Nikolas Gvosdev
Nikolas Gvosdev is a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College, and serves as Senior Fellow, U.S. Global Engagement Program.
Nikolas Gvosdev's Latest Posts
Competing Bipartisan Consensuses?
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) tweets: “There is an emerging, left right coalition of common sense for a foreign policy of restraint.” We certainly have seen some interesting challenges in the past several weeks to some of the established verities about the role the United States ought to be playing in the world. If nothing else, a […]
The New Congress and U.S. Foreign Policy
One of the questions I have been following is how the new Congress will approach questions of U.S. foreign policy. With the Democrats in control of the lower chamber, but Republicans retaining their majority in the Senate, it provides for divided oversight and assessment. Moreover, while the broad tent of the Democratic party has found […]
Rischian Transactionalism
Transactionalism in U.S. foreign policy has a new proponent: James E. Risch, incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Ethics and the Syria Withdrawal
All of the questions I wanted to pose about the ethics surrounding the question of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria have been raised in Conor Friedersdorf’s December 26 column in The Atlantic. (In fact, the only ethical question he does not address about a Syria withdrawal is the one raised recently by Josh […]
Warren and Haley: Post-Trump Foreign Policies?
One of the conclusions of the recently released report Misconnecting with the U.S. Public: Narrative Collapse and U.S. Foreign Policy is the need for U.S. political figures, particularly thinking toward a post-Trump administration, to develop a narrative which acknowledges the recent mistakes that have led to skepticism on the part of the U.S. public towards […]
Kerch and San Ysidro
The events in the Kerch Straits, which connect the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and on the U.S.-Mexico border at the San Ysidro crossing, have several things in common despite occurring in different parts of the world and reflecting different sorts of crises (one, an armed clash between Ukrainian and Russian naval vessels, […]
Sanders’ “Selective Engagement” versus Transactional Internationalism
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders each offer a different alternative to the traditional “bipartisan consensus” in U.S. foreign policy.
Empty Pews in the Church of Atlanticism
Timothy Garton Ash uses the image of “empty pews” to describe a declining commitment, not only on the part of the U.S. public, but even some American foreign policy experts, to the cause of Atlanticism–the notion that the United States has compelling interests to remain involved in European affairs. As he notes in his essay […]
