Walter Russell Mead | |
---|---|
Born | Columbia, South Carolina, U.S. | June 12, 1952
Education | Yale University (BA) |
Occupation | Academic |
Walter Russell Mead (born June 12, 1952) is an American academic. He is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and taught American foreign policy at Yale University. He was also the editor-at-large of The American Interest magazine. Mead is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal , a scholar at the Hudson Institute, and a book reviewer for Foreign Affairs , the quarterly foreign policy journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mead was born on June 12, 1952, in Columbia, South Carolina. His father, Loren Mead, was an Episcopal priest and scholar who grew up in South Carolina. His mother is the former Polly Ayres Mellette. Mead is one of four children with two brothers and one sister. [1] Mead was educated at the Groton School, a private boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts. He then graduated from Yale University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. [2]
Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and previously taught American foreign policy at Yale University. He was also the editor-at-large of The American Interest . In 2014, he joined the Hudson Institute as a Distinguished Scholar in American Strategy and Statesmanship. [3] [4] He served as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations until 2010, [5] and is a Global View Columnist for The Wall Street Journal . He is a cofounder of the New America Foundation, a thinktank that has been described as "radical centrist"[ clarification needed ] in orientation. [6]
An active faculty member at Bard's campus in Annandale and its New York-based Globalization and International Affairs Program, he teaches on American foreign policy and Anglo-American grand strategy, including curriculum addressing Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. [7] He has conducted coursework on the role of public intellectuals in the internet age, as well as the role of religion in diplomacy. Mead is also a regular instructor for the U.S. State Department's Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSIs) for Scholars and Secondary Educators. His past teaching positions have included Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy, at Yale University, from 2008 to 2011, as well as Presidents Fellow at the World Policy Institute at The New School, from 1987 to 1997. [8]
His most recent book, The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People was published by Knopf in 2022. [9] Mead argues that Gentile support for a Jewish state and geopolitical realities have influenced US policy towards Israel as much as anything else. [10]
In October 2007, he published God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World about the Anglo-American tradition of world power since the 17th century. It argues that the individualism inherent in British and American religion was instrumental for their rise to global power [11] and integrates Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" with Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" in its predictions for the future. [12] The Economist , [13] The Financial Times [14] and The Washington Post [15] all listed God and Gold as one of the best non-fiction books of the year.
In June 2005, Mead published Power, Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk. The book outlines American foreign policy under the Bush administration after September 11, 2001, and contextualizes it in the history of U.S. foreign policy. In it, Mead recommends changes in the American approach to terrorism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and international institutions. [16]
In 2001, Mead published Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World. It won the Lionel Gelber Award for the best book in English on International Relations in 2002. The Italian translation won the Premio Acqui Storia, an annual award for the most important historical book published. Special Providence, [17] which stemmed from an article originally published in the Winter 1999/2000 issue of The National Interest , "The Jacksonian Tradition," [18] describes the four main guiding philosophies that have influenced the formation of American foreign policy in history: the Hamiltonians, the Wilsonians, the Jeffersonians, and the Jacksonians. [19]
The New Left Review described the book as a "robust celebration of Jacksonianism as it historically was... an admiring portrait of a tough, xenophobic folk community, ruthless to outsiders or deserters, rigid in its codes of honour and violence." [20] Not all critics praised the book, however. "Despite the hype surrounding the book, it ultimately challenges little," the geographer Joseph Nevins wrote. "To the contrary, it reinforces the tired notion of U.S. exceptionalism. Thus, he [Mead] paints U.S. deployment of violence as inherently less brutal than that of Washington's enemies. In doing so, he sometimes grossly understates the human devastation wrought by the United States." [21]
Of the four traditions of American politics described in Special Providence, Jacksonianism has received the most attention. Mead has expanded and applied his description of Jacksonianism in his other writings. [22] [23]
The idea of a Jacksonian tradition in American politics has received greater interest and attention since the candidacy and election of Donald Trump, particularly because of both former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon's references to Jackson and comparisons of Jackson to Trump. [24] [25] The New York Times has speculated that Bannon drew inspiration from Mead's description of Jacksonianism in Special Providence. [26]
In an interview with Politico , Mead was dubbed the "Trump Whisperer" by the author Susan Glasser. [27]
Mead's first book, Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition, was published in 1987. He argues that American policy under Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter stifled sustainable development in the Third World. [28] Reviewing the book in Foreign Affairs , John C. Campbell called Mortal Splendor "a brilliantly written demolition of both liberal and especially conservative shibboleths concerning the political economy of the United States, both in its domestic and international arrangements." [29]
Mead is a Global View Columnist for Wall Street Journal , and a regular contributor to Foreign Affairs. [30] [31]
From 2009 until August 2017, Mead oversaw a daily blog, "Via Meadia", on the website of the journal The American Interest . Mead published a piece in the 2014 May/June issue of Foreign Affairs titled "The Return of Geopolitics". [32]
