Roger Cohen was born in London to a Jewish family. His father, Sydney Cohen, a doctor, immigrated from South Africa to England in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, he studied at Westminster School, one of Britain's top private schools. He won a scholarship and would have entered College, the scholar's house, but was told a Jew could not attend College or hold his particular scholarship. Instead, he received a different scholarship.

In 1973, Cohen and his friends traveled throughout the Middle East, including Iran and Afghanistan. He drove a Volkswagen Kombi named 'Pigpen' after the late keyboard playing frontman of Grateful Dead. He attended Balliol College, Oxford University. Cohen graduated with M.A. degrees in History and in French in 1977. He then left that year for Paris to teach English and to write for Paris Metro. He started working for Reuters and the agency transferred him to Brussels.

Cohen is married to the sculptor Frida Baranek and has four children. The family lives in Brooklyn, New York. Cohen has not lived in London since 1980.

In 1983, Cohen joined The Wall Street Journal in Rome to cover the Italian economy. The Journal later transferred him to Beirut. He joined The New York Times in January 1990. In the summer of 1991, he co-authored with Claudio Gatti In the Eye of the Storm: The Life of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. The authors wrote the books based on information from Norman Schwarzkopf's sister Sally, without Schwarzkopf's help.

Cohen worked for The New York Times as its European economic correspondent, based in Paris, from January 1992 to April 1994. He then became the paper's Balkan bureau chief, based in Zagreb, from April 1994 to June 1995. He covered the Bosnian War and the related Bosnian Genocide. His exposé of a Serb-run Bosnian concentration camp won the Burger Human Rights Award from the Overseas Press Club of America. At this time and afterward, questions arose about whether or not Cohen's pro-Bosnian Muslim/pro-Sarajevo and anti-Bosnian Serb beliefs crossed the line, making him more of an advocate than an objective reporter.

He wrote a retrospective book about his Balkan experiences called Sagas of Sarajevo in 1998. It won a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club in 1999. Cohen wrote in Hearts Grown Brutal that his coverage of the war changed him as a person, and that he considers himself lucky to still be alive. He later called this period the proudest achievement in his entire journalistic career.

He returned to the paper's Paris bureau from June 1995 to August 1998. He served as bureau chief of the Berlin bureau after September 1998. He took over as foreign editor of the paper's American office in the direct aftermath of the September 11 attacks. His unofficial role was made formal on March 14, 2002. In his tenure, he planned and then oversaw the paper's coverage of the War in Afghanistan. During his first visit to India as an editor, he entered the country without obtaining a visa, having assumed that he would not need one. He was then stuck in diplomatic limbo for several hours. He has called this the most stupid thing he has ever done in his career.

In 2004, he began writing a column called 'Globalist', which is published twice a week in The International Herald Tribune. In 2005, he wrote his third book, American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble, and he published it through Alfred A. Knopf. In 2006, he became the first senior editor for The International Herald Tribune.

After columnist Nicholas D. Kristof took a temporary leave in mid-2006, Cohen took over Kristof's position. He has written columns for the Times since then. On April 28, 2009, Cohen wrote an open letter to Mondoweiss, the blog created by Philip Weiss, clarifying that "I've never had a permanent place in NYT paper. My deal is in IHT (paper) and online; in NYT online with same display as other columnists; and in NYT paper intermittently when schedules permit."

Iraq

Cohen supported the American-led invasion of Iraq. He criticized the Bush administration's handling of the occupation while still supporting the cause given the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime. In January 2009, he commented that Saddam's "death-and-genocide machine killed about 400,000 Iraqis and another million or so people in Iran and Kuwait." He wrote that "I still believe Iraq’s freedom outweighs its terrible price."

He opposed the 2007 'surge' of troops into Iraq. In June 2007, he advocated pulling out 105,000 soldiers. He argued, "Pulling out a lot of troops is the only way to increase pressure on Maliki to make the political compromises - on distribution of oil revenue, the constitution and de-Baathification - that will give Iraq some long-term chance of cohering."

In November 2008, Cohen stated that "gains are real but fragile" in Iraq. He criticized Democratic candidate Barack Obama's calls for sixteen month withdrawal from the country, calling it irresponsible. Cohen wrote that "we’re going to have to play buffer against the dominant Shia for several years".

