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The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

Campbell’s new firm pursues Burma contract

A consulting firm run by the State Department’s recently departed top Asia official has just joined a bid for a huge contract to revamp the largest airport in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Kurt Campbell, the recently departed assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, started a new consulting firm called the ...

By Josh Rogin

March 11, 2013, 4:49 PM

A consulting firm run by the State Department’s recently departed top Asia official has just joined a bid for a huge contract to revamp the largest airport in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Kurt Campbell, the recently departed assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, started a new consulting firm called the Asia Group with his former deputy assistant secretary Nirav Patel. On Monday, the ACO Investment Group (ACO), a collection of mostly American firms who have joined forces, announced that the Asia Group will join its consortium to try to secure the contract to upgrade and modernize the Yangon International Airport, which was built in 1947.

"This is a thrilling opportunity to help advance the progress Myanmar has made over the past couple years by enhancing prospects for economic investments, and ensuring connectivity for Myanmar with ASEAN and the world," Campbell saod in the release. "We are pleased to join the ACO Consortium in their strong bid to renovate Yangon International Airport. The other members of the consortium include the most dynamic visionaries in the aviation and infrastructure fields with a demonstrated track record, and we are confident that their expertise and track record will be critical to help rebuild Yangon International Airport as a critical transit hub."

Campbell will lead a trip to Myanmar early next month with other consortium members to pitch the ACO bid. Other American consortium members include Boeing Professional Services, Burns & McDonnell Engineering, Fentress Architects, the MITRE Corporation, and Unison Consulting. The consortium also includes McKinsey and Co. out of Hong Kong, and Myint Mo Oo General Services, a trading company based in Myanmar.

ACO is one of 11 pre-qualified consortia that will bid for the airport project, which is expected to double the airport’s capacity to handle an estimated 5.5 million passengers per year.

Campbell was the State Department’s point man on engagement with Myanmar and traveled to the country several times as part of the Obama administration’s policy of engagement, which eventually led to an easing of U.S. sanctions. The ACO consortium is clearly interested in capitalizing on that work.

"Kurt Campbell is widely regarded as one of the key architects of the United States’ efforts to engage and normalize relations with Myanmar," ACO said in the release.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

Tag: Myanmar