Affiliated Staff & Scholars

Adrian A. Basora · Co-chair

Ambassador Adrian A. Basora is FPRI Senior Fellow and Co-chair of the Eurasia Program. Amb. Basora is co-editor of FPRI’s 2017 volume Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support.He was the last U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, and then the first to the Czech Republic, after witnessing Czechoslovakia’s peaceful “Velvet Divorce.” He spearheaded early U.S. support for democracy and market economics in the Czech and Slovak republics. Immediately prior to that, he was Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council as the Iron Curtain fell, and he participated in the design of U.S. policies and programs to encourage democratic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe.  Ambassador Basora holds an MPIA from Princeton University. 

John R. Haines · Co-chair

John R. Haines is FPRI Senior Fellow and co-chair of the Eurasia Program. He is a trustee of FPRI, where he is a member of its executive, finance, and nominating committees, Executive Director of FPRI’s Princeton Committee, and is also a Senior Fellow. An active investor and entrepreneur whose current efforts focus on nuclear smuggling and terrorism, in 2010 John co-founded, as Chief Executive Officer, Ionetix Corporation, to develop proprietary particle accelerator and fissile material detection technologies.

Chris Miller · Director

Chris Miller is the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program. He is also Assistant Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Dr. Miller is the author of Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR. He received his PhD from Yale University and his BA from Harvard University. For more information, see www.christophermiller.net.

Maia Otarashvili · Deputy Director

Maia Otarashvili is FPRI Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Eurasia Program. She is co-editor of FPRI’s 2017 volume Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support. She is also the lead editor of FPRI’s forthcoming E-Guide on Democratization. Her research interests include the geopolitics of the Black Sea-Caucasus region, the post-Communist CEEE countries, EU’s eastern enlargement policies, and Russian foreign policy. Maia is a regular contributor for the Majalla Magazine. She holds an M.A. in Globalization, Development and Transition from the University of Westminster in London, with emphasis on post-authoritarian transitions. Maia is currently pursuing her PhD at the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London, researching the post-Soviet conflicts of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria.