Dr. Litwak is Director of the Division of International Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Before joining the Woodrow Wilson Center staff in 1983, Dr. Litwak was a Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and a Fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs and Russian Research Center.

Dr. Litwak has held visiting fellowships at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, the United States Institute of Peace, and Oxford University. He has also served on the National Security Council staff at the White House as Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls.

The author or editor of eight books, Dr. Litwak has written Security in the Persian Gulf; Nuclear Proliferation after the Cold War, and Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy.