Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

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Where is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed?

Thu, February 1, 2018
Dinner Program
Stephen Walt

During the campaign, President Trump described U.S. foreign policy as “a complete and total disaster.” (Indeed, when Bernie Sanders made similar complaints from the left, many Americans nodded their heads in agreement, indicating a bi-partisan dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy.) Trump promised to “shake the rust off” and chart a new course; but his policies as president soon reverted to the familiar status quo. His bellicose tweets notwithstanding, Trump is gradually being captured, co-opted, and constrained by the foreign policy establishment. Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, will explore the future of U.S. foreign policy and argue that under Trump, U.S. foreign policy is likely to be an even more inept version of our recent follies.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Walt previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and deputy dean of Social Sciences. He has been a resident associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. He has also served as a consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Defense University. He presently serves on the editorial boards of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International Relations, and Journal of Cold War Studies, and serves as co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, published by Cornell University Press. Additionally, he was elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005.

Walt is the author of The Origins of Alliances (1987), which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award. He is also the author of Revolution and War (1996), Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (2005), and, with co-author J.J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby (2007). He is currently working on a book about why U.S. foreign policy keeps failing.

Professor Walt is the 2018 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar and his Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.


Food for Thought: Podcast with Stephen Walt

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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