Matthew Spence (lawyer)

Matthew Spence is an American lawyer, international relations scholar, and former senior defense official currently serving as Managing Director of Guggenheim Partners, focusing on issues related to security and technology.

Education
Spence holds a BA and MA in international policy studies from Stanford University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in international relations from the University of Oxford. He was a Marshall Scholar (class of 2000).

Career
Spence clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was a Future Security Fellow at New America.

Spence co-founded the Truman National Security Project with international relations scholar Rachel Kleinfeld in 2004.

From 2009 to 2012, Spence was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for International Economic Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council. He was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy from 2012 to 2015 during the Obama administration.

He was a recipient of the U.S. Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Public Service.

Views on U.S. Middle East policy
In a July 2015 interview with Politico about Obama's approach toward Iran, Spence said: “There’s a real potential benefit when American and Iranian diplomats have been talking so much and so intensively over the last 20 months. We can try to leverage those diplomatic contacts to see if there are any possibilities that would arise from common interests in the region.” He continued: “At the same time, the U.S. needs to signal that it’s not naive about Iran’s intentions and behavior in the region beyond the nuclear issue.”

In a January 2016 interview with Politico, Spence noted that “Egypt was one of the most significant policy divides between the White House and the State Department and the Department of Defense.”

Articles

 * The National Security Case for Lab-Grown and Plant-Based Meat, Slate, December 29, 2021
 * I was a closeted Christian at the Pentagon, Washington Post, April 8, 2016
 * On Syria, the U.S. should take cues from Beijing, not Moscow, Washington Post, October 29, 2015