William Flynn Martin (born October 4, 1950) is an American energy economist, educator, and international diplomat. Martin served as Special Assistant to Ronald Reagan for National Security Affairs, Executive Secretary of the United States National Security Council, and United States Deputy Secretary of Energy during the Ronald Reagan Administration. He was President of the Council of the University for Peace, appointed to the Council by Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan. In 1992, he was Executive Director of the Republican Platform committee under George H. W. Bush. William Martin served for ten years (from 2000 to 2010) as Chairman of the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Martin was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He achieved his Bachelor of Science from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and his Master of Science from MIT in 1974. His master's thesis was the basis of an article he co-authored with George Cabot Lodge in the March, 1975 Harvard Business Review entitled Our Society in 1985: Business May Not Like It.
William Martin is the recipient of seven letters of merit from Ronald Reagan, received the Order of the Rising Sun in person from Emperor Akihito of Japan, and was commended by Czech President Vaclav Havel for significant contributions to the Czech Republic.In 2023 he received the Distinguished Contribution to Diplomacy Medal of the Czech Republic. Martin received the highest honor of the Department of Energy for contributions in the fields of energy security and science and technology including fathering both the human genome project (1986) and international thermonuclear experimental reactor - ITER (1985). Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette honored Martin’s contributions thirty five year service to the Department of Energy in 2019.
Martin’s perspectives on President Reagan are summarized in a book Reflections on President Reagan and an oral history video. His lifelong experiences with Japan are included in US-Japan Relations and Energy Security (1970-2100). William F. Martin’s publications have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Harvard International Review, MIT Technology Review, and the Wall Street Journal. He has authored several books on energy, environment, and national security through MIT Press (two books), McGraw-Hill, Trilateral Commission, United States Department of Energy, and the International Energy Agency. His books have been published in Japanese, German, and French.
William F. Martin’s official White House government National Security Council files are available in the Ronald Reagan Library archive
Education and early career William Martin received his BS in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1972. He immediately entered MIT for a Master’s degree. His MIT advisor was Professor Carroll L. Wilson, the first general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission. Martin had private studies with two Nobel Prize winners in Economics: Professor Paul Samuelson and Professor Robert Solow. The focus with Professor Solow was in the economics of externalities — to study how non economic factors such as environmental degradation should be accounted in free market economic systems. His thesis advisors were MIT Professor Carroll L. Wilson and Professor George Cabot Lodge of Harvard.
As a graduate student at MIT, he was part of a team that prepared ten days of Congressional hearings chaired by Congressman John Dingell on Growth and Its Implications for the Future (Roundtable Press, 1973). The hearings were in response to the Club of Rome's report, The Limits to Growth and were aimed at providing the first Congressional hearings on the world economic, energy and environmental outlook and the need for sustainable growth strategies. He was also part of an MIT engineering group that produced a volume for the United Nations Environmental Program on resource materials for studies in environmental management. He is co-author of the report, Professional Materials for Environmental Management Education (MIT Press, 1975). These publications were induced by the first United Nations conference on the environment held in Stockholm in 1972 and headed by Maurice Strong who said of Growth and Its Implications for the Future, "This small volume summarizes much of the important work going on today with regard to global survival...I know of no other publication to date which emphasizes more systematically or extensively, and in such readable form, the interacting relationships amongst diverse fields."
Following graduating from MIT, Martin joined the MIT Energy Laboratory as a Program officer for the Workshop on Alternative Energy Strategies (WAES) headed by Professor Carroll L. Wilson, the first General Manager of the US Atomic Energy Commission. This fifteen country energy assessment group, headquartered at MIT, met for three years and produced the report, Energy: Global Energy Prospects 1985-2000 (McGraw-Hill, 1975). Martin was a co-author of the final report and editor of Energy Supply to the Year 2000 (MIT Press, 1977). Martin was responsible for energy supply analysis as well as energy projections of developing nations. He and his co-author Frank J.P. Pinto were responsible for using the SIMLINK model of the World Bank as an economic foundation for projecting energy futures for developing nations. This World Bank-MIT project entitled Energy and Economic Growth Prospects for the Developing Countries: 1960-2000 (MIT Press, 1977). was one of the pioneering research attempts to estimate energy prospects for developing countries.