In 2003, he argued that an Iraq War was preferable to continuing UN sanctions against Iraq, because "Each year of containment is a new Gulf War", [33] and that "The existence of al Qaeda, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are part of the price the United States has paid to contain Saddam Hussein." [33] He has since become more critical of the war, and advocated for the Republican Party to change its official policy on it. [34]
Mead was critical of the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, calling it "reckless and thoughtless". [35]
Mead was also critical of President Barack Obama's decision not to launch a military strike against Syria in retaliation for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons against civilians. He argued that Obama made an "empty statement" by condemning the attacks without accompanying military force, had damaged American credibility, and encouraged Russia and Iran to ramp up their direct support for al-Assad's regime. [36] Mead supported arming Syrian rebels. [37]
Mead has written extensively about the decline of the "Blue Social Model," which refers to the political and economic status quo of the United States following the New Deal and World War II. [38] [39]
Mead has been a strong critic of the "Israel Lobby" hypothesis advanced by political scientists Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. In a review of their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy in Foreign Affairs, [40] he insists that domestic factors are generally irrelevant to foreign policy, and the "Israel Lobby" hypothesis strongly insists on the opposite. Mead also notes that contrary to Walt and Mearsheimer's claim that pro-Israel groups exert influence through campaign finance, pro-Israel groups contributed less than one percent of PAC contributions in the 2006 election cycle. Mead agreed that pro-Israel political advocacy is a topic worthy of study but argued that the US policy on Israel grows out of more diverse and complicated historical reasons than described in The Israel Lobby.
Mead has been a strong supporter of Transatlantic relations. [41] He is currently a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Bosch Stiftung. [42]
In February 2020, Mead published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal titled "China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia". The title, chosen by the Journal's editors, was criticized by a Chinese foreign spokesperson and some professors in the United States as racist; [43] the article was defended by the CEO of Dow Jones, the company that publishes the Journal. [44] 53 reporters and editors of the Wall Street Journal signed an open letter criticizing the headline and urging the newspaper's leaders "to consider correcting the headline and apologizing to our readers, sources, colleagues and anyone else who was offended" by it. [45] [46] [47] Arguing against such an apology was former U.S. diplomat Susan L. Shirk who, according to an article in The New York Times, argued that the newspaper should refrain from making an apology because the Chinese government had demanded one. [48] In March 2020, the Chinese government expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters from China over the article, the first such expulsion since 1998. [49] This decision drew criticism from the State Department, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, and an article in USA Today. [50]
Mead lives in Washington, D.C. [3] He is a member of the Church of the Advent, an Anglican church in Washington. [51]
New America, formerly the New America Foundation, is a think tank in the United States founded in 1999. It focuses on a range of public policy issues, including national security studies, technology, asset building, health, gender, energy, education, and the economy. The organization is based in Washington, D.C., and Oakland, California. Anne-Marie Slaughter is the chief executive officer (CEO) of the think tank.
Max Boot is an American author, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He worked as a writer and editor for Christian Science Monitor and then for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s. Since then, he has been the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributor to The Washington Post. He has also written for numerous publications such as The Weekly Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and he has authored books of military history. In 2018, Boot published The Road Not Taken, a biography of Edward Lansdale, and The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, which details Boot's "ideological journey from a 'movement' conservative to a man without a party", in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The phrase "Sick man of Asia", or "Sick man of East Asia" when referring specifically to China, is a discriminatory term for Chinese people. It originally referred to Qing China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which, experiencing internal divisions and social upheaval at the time, was taken advantage of by the great powers.
Bret Louis Stephens is an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He has been an opinion columnist for The New York Times and a senior contributor to NBC News since 2017. Since 2021, he has been the inaugural editor-in-chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations.
The Lionel Gelber Prize is a literary award for English non-fiction books on foreign policy. Founded in 1989 by Canadian diplomat Lionel Gelber, the prize awards "the world’s best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues." A prize of CA$50,000 is awarded to the winner. The award is presented annually by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
George Soros is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist. As of March 2021, he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, of which $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. Forbes called Soros the "most generous giver". He is a resident of New York.
Kenneth R. Weinstein is the Walter P. Stern Distinguished Fellow at Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank. From 2005, he served as Hudson's CEO, and from April 2011 until January 2021 was Hudson's President and CEO. Weinstein is an expert on U.S. foreign policy and international affairs and has commented on national and international affairs on television and in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal,The Weekly Standard, Yomiuri Shimbun and Le Monde.
