Before joining The Times, Mr. Shanker was foreign editor of The Chicago Tribune. During his lengthy career as a foreign and national security correspondent, he was the Tribune¹s senior European correspondent, based in Berlin, from 1992-1995. Most of that time was spent covering the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He also covered the official departure of American, British, French, and Russian forces form Berlin, and reported on emerging cases of nuclear smuggling in Central Europe and the rise of right-wing, neo-Nazi organizations in the region. His first posting abroad was as The Tribune¹s Moscow bureau chief from 1985-1988, covering the early years of the Gorbachev era as well as issues of superpower arms control. From 1988-1990, he was The Tribune¹s Pentagon correspondent. Mr. Shanker returned to Moscow as special correspondent from 1990-1992 to cover the death of the USSR and the collapse of the Communist empire in Eastern Europe. Mr. Shanker spent two years in the master¹s degree program at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at Tufts University, specializing in strategic studies and international law. Mr. Shanker has written on foreign policy, military affairs, and the intelligence community for The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and the American Journalism Review.