltic States: Strengthening the Euro-Atlantic Alliance in an age of non-linear threats, Baltic Defence College, Tartu, 2019; A Strategic Odyssey: Constancy of Purpose and Strategy-Making in NATO, 1949-2019, Research Paper 3, NATO Defense College (NDC), Rome, June 2019; Theatre Operations, High Commands and Large-Scale Exercises in Soviet and Russian Military Practice: Insights and Implications, Fellowship Monograph n°12, NDC, May 2018; The Framework Nations’ Concept and NATO: Game-Changer for a New Strategic Era or Missed Opportunity? Research Paper n°132, NDC, July 2016; Back to the future? Russia’s Hybrid Warfare, Revolutions in Military Affairs, and Cold War Comparisons, Research Paper n°120, NDC, October 2015; and “The NATO-Warsaw Pact competition in the 1970s and 1980s: a revolution in military affairs in the making or the end of a strategic age?” Cold War History, Volume 14, No. 4, autumn 2014. He holds degrees from The George Washington University (1981) and Harvard University (1985) and from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris (1978).