Robert Charles O'Brien Jr. is an American attorney who served as the 27th United States national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. He was the fourth and final person to hold the position during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Thomas Edward Donilon is an American lawyer, business executive, and former government official who served as the 22nd National Security Advisor in the Obama administration from 2010 to 2013. Donilon also worked in the Carter and Clinton administrations, including as Chief of Staff of the U.S. State Department. He is now Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the firm's global think tank.
David Paul Goldman is an American economic strategist and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler with the first column published January 1, 2000. The pseudonym is an allusion to German historian Oswald Spengler, whose most famous work, Decline of the West (1918), asserted that Western civilization was already dying. Goldman says that he writes from a Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses; he says his subject matter proceeds "from the theme formulated by [Franz] Rosenzweig: the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie, and unadaptable Islam." On March 14, 2015, Goldman and longtime Asia Times associate Uwe Von Parpart joined an investor group that took control of Asia Times HK Ltd. He became Deputy Editor (Business) at Asia Times in 2020. Goldman was global head of credit strategy at Credit Suisse 1999-2002, Global Head of Fixed Income Research for Bank of America 2002-2005, and Global Head of Fixed Income Research at Cantor Fitzgerald 2005-2008. He subsequently was a partner at Yunfeng Financial in Hong Kong, an investment bank later acquired by Jack Ma. He continues to advise CEOs and institutional investors. He is a regular contributor to Claremont Review of Books, Law and Liberty, Tablet Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and First Things.
Michael Richard Pompeo is an American politician who served in the administration of Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021.
That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back is a nonfiction book written by Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist and author, with Michael Mandelbaum, a writer and foreign policy professor at Johns Hopkins University. They published the book on September 5, 2011, in the United States. It addresses what the authors see as the four major problems America faces today, and possible solutions. These problems are defined as: globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption.
Kevin Peraino is an American author and journalist.
The World America Made is a 2012 non-fiction book written by Robert Kagan. In it, Kagan argues against the retreat of the United States as the global superpower and suggests that maintaining the current American-led world order is good for democracy around the world. The book influenced President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union Address.
Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics, and head of the Department of International Politics at City, University of London and an Honorary Research Fellow (Politics) at the University of Manchester. He is past president of British International Studies Association and Vice Chairman of the British International Studies Association, where he formerly served as Treasurer. He has been described as "an obligatory reference point on the history of social science, international relations and US foreign policy."
Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again is a non-fiction book by businessman Donald Trump, first published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster in 2015. A revised edition was subsequently republished eight months later in trade paperback format under the title Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America. Like his previous work Time to Get Tough (2011) did for the U.S. presidential election in 2012, Crippled America outlined Trump's political agenda as he ran in the 2016 election on a conservative platform.
This article describes the foreign policy positions taken by Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
U.S. foreign policy during the presidency of Donald Trump (2017–2021) was noted for its unpredictability and reneging on prior international commitments, upending diplomatic conventions, embracing political and economic brinkmanship with most adversaries, and stronger relations with traditional allies. Trump's "America First" policy pursued nationalist foreign policy objectives and prioritized bilateral relations over multinational agreements. As president, Trump described himself as a nationalist while espousing views that have been characterized as isolationist, non-interventionist, and protectionist, although the "isolationist" label has been disputed. He personally praised some populist, neo-nationalist, illiberal, and authoritarian governments, while antagonizing others, even as administration diplomats nominally continued to pursue pro-democracy ideals abroad.
Aaron Wess Mitchell is an American foreign policy expert and former diplomat who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from October 2017 until February 2019. Prior to assuming the role at State Department, he was president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis. On July 19, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Mitchell as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
The Commission on Unalienable Rights was a commission created under the U.S. State Department in July 2019. It released its final report in August 2020.
Our opinion pages regularly publish articles with opinions that people disagree – or agree with – and it was not our intention to cause offense with the headline on the piece.
"The Chinese government has been coercive in its demands for apologies from all sorts of international groups on issues that are essentially domestic political issues," Ms. Shirk, a deputy secretary of state under former President Bill Clinton, said. "This has the effect of interfering in freedom of expression in our own countries."
Like many American newspapers, including USA TODAY, the opinion pages of The Journal are run separately from the news department. This means that none of The Journal's news staff would have been involved in commissioning or editing Mead's column or writing the headline. Like most foreign media, The Journal is not available in China, and its website and stories are blocked by its so-called Great Firewall: censors.
Many of us simply know Walter as a fellow member at Advent, and as a friend and mentor to many.
Library resources |
By Walter Russell Mead |
---|