Robert Strausz-Hupe, 98; Former Ambassador to Several Countries

Robert Strausz-Hupe, 98, former U.S. ambassador to Sweden, Sri Lanka, Belgium, Turkey and NATO, died Sunday at his home in Newtown Square, Pa., of a stroke and cardiovascular disease. He was also an author and director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Foreign Policy Research Institute,

A hard-liner against communism during the Cold War, Strausz-Hupe served as foreign policy advisor to Republican presidential contenders Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1968.

Nixon planned to appoint Strausz-Hupe ambassador to Morocco, but liberal Democrat Sen. J. William Fulbright, then chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, blocked the nomination, calling him “the very epitome of hard-line, no-compromise” policy against communism. Fulbright relented by 1970, and Strausz-Hupe was named ambassador to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and to the Maldives.

He went on to serve as ambassador to Belgium from 1972 to 1974, Sweden for the next two years, envoy to NATO in Brussels in 1976-77 and then ambassador to Turkey from 1981 until he retired in 1988.

Strausz-Hupe, born and raised in Vienna, immigrated to New York in 1923 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1932. He wrote numerous books about foreign policy, taught political science at Penn and founded its Foreign Policy Research Institute.