Gottemoeller was confirmed as Under Secretary of State by the U.S. Senate on March 6, 2014. Prior to her confirmation, she had served as the Acting Under Secretary of State in the same capacity since February 7, 2012, in addition to her role as the United States Department of State's Assistant Secretary for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, which she held since April 6, 2009. She was the chief negotiator of the follow on for the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty otherwise known as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russian Federation. Since 2000, she had been with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Before returning to government, she was a senior associate in the Carnegie Russia & Eurasia Program in Washington, D.C., where she worked on U.S.–Russian relations and nuclear security and stability. While with Carnegie, Gottemoeller led consultative Track II meetings with Russian nuclear experts. She also served as the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from January 2006 to December 2008. Gottemoeller was formerly the Deputy Under Secretary of Energy for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the U.S. Department of Energy. She had previously held the post of Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation and National Security, also at the Department of Energy. At DOE, Gottemoeller was responsible for all nonproliferation cooperation with Russia and the Newly Independent States. She first joined the Department of Energy in November 1997 as director of the Office of Nonproliferation and National Security. Prior to her work at the Department of Energy, Gottemoeller served for three years as Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. From 1993 to 1994, she served on the National Security Council in the White House as director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs, with responsibility for denuclearization in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Previously, she was a social scientist at RAND and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. She has taught Soviet military policy and Russian security at Georgetown University. On August 6, 2015, Gottemoeller became the first senior U.S. official to attend the memorial of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan by the United States in World War II. It marked the 70th anniversary of the bombing and Gottemoeller was accompanied by U.S. ambassador Caroline Kennedy, herself being only the second U.S. ambassador to attend the annual memorial. Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe at the memorial, with representatives of 100 countries in attendance, reiterated Japanese policy in favor of the abolition of nuclear weapons. Japan also had hoped for U.S. president Barack Obama to attend the memorial and has a standing call for the U.S. to apologize for the bombings.
