Matthew Frakes

AWC Postdoctoral Fellow

Biography

Matthew Frakes is an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on U.S. foreign relations and national security strategy, with particular emphasis on the late Cold War and the emergence of the post–Cold War world.

His current book project is titled Rogue States: The Making of America’s Global War on Terror (under contract with Cornell University Press). The book, drawn from his dissertation research, examines the origins of post–Cold War strategy in response to the emerging transnational security threats of rogue states, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction from the early Reagan years to the aftermath of the Gulf War. The book traces the formation and evolution of the concept of “rogue states” as a new framework to guide U.S. national security following the end of the Cold War, laying the groundwork for the War on Terror after 9/11.

He is also writing a brief history of the U.S. invasion of Grenada, titled Grenada 1983: American Resurgence towards the End of the Cold War (under contract with Osprey Publishing). This book examines the military dimension of the Grenada invasion within the broader context of the strategic, diplomatic, and political developments of the most tumultuous year of the 1980s, revealing how this short crisis held deep and lasting implications for the U.S. approach to using military force in the post–Cold War world.

He also holds master’s degrees in international history from the University of Virginia, Columbia University, and the London School of Economics and a bachelor’s degree in history from Princeton University.