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
A Washington Insider Take on the Narratives
Are we in a moment? Ever since Trump was elected I have been trying to sort out whether we have reached a critical turning point in U.S. relations with the world or whether this is a momentary flare up (which because we are in the moment) we are over emphasizing the importance of.
Crafting Narratives and the 2020 Elections
The Project on U.S. Global Engagement has released its report, The Search for a New Narrative: Recasting American Involvement in the International System.
A Russian Take on the Kurds and U.S. Foreign Policy
The Russian defense news site Voennoye Obozrenie has a very interesting and caustic take on the U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria.
Need for a New Consensus
Josh Rogin follows up on the move to institutionalize transactionalism as the guiding principle of U.S. foreign aid.
Candidates, Calculus and the Iran Crisis
I had the distinct honor and pleasure of speaking with the members of the Greater Des Moines Committee on Foreign Relations this past Tuesday around the topic of the role and scope of U.S. global engagement.
The Narrative IS Changing …
One of the criticisms that the U.S. Global Engagement project has received over the past year is the assessment that we are assigning too much weight to those Americans who have expressed dissatisfaction with the level of American involvement in world affairs–and that this is primarily concentrated among one segment of voters who cast ballots for Donald Trump in 2016.
Transactionalism and U.S. Foreign Aid
One of the critical questions we have been grappling with since Donald Trump’s election is the extent to which a transactional calculus would come to predominate in U.S. foreign policy decision-making. Nahal Toosi of Politico, in her story, “Trump Plan Would Steer Foreign Aid to ‘Friends and Allies,’ has obtained the draft of a new presidential directive on American foreign aid which suggests that transactionalism will shift from being a rhetoric device to an actual defining principle