Patrick Turner

Before joining The Cohen Group, Mr. Turner was the Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning at NATO from 2018 to 2022, and chaired NATO’s Defence Policy and Planning Committee and its Resilience Committee. In that role, he focused on increasing defense spending by Allies, improving Allies’ defense capabilities, strengthening the force structure and military posture of NATO and Allies, and assuring NATO’s nuclear deterrent capability. This work assumed even greater importance after Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

From 2015 to 2018, he was the NATO Assistant Secretary General for Operations, responsible for advising on NATO’s operations and missions (in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo, for example) and planning and exercising for the defense of Allies. He was also the chair of NATO’s Operations Policy Committee. From 2011 to 2015, he was the UK’s Deputy Ambassador to NATO. In the 1990s, he served in the Private Office of three NATO Secretaries General (Manfred Worner, Willy Claes, and Javier Solana).

Mr. Turner joined the UK Ministry of Defence in 1984 after studying history at Merton College, Oxford. He has held a wide of variety of roles in the UK Civil Service, including Private Secretary to the Minister for the Armed Forces and Private Secretary to the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service at the time of Prime Minister Thatcher. He led a team which helped build new defense relationships between the UK and the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Later, he helped implement the 1998 UK Strategic Defence Review and was subsequently the Director of Defence Policy in the Ministry of Defence at the time of 9/11, when he worked on the UK defense response. Later, he worked on the renewal of the UK nuclear deterrent in 2005–7, and then led a team in the Cabinet Office which produced the first UK national security strategy in 2008. From 2008–10 he was the Minister Counsellor for Defence at the British Embassy in Washington DC.

Mr. Turner now lives in McLean, Virginia with his family. In addition to his work with The Cohen Group, he is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.