Ambassador John Desrocher

John Desrocher is the Director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. Ambassador Desrocher joined the NESA Center as Director in June 2024 and came to NESA from a 35-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria from 2017 until 2020. After departing Algiers, he served as Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassies in Doha and Cairo, as mediator of negotiations on the maritime boundary between Israel and Lebanon, and as Senior State Department Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.  Most recently he served as Deputy Commandant of the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy at the National Defense University.  From September 2014 until August 2017, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Egypt and Maghreb Affairs. Prior to that, he was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He also served in Baghdad from 2009-2010 as Minister Counselor for Economic Coordination, responsible for U.S.-Iraq economic policy issues. In the interim, he served in the Department of State as the Director of the Office of Iraq Affairs and briefly as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Maghreb Affairs. Between 2006 and 2009, he served as the U.S. Consul General in Auckland.

Ambassador Desrocher has extensive experience in international trade and in the Arab world. Immediately prior to his assignment to Auckland he served as Counselor for Economic and Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and he has also served in Jerusalem, Monrovia, Bonn, and in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative among other Washington assignments.