Dr. Richard P. Cronin
Senior Associate, Henry L. Stimson Center
Washington, DC
Dr. Richard P. Cronin Directs the Southeast Asia program at the Stimson Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington. Cronin works primarily on transboundary and nontraditional security issues in the Mekong Basin , Southeast Asia, and the South China Sea from a political economy perspective, on China's growing role and influence in the region, and on the impact of and response to the current global financial crisis in Asia. He is the co-producer of a documentary video "Mekong Tipping Point" (Stimson, September 2009) on the threat posed by existing and proposed hydropower dam projects on the Upper Mekong River in China's Yunnan Province and on the Lower Mekong in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia on food security, livelihoods and regional stability. Cronin’s article “Mekong Dams and the Perils of Peace” was published in the December 2009/January2010 issue of Survival, the IISS (London). Dr. Cronin joined Stimson after a long career with the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan research and analysis arm of the US Congress. Cronin has taught comparative political economy of Asia at Washington area universities and in Tokyo, and given short courses on comparative economic development issues in Ho Chi Minh City and Vientiane, Laos. He regularly lectures on Southeast Asian issues at the Foreign Service Institute. He served in Vietnam as an intelligence officer with the US Army's 1st Infantry Division.