Martin then moved to Paris where he was responsible for energy statistics for developing countries at the International Energy Agency Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and was part of a UN expert group that developed the methodology for reporting United Nations energy statistics. The statistics were published in the volumes I and II of the report Workshop on Energy Data of Developing Countries (IEA/OECD, 1978). Martin was also director of the IEA Workshop on Energy Statistics for Developing Countries that resulted in the first publication of energy statistics for over 100 countries in a matrix supply/demand integration format.
In 1978, he was promoted to Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the IEA, Ulf Lantzke, and served in this capacity for two years during the time of the Second Oil Shock. At the commencement of the Iran-Iraq war, it was agreed that nations should coordinate their oil stock draws in the event of a major disruption. As the Special Assistant to the IEA Executive Director, Martin served as the coordinator for four IEA Ministerial meetings where he aided in the drafting of several communiques, including the one from 1981 that is the basis of IEA agreements today on coordinated stock draw as well as a key element of the 2009 discussions between Henry Kissinger (the founder of IEA), Nobuo Tanaka (then Executive Director) and Martin on expanding this concept to include China, India and other advancing nations. A letter from Kissinger to Martin recognizing his contribution in this regard can be seen online.
Reagan administration
In 1981, Martin joined the United States Department of State as Special Assistant to Under Secretary of State James L. Buckley who recalled Martin's activities in his book Gleanings from an Unplanned Life. The senior Reagan administration inter-agency "Buckley Group" that Martin coordinated sought to reduce European subsidies and credits to the Soviet Union. It also urged Europeans to reduce their dependence on Soviet gas and to find alternatives. Finally, it proposed market oriented energy policies for the United States (deregulation of oil and gas price controls, permitting Alaskan oil exports, allowing eminent domain for coal slurry pipelines) -- all policies of which eventually came to fruition during the Reagan Presidency. (see reference to this again in James Buckley's Gleanings from an Unplanned Life). Martin briefed President Reagan in the Oval Office that unless the US was credible in its energy policies, the Europeans would not take seriously our concerns on their over dependence on Soviet gas imports.
In 1982, he was transferred to the National Security Council as the Director of International Economic Affairs. In this capacity he prepared recommendations for the President in the areas of energy security, East-West economic relations, the Iran-Iraq War and Central American economic development. A key responsibility of Martin's was to conceptualize and then negotiate with the Europeans on the issue of reducing their reliance on Soviet natural gas imports, a project that was directed personally by President Reagan. Martin made a key presentation to President Reagan on alternative gas scenarios for Europe, concluding that the Troll field was vital for European security. Martin's role was to negotiate the development of the giant Norwegian Troll gas field to be an alternative to Soviet gas imports and this was documented in the book Troll: Gas for Generations, an excerpt of which can be seen online. This was part of a larger program to undermine the Soviet economy as reported by Peter Schweizer in his book, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union and the excerpt where he credited Martin for this effort can be seen online.
Martin is also credited in a Presidential citation as the principal draftsman of the Williamsburg Declaration, at the 9th G7 Summit which is a three-page communique agreed to by the G-7 leaders who were Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the UK, Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone of Japan, Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada, Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani of Italy and Prime Minister François Mitterrand of France. The President read the three-page declaration before the world press (President Reagan's opening remarks can be seen on online) and credited Martin as the principal draftsman in the following online letter. Many conclude that this jointly agreed document, which argued for free markets and free trade policies, set in place the foundations for a worldwide economic recovery beginning in 1983. Based on these achievements, Martin was appointed Special Assistant to President Reagan, responsible for the coordination of the President's international and head of state meetings.
Martin helped arrange President Reagan's international meetings coordinating with the White House Advance Office, NSC staff and the Department of State. He participated in the President's visits to Japan (1983), South Korea (1983), China (1984), Ireland (1984), United Kingdom (1984), the D-Day fortieth anniversary commemoration on Normandy beaches in France (1984), Canada (1985), Spain (1985), Germany (1985), EU Parliament (1985), the Reagan-Gorbachev Geneva Summit (1985) and several G-7 economic summit meetings (Williamsburg, London and Bonn). Working closely with the State Department and NSC staff, he also coordinated the preparation of President Reagan's Oval Office head of state meetings. As NSC Senior Director for Coordination, he coordinated and participated in the President's major bilateral meetings with, among others, Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone of Japan, Shimon Peres of Israel, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, President Ali Saibou of Niger, King Hussein of Jordan, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the UK, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi of Italy, Prime Minister Kåre Willoch of Norway, Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanond of Thailand, Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of the USSR, OECD Secretary General Jean-Claude Paye, UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany.