Nipp

Keith Payne is President and co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit research center located in Fairfax, Virginia.

Dr. Payne most recently served in the Department of Defense as a Senior Advisor to OSD and was awarded OSD’s Outstanding Achievement Award for this work. Previously he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy for which he received the Distinguished Public Service Medal. In 2005 he was awarded the Vicennial Medal from Georgetown University for his many years on the faculty of the graduate National Security Studies Program.

Dr. Payne served for many years as the Chairman of the U.S. Strategic Command’s Senior Advisory Group, Strategy and Policy Panel. He also served as a Commissioner on the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board, as co-chairman of the Department of Defense’s Deterrence Concepts Advisory Group, and also as a participant or leader of numerous governmental and private studies, including White House studies of U.S.-Russian cooperation, Defense Science Board Studies, and Defense Department studies of deterrence, missile defense, arms control, and proliferation. He has served as a consultant to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and participated in
the 1998 “Rumsfeld Study” of missile proliferation.

Dr. Payne has lectured on defense and foreign policy issues at numerous universities and government offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. He also is an award-winning author, coauthor or editor of 40 published books and monographs and more than 200 published articles and book chapters.  His most recent book is entitled, Shadows on the Wall:  Deterrence and Disarmament (Fairfax, VA:  National Institute Press, 2020).

Dr. Payne received an A.B. (honors) in political science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976, studied in Heidelberg, Germany, and in 1981 received a Ph.D. (with distinction) in international relations from the University of Southern California.