Hal Brands
Hal Brands is a Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author or editor of several books, including Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (2016), What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (2014), Latin America's Cold War (2010), From Berlin to Baghdad: America's Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (2008), and The Power of the Past: History and Statecraft (co-edited with Jeremi Suri, 2015).
He was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow from 2015 to 2016. He has also consulted with a range of government offices and agencies in the intelligence and national security communities.
He received his BA from Stanford University (2005) and his PhD from Yale University (2009). He previously worked as an assistant and associate professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, and as a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses.
Author's Articles
One War Is Not Enough: Strategy and Force Planning for Great-Power Competition
What are the implications of the Department of Defense's adoption of a one-war standard that is focused on defeating a great-power rival? Hal Brands and Evan Braden Montgomery discuss the gap between America's global commitments and the military challenges it…
After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy
Now that the responsible stakeholder approach to China is essentially defunct, how should America respond? There are four options — accommodation, collective balancing, comprehensive pressure, and regime change.
Choosing Primacy: U.S. Strategy and Global Order at the Dawn of the Post-Cold War Era
Newly declassified U.S. government records shed some light onto U.S. strategic thinking about the post-Cold War era and the infamous Defense Planning Guidance.