Peter Rough

Senior Fellow and Director, Center on Europe and Eurasia

peter_rough

At A Glance:

Peter Rough is a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute.

Biography

Peter Rough is a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute. In that capacity, he writes and comments on US foreign policy and regularly briefs official delegations, news media, public intellectuals, academics, and business leaders from around the world. Mr. Rough also convenes several track 1.5 dialogues.

Mr. Rough is a regular commentator on major radio and television and speaker in public forums. While at the institute, he has been named a next generation leader at the Munich Security Conference, Atlantik-Brücke, the Center for New American Security, and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. He has also helped edit Hudson’s journal, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology.

Mr. Rough is also principal and founder of Hilltop Solutions, a limited liability company that performs writing and research services for academics, executives, and political professionals. Previously, as director of research in the Office of George W. Bush, Mr. Rough assisted the former president with his memoir, Decision Points. In 2014, his highly acclaimed collaboration with Leila Fawaz on a social history of World War I in the Middle East, A Land of Aching Hearts, was published by Harvard University Press.

From 2007 to 2009, Mr. Rough served as associate director in the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, where he helped coordinate political strategy and outreach to key stakeholders. He has also completed stints as a policy analyst at the US Agency for International Development, where he was staff briefer to Administrator Henrietta Fore, and as an advisor to US Army Special Operations Command, where he analyzed unconventional warfare doctrine for the commanding general’s Strategic Initiatives Group. In 2012, he was responsible for US-Russia bilateral relations as a member of the Romney for President Russia Working Group. In 2016, he served as a member of the Rubio for President Middle East Working Group.

Mr. Rough began his career at the Republican National Committee specializing in political research. A proud native of Des Moines, Iowa, he holds his BA, summa cum laude, from the George Washington University and MA in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he was a Cabot corporation scholar.

He is a member of the board of the American Main Street Initiative and previously was a commissioner of the Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) Commission in Berlin. Mr. Rough is also a member of the Friends of Ukraine Network’s (FOUN) Task Force on National Security and vice chair of the Reagan Institute’s Foreign for American Leadership Europe group.

Mr. Rough is a native German speaker.

Events
16
September 2023
Past Event
Central and Eastern Europe Strategy Summit
Featured Speakers:
Peter Rough
John P. Walters
Moderator:
Matthew Boyse
Luke Coffey
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
Summit Logo
16
September 2023
Past Event
Central and Eastern Europe Strategy Summit

Hudson hosts senior officials from the Bucharest Nine states of Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine and Moldova.

Summit Logo
Featured Speakers:
Peter Rough
John P. Walters
Moderator:
Matthew Boyse
Luke Coffey
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
15
September 2023
Past Event
Securing Europe’s Tinderbox: Economic and Geopolitical Challenges in the Balkans
Featured Speakers:
Luminița Odobescu
Luke Coffey
Jan Ruzicka
Amb. Cameron Munter
Ekaterina Zaharieva
Jaroslav Kurfürst
Ivana Stradner
Moderator:
Matthew Boyse
Peter Rough
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15
September 2023
Past Event
Securing Europe’s Tinderbox: Economic and Geopolitical Challenges in the Balkans
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Featured Speakers:
Luminița Odobescu
Luke Coffey
Jan Ruzicka
Amb. Cameron Munter
Ekaterina Zaharieva
Jaroslav Kurfürst
Ivana Stradner
Moderator:
Matthew Boyse
Peter Rough
10
August 2023
Past Event
Russia, China, and the Revisionist Assault on the World Order: A Book Talk with Gerlinde Groitl
Featured Speakers:
Peter Rough
Dr. Gerlinde Groitl
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10
August 2023
Past Event
Russia, China, and the Revisionist Assault on the World Order: A Book Talk with Gerlinde Groitl

Join Peter Rough, director of Hudson’s Center on Europe and Eurasia, for a book talk with Dr. Gerlinde Groitl. In her latest book, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Groitl assesses the revisionist powers’ assault on the American-led order and proposes a new strategy to contain Russian and Chinese revisionism and preserve prosperity. 

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Featured Speakers:
Peter Rough
Dr. Gerlinde Groitl
26
June 2023
Past Event
Mutiny in Russia: Assessing the Implications of Prigozhin’s March on Moscow
Featured Speakers:
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
Can Kasapoğlu
Luke Coffey
Moderator:
Peter Rough
 Members of Wagner patrol in an area near a tank outside a circus building in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24, 2023. (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)
26
June 2023
Past Event
Mutiny in Russia: Assessing the Implications of Prigozhin’s March on Moscow

Hudson experts sort through what Yevgeny Prigozhin's short-lived mutiny means and what policymakers should focus on next.

 Members of Wagner patrol in an area near a tank outside a circus building in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24, 2023. (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)
Featured Speakers:
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
Can Kasapoğlu
Luke Coffey
Moderator:
Peter Rough