Kapur will replace Donald Lu, who was asked to leave the position with the shift in the administration, once the Senate confirms him.

For now, Eric Meyer, who last served as the US Chargé d’Affaires in Oslo, is the senior bureau official for the region.

A professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the US Naval Post Graduate School and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Kapur served in the State Department’s policy planning team in the final year of the Trump presidency where he worked on South Asia. Kapur has also taught at the Claremont McKenna College and has been a visiting professor at Stanford.