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The Rostrum, featuring Anthony Ruggiero on North Korea

After Rex Tillerson’s retreat on Friday from a seeming offer to North Korea of talks without preconditions, the situation around its military ambitions and nuclear program — and how the world ought to respond — has grown even muddier. For this week’s podcast, we spoke with Anthony Ruggiero, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, about the most effective U.S. response to North Korea.

About Anthony Ruggiero:

Anthony spent more than 17 years in the U.S. government as an expert in the use of targeted financial measures. Most recently he was a Foreign Policy Fellow in the Office of Senator Marco Rubio, where he drafted Iran-related legislation and was Senator Rubio’s senior advisor on issues related to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Anthony is recognized as an expert in targeted financial measures as a foreign policy tool and has extensive experience working on non-proliferation, North Korea, and Iran.

Anthony also served in the Treasury Department as Deputy Director and then Director of the Office of Global Affairs (OGA) in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. In this capacity, he developed and implemented policy options to combat all forms of illicit finance, including terrorist financing and proliferation finance, kidnapping for ransom, money laundering, narco-trafficking, and transnational organized crime. Anthony supervised the Asia and Africa division of OGA concurrent with his responsibilities as Deputy Director.

Prior to joining Treasury, Anthony spent over 13 years in various capacities at State Department, including as Chief of the Defensive Measures and WMD Finance Team. There he developed, coordinated and implemented policies on counter-proliferation and WMD financing related to Iran and North Korea. Anthony was Non-Proliferation Advisor to the U.S. delegation to the 2005 rounds of the Six-Party Talks in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear program, and participated in U.S.-North Korea meetings following the identification of Macau-based Banco Delta Asia as a primary money laundering concern. He also was an intelligence analyst covering North Korean nuclear and missile programs and proliferation activities.

Anthony holds a BA from Duquesne University, an MS in National Security Strategy from the National War College and an MPIA from the University of Pittsburgh.