Nov. 6: Eye of the Hawk Lecture focuses on American strategy in an age of upheaval

The next in the Eye of the Hawk Lecture Series is set for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 6, at the Gorecki Alumni Center. Hal Brands will present “American Grand Strategy in an Age of Upheaval.”

American foreign policy is in a state of upheaval. There is more uncertainty about America’s role in the world than at any time in recent decades. From the South China Sea, to the Middle East, to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, the geopolitical challenges to U.S. power and influence seem increasingly severe—and America’s responses to those challenges seem increasingly unsure.

Questions that once had widely accepted answers are now up for debate. What role should the United States play in the world? Can, and should, America continue to pursue an engaged an assertive strategy in global affairs?

As a leading scholar of grand strategy, Hal Brands helps us to make sense of the headlines and the upheaval by providing sharp yet nuanced assessments of the most critical issues in American grand strategy today. He asks, and answers, such questions as: Has America really blundered aimlessly in the world since the end of the Cold War, or has its grand strategy actually been mostly sensible and effective? Is America in terminal decline, or can it maintain its edge in a harsher and more competitive environment?

Grappling with these kinds of issues is essential to understanding the state of America’s foreign relations today and what path the country might take in the years ahead. At a time when American grand strategy often seems consumed by crisis, this collection of essays provides an invaluable guide to thinking about both the recent past and the future of America’s role in the world.

Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author, most recently, of “American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump” (2018). He has also written or edited several other 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).

From 2015 to 2016, he served as special assistant to the secretary of defense for strategic planning, and he has consulted with a range of government offices and agencies and think tanks. He has also served as lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy of the United States.

The UND College of Business & Public Administration‘s Eye of the Hawk Lecture is sponsored by BankNorth.

President Mark and First Lady Debbie Kennedy developed the Eye of the Hawk Lecture Series as a way to bring the UND community together to discuss important topics with preeminent experts.