About

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 scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. His work includes authoring and editing several books such as The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us About Great-Power Rivalry, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (co-authored with Michael Beckley), and The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age. Brands has served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning and was the lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States. He is a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board and consults with various government offices and agencies within the intelligence and national security communities. His writings have been published in outlets including Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. He has lectured widely on foreign policy and global affairs to audiences in government, academia, and the private sector.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Sociology
• Geography
• Medicine
• Business
• History
• Criminology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Political economy

Selected publications

• Lessons from the New Cold War

  Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks · 2025-01-01

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Persian Gulf Crisis and War

  2025-01-23

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  What is commonly known as the Persian Gulf War was actually two wars: one between Iraq and Kuwait, which lasted but one day in August 1990, and one between Iraq and a U.S.–led international coalition, which lasted from 16 January to 28 February 1991. This conflict, the immediate roots of which were in the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait, ended in a tactical victory for the international coalition, but left many important issues pertaining to Iraq and Persian Gulf security unresolved. With communism having collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union working with the United States, the George H.W. Bush administration was able to assemble a large international coalition to conduct the war, although the United States provided by far the most men and material. U.S. officials also began to frame their response to the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait as part of a ‘new world order’ in which countries worked together to prevent or punish aggression. While this rhetoric and U.S.-Soviet cooperation certainly seemed to indicate that a moment of transition away from the Cold War, and toward a more stable international order, had occurred, the decision not to remove Saddam Hussein from power, as well as other events in the 1990s, revealed that while the formal Cold War was ending, a placid international environment would not be the result around the world.

  PublisherDOI

• INTRODUCTION:

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2023-05-02

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• China's Threat to Global Democracy

  Journal of democracy · 2023-01-01 · 14 citations

  articleSenior author

  A powerful but anxious Chinese regime is now engaged in an aggressive effort to make the world safe for autocracy and to corrupt and destabilize democracies. Democracy promotion may be out of style in U.S. foreign policy, but democracy prevention is very much at the heart of Chinese strategy today.

  PublisherDOI

• The Twilight Struggle

  Yale University Press eBooks · 2022-01-05 · 2 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Twilight Struggle

  Yale University Press eBooks · 2022-01-25 · 10 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Return of Geopolitics: Latin America and the Caribbean in an Era of Great-Power Rivalry

  Global Security Review · 2022-01-11 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This article is taken from a larger report published by Ryan C. Berg and Hal Brands titled “The Return of Geopolitics: Latin America and the Caribbean in an Era of Great-Power Rivalry”. The full publication can be found at www.gordoninstitute.fiu.edu/research/publications.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Getting Grand Strategy Right

  2021-03-18 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter highlights ten common fallacies in the study of grand strategy and clarifies the misconceptions underlying them. Clearing away this conceptual confusion can lead to more productive debates about grand strategy writ large; it can also better inform discussions about the prospects for American grand strategy today. One of the fallacies is thinking of grand strategy as a principle or a doctrine rather than a process. Another is the idea that only certain types of grand strategies are worthy of the label. An additional one is the idea that democracies in particular just cannot get grand strategy right. The chapter then looks at the importance of politics and policy debates to grand strategy.

  PublisherDOI

• A Grand Strategy of Democratic Solidarity

  The Washington Quarterly · 2021 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  On March 12, 1947, Harry Truman addressed a joint session of Congress with a very specific proposal: emergency aid for Greece and Turkey, which were menaced by a communist insurgency and facing Sov...

  PublisherDOI

• The Return of Geopolitics: Latin America and the Caribbean in an Era of Strategic Competition

  Florida International University Digital Commons (Florida International University) · 2021-01-01 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  With the advent of the Biden administration, it is clear the idea of focusing U.S. foreign policy on strategic competition enjoys widespread bipartisan support. U.S. statecraft is increasingly directed at the threats posed by powerful state rivals—especially China—as opposed to Salafi-Jihadist extremists and other non-state actors. Yet geopolitical rivalry is not simply something that happens over there in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. It also happens over here, within the Western Hemisphere. As the United States enters a new period of geopolitical rivalry, it must update its understanding of strategic denial to fit the facts on the ground. This paper offers an intellectual starting point for that endeavor. It is intended to help the U.S. national security community think through the imperative of strategic denial and hemispheric defense in the twenty-first century.

  PublisherOA PDF

Frequent coauthors

• Peter D. Feaver

  Duke University

  9 shared

• Charles Edel

  7 shared

• David D. Palkki

  3 shared

• Ryan C. Berg

  3 shared

• Eric S. Edelman

  3 shared

• Zack Cooper

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  2 shared

• Harold James

  2 shared

• Tevfik Turan

  2 shared