The US Senate on October 7, 2025, confirmed Indian American S. Paul Kapur as Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs at the State Department. Kapur replaces Donald Lu, and his appointment comes at a difficult time not only in US-India relations, but also within the South Asian Subcontinent following on the heels of the India-Pakistan imbroglio, and the turmoil in Bangladesh and Nepal.
The Senate voted 51 to 47, a partisan vote October 7, for one of the top posts at the State Department, which in the past has been occupied by one other Indian American, Nisha Desai Biswal. Kapur was nominated to the position by President Trump on February 11 this year.
Kapur has been a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Department of Security Affairs. His expertise listed on that site (nps.edu) is in South Asian Politics and Security as well as International Relations.
He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
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Kapur is not new to the State Department. He served from 2020-2021, on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, working on issues related to South and Central Asia, Indo-Pacific strategy, and U.S.-India relations.
Previously, he taught at Claremont McKenna College, and was a visiting professor at Stanford University. Kapur has written extensively on issues in the South Asian Subcontinent. His biography on nsu.edu shows he is the author of Jihad as Grand Strategy: Islamist Militancy, National Security, and the Pakistani State (Oxford University Press, 2016); Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2007); co-author of India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia (Columbia University Press, 2010).
Most recently, he was the co-editor of The Challenges of Nuclear Security: U.S. and Indian Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
His work has appeared in leading academic journals such as International Security, Security Studies, Asian Survey, and Washington Quarterly; in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the National Interest, and RealClearPolicy; and in a wide variety of edited volumes.
Kapur also directs a United States-India Track 1.5 strategic dialogue, as well as other U.S.-India engagements, for the Department of Defense. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and his B.A. from Amherst College.