John Alexander Baker Jr. (October 3, 1927[1] – August 16, 1994)[2] was a United States diplomat, most notable for serving as Director of the Bureau of Refugee Programs from 1979 to 1980.
He received Russian language training in Oberammergau in 1957 and was then posted in Moscow as a political officer from 1957 to 1958.
He returned to the field in 1960, working in Rome as a political officer and making a study of the Italian Communist Party.
Baker spent 1967-68 teaching at Harvard University as part of its International Affairs Fellows Program.
He thus witnessed first hand The Two Thousand Words, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the implementation of the Moscow Protocol.