Biographical Sketch
email: rbstjohn@comcast.net
Ronald Bruce St John graduated from Knox College with a B.A. in political science and
international relations and the Graduate School of International Studies (now the Josef Korbel
School of International Studies), University of Denver, with an M.A. and Ph.D. in international
relations. Following service in Vietnam as a Captain, Military Intelligence, he joined the
marketing division of Caterpillar Inc., spending most of a 30-year career in Europe, the Middle
East, Africa, and Asia. He retired at the end of 2001 after a decade as a Strategic Planning and
Commercial Manager.
Dr. St John was an affiliate professor at the Institute of International Studies, Bradley University,
in 1982-2006, lecturing and teaching a course on Middle East politics. Since 1999, he has been a
frequent guest lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of Peru in Lima. He participated in 1999-
2001 in the Proyecto Trinacional, a trilateral project (Bolivia, Chile, Peru) promoting economic
development in the Atacama Desert. In 2002, he was actively engaged in the Palestinian
Authority’s Land Corridor Project, sponsored by The Adam Smith Institute in London. In 2003,
he was a lecturer at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. More recently, he has
served as a speaker and panelist at Columbia University, the Middle East Institute, Oxford
University, Princeton University, the Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid, the Royal Danish Defense
College in Copenhagen, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Institute for
Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant for a variety of Fortune 500
companies, U.S. government agencies, Al Jazeera International, the Associated Press, BBC
World Service, CNN News, NBC News, The New York Times, and Washington Post, among
others. He also served on the International Advisory Board of The Journal of Libyan Studies and
The Atlantic Council Working Group on Libya.
Working as an independent scholar, Dr. St John has published 27 books and monographs and
contributed to 40 others with a three-fold focus on Andean America (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru),
North Africa & the Middle East, and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam). He has also
authored more than 400 articles and reviews. He currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico.