Dr. Robert A. Wampler, Fellow, has been at the Archive since 1993. At the time of his retirement at the end of 2021, he was a Senior Analyst and directed the Archive's projects on Environmental Diplomacy and Tibet. Prior to these activities, he directed projects on U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korean relations. These undertakings provided the basis for six document sets: Japan and the United States, 1960-1976; Japan and the United States, 1977-1990; Japan and the United States: Part III, 1961-2000; The United States and the Two Koreas, 1969-2000; The United States and the Two Koreas, 1969-2010 (forthcoming); and U.S. Climate Change Diplomacy: From the Montreal Protocol to the Paris Agreement, 1981-2015. He organized a series of international conferences for research fellows working with the Japan and Korea projects, whose work provided the basis for two collections of studies edited by Dr. Wampler: Partnership: the United States and Japan, 1951-2001, co-edited with Akira Iriye (Kodansha International, 2001), and Trilateralism and Beyond: Great Power Politics and the Korean Security Dilemma During the Cold War and After (Kent State University Press, 2012).
Dr. Wampler's most recent work at the Archive focused on climate change diplomacy, the Tibet issue in Sino-US relations and the history of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. Prior work has included nuclear history, NATO military planning and the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger. He was a founding member of the Department of Defense Historical Records Declassification Advisory Panel, created during the Clinton administration to advise the Pentagon on policies regarding the declassification of historically significant records, and he has testified before the Public Interest Declassification Board regarding priorities for U.S. declassification efforts. Prior to coming to the Archive, he taught at the University of Maryland and was Director of the Nuclear History Program's Project on Nuclear Weapons and Alliance Cohesion. In the latter connection, he organized oral history sessions on the Eisenhower administration and NATO strategy, and helped to develop the Nuclear History Program's primary documents database. Dr. Wampler received his undergraduate training at King College, obtained a Master's in History from Wake Forest University and in 1991 earned his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, where he worked with Ernest R. May.