Iran

Cohen wrote a series of articles for The New York Times in February 2009 about a trip he conducted to Iran. In his writings he expressed opposition to military action against Iran and encouraged negotiations between the United States and the Islamic Republic. He also remarked that Iranian Jews were well treated, writing "of a a Jewish community living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility." He also described the hospitality that he received in Iran, stating that "I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran." In his trip, he paid an Iranian agency $150 a day for the services of a translator, who filed a report on Cohen’s doings with the Iranian government.

His depiction of Jewish life in Iran sparked criticism from columnists and activists such as Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Monthly and Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. In his Jerusalem Post op-ed, Medoff criticized Cohen for being “misled by the existence of synagogues” and further argued that Iranian Jews "are captives of the regime, and whatever they say is carefully calibrated not to get themselves into trouble." The American Jewish Committee also criticized Cohen's articles. Dr. Eran Lerman, director of the group's Middle East directory, argued that "Cohen’s need to argue away an unpleasant reality thus gives rise to systematic denial".

Roger Cohen responded on March 2, defending his observations and further elaborating that "Iran’s Islamic Republic is no Third Reich redux. Nor is it a totalitarian state." He also stated that "This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country’s Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense." He ended with a warning:

"I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one ... the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results."

On March 12, Cohen accepted an invitation to meet with selected members of Los Angeles's Iranian Jewish and Bahai community at Sinai Temple, after receiving some of their critical mail about his column. Cohen defended his views and analysis on Iran and Israel to a partly hostile audience. Rabbi David Wolpe of the Sinai Temple criticized Cohen after the event, saying "Increasingly I came to believe that Iran was not Cohen's sole concern; he wanted it as a stick with which to beat Israel over Gaza, whose incursion he wrote left him ashamed."

In the aftermath of the June 2009 Iranian Presidential election, Cohen has argued that the announced results in favor of President Ahmadinejad over reformist Mir Hussein Moussavi were fabricated. He wrote that "President Obama’s outreach must now await a decent interval." He also commented, "I’ve also argued that, although repressive, the Islamic Republic offers significant margins of freedom by regional standards. I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness."

Israel

Cohen wrote in January 2009 that the Israel-Palestinian conflict should not be seen by the United States as just another part of the War on Terrorism. He called for the ending of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and the ending of the blockade of the Gaza Strip. He also supported the reconciling of Hamas with Fatah after their violent split. As such, he criticized the Obama administration for its continuance of past United States policies towards Israel.

Cohen opposed Operation Cast Lead, labeling it "wretchedly named ... and disastrous". He has accused Israelis of the "slaying of hundreds of Palestinian children" in the campaign. In a March 8 column, Cohen stated that he had "never previously felt so shamed by Israel’s actions."

Pakistan / Afghanistan

On November 8, 2007, Cohen described the then $10 billion given to the Pakistani government and $22 billion given to the Afghani government as "self-defeating". He called Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf "a dictator with a gentleman’s itch". He also stated that "the U.S. must stick with him and maintain aid for now", but it should press Musharraf for more political reforms.

In September 2008, Cohen stated that only the Afghani people themselves can win the War in Afghanistan. He wrote:

In Afghanistan, a Taliban-led insurgency is growing in reach and effectiveness. There’s talk of a mini-surge in U.S. troops there -- now about 34,000 -- to counter the threat, but little serious reflection on what precise end perhaps 12,000 additional forces would serve. Until that’s clarified, I’m against the mini-surge.

Cohen has won numerous awards and honors, among them the Peter Weitz Prize for Dispatches from Europe, the Arthur F. Burns Prize, and the Joe Alex Morris lectureship at Harvard University. He received an Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of third world debt in 1987, the Inter-American Press Association "Tom Wallace" Award for feature writing in 1989.

"Living through a war in Europe was a harrowing experience in many ways, but I think that for everyone there of my pampered generation, it was also an education. In war, you see people pushed to their limits. To try to evoke that, to convey those experiences and so to impact government policy when governments are doing their best to ignore terrible things - that can be rewarding in more lasting ways than most journalism."

Cohen says that "journalism is a young person's game." "When the phone goes in the middle of the night and you're 25 and you're asked to go to Beirut, it's the greatest thing. But when that happens at 50, less so."