Hal Brands

Hal Brands (born 1983) is an American columnist and scholar of US foreign policy. He is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, as well as a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.^[1]

Hal Brands
Brands in 2014
Born	1983 (age 41–42)
Academic background
Education	Stanford University (BA) Yale University (MA, MPhil, PhD)
Academic work
Discipline	Political science, history
Main interests	United States foreign policy
Website	Official website

Education

Brands holds a BA in history and political science from Stanford University and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in history from Yale University.

Personal life

Brands' father is the historian H. W. Brands.^[2]

Publications

Books

• From Berlin to Baghdad : America's Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (2008)^[3]
• Latin America's Cold War (2010)
• What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (2014)^[4]
• (editor, with Jeremi Suri) The Power of the Past: History and Statecraft (2015)
• Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (2016)
• American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump (2018)^[5]
• (With Charles Edel) The Lessons of Tragedy (2019)^[6]
• The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today (2022)^[7][8][9]
• Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (2022) (co-authored with Michael Beckley)^[10]
• The New Makers of Modern Strategy. From the Ancient World to the Digital Age (2023)^[11]
• The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World (2025)^[12]

Articles

• "An 'America First' World", Foreign Affairs, May 27, 2024^[13]
• "Putting ‘Asia First’ Could Cost America the World", Bloomberg, August 26, 2024^[14]
• "How Primed for War Is China?", Foreign Policy, February 4, 2024 (co-authored with Michael Beckley)^[15]