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Right Web

Tracking militarists’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy

Ellen Bork


  • Project for the New American Century: Acting Executive Director

PRA's Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.

Ellen Bork, daughter of conservative icon and former Supreme Court justice nominee Robert Bork, is the acting executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). This is likely not too time-consuming, as PNAC has been inactive since late 2005. Her resume includes stints working as an Asia specialist for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, completing a fellowship at the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels, and serving as "counsel to the chairman" of the Hong Kong Democratic Party. She has been published in a number of newspapers and journals, including the Wall Street Journal Asia, Washington Post, Weekly Standard, Humanitarian Affairs Review, and Forward.

In an August 3, 2004 article for Wall Street Journal Asia (then called the Asian Wall Street Journal), Bork called for replacing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with a NATO-style alliance: "The outlook for ASEAN and the ARF [Asian Regional Forum] is not promising. There is, however, an alternative. Rather than trying to transform the ASEAN-ARF system, Asia's democracies should establish a regional political and military alliance committed to strengthening the democracy and security of its members and expanding it in the region. Such an organization would be a logical outgrowth of Asia's democratic development over the last half-century, and an answer to the anachronistic regional institutions that now fail to guarantee the region's security and freedom."

More recently, Bork published an opinion piece in the Weekly Standard on December 19, 2005, criticizing what she sees as a double standard in the Bush administration's treatment of Taiwan. Highlighting the administration's message to Taipei and Beijing that both should hold to "the status quo," Bork opined: "The Bush Doctrine is incompatible with America's one-China policy, which holds that Taiwan is a part of 'one China' and that there should be a peaceful resolution of the dispute between Beijing and Taipei." She added: "Washington's official 'one China' policy is not rooted in democracy or self-determination. Conceived during the Cold War, U.S. policy has remained mostly static and hamstrung by anachronistic views of China and Taiwan. Washington has tried to soften the edges of Chinese demands without questioning their legitimacy. U.S. policy reflects neither the dramatic changes in Taiwan nor China's economic and military growth and petrified political system. As a result, U.S. policy treats Taiwan as an abstraction. American officials resist as provocative all assertions of a Taiwanese identity, including revisions to the constitution, referenda, and other normal prerogatives of a democratic nation. This state of affairs is both unsustainable and at odds with the Bush Doctrine."

Bork argued in an August 2005 interview with National Public Radio that two Uighur men wrongfully detained at Guantanamo Bay should be allowed to resettle in the United States. Said Bork: "The Bush administration does not want to return them to China, because China has a campaign of repression against Uighurs. The administration, to their credit, does not want to return them, but is looking for other countries that would accept them. I think we should allow them to settle here."

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    Affiliations

  • Project for the New American Century: Acting Executive Director
  • Center for Strategic and International Studies: Contributor, 2003 Publication
  • German Marshall Fund: Transatlantic Fellow, 2001-2002
  • Hong Kong Democratic Party: Counsel to the Chairman, 1998-1999


  • Government Service

  • U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: Senior Staff Member for Asia and the Pacific, 1996-1998


  • Education

  • Yale University: B.A., History
  • Georgetown University Law Center: J.D.


  • Right Web Links

  • Robert Bork
  • Project for the New American Century
  • Weekly Standard


The Right Web Mission

Right Web tracks militarists’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Sources
Ellen Bork, "Replace ASEAN," Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, August 3, 2001, www.taiwandc.org/wsj-2001-19.htm.

Ellen Bork, "One China, One Taiwan," Weekly Standard, December 19, 2005,
www.newamericancentury.org/taiwan-20051219.htm.

"Ellen Bork Discusses Uighurs Posing Challenges in Guantanamo," All Things Considered, National Public Radio, August 10, 2005.

Project for the New American Century, www.newamericancentury.org/ellenborkbio.htm.

Carola McGiffert, ed., China in the American Political Imagination, CSIS Publications, 2003.

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