Kissinger Center Hosts Virtual Event: American Grand Strategy in the Post-Trump Era

On Wednesday, October 13th, 2021, Professor Hal Brands, Professor Francis J. Gavin, and incoming Dean of Johns Hopkins SAIS Professor Jim Steinberg engaged a group of undergraduate students in a panel presentation on American grand strategy in the post-Trump era. Each panelist shared his insights on the nature and meaning of grand strategy, key challenges the United States faces, and how the approach to grand strategy under the Biden Administration differs form that of the Trump Administration.

Professor Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is also a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the author or editor of several books, including American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump (2018), 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). His newest book is The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, co-authored with Charles Edel. Hal served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning from 2015 to 2016. He has also served as lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States, and consulted with government offices and agencies in the intelligence and national security communities.

Professor Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. In 2021, Professor Gavin was named a 2021-2022 Ernest May Senior Visiting Fellow of the Applied History Project at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In 2013, Gavin was appointed the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies and Professor of Political Science at MIT. Before joining MIT, he was the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. From 2005 until 2010, he directed The American Assembly’s multiyear, national initiative, The Next Generation Project: U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions. Gavin’s writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2012).

The Honorable James B. Steinberg is the incoming Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is University Professor of Social Science, International Affairs and Law at Syracuse University and served as Dean of the Maxwell School from July 2011 until June 2016. Prior to becoming Dean, he served as Deputy Secretary of State (2009-2011), serving as the principal Deputy to Secretary Clinton. From 2005-2008 he was Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs University of Texas. From 2001 to 2005, Professor Steinberg was vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Professor Steinberg served as deputy national security advisor to President Clinton from 1996 to 2000. During that period he also served as the President’s personal representative to the 1998 and 1999 G-8 summits. Prior to becoming deputy national security advisor, Professor Steinberg served as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for analysis, Bureau of Intelligence and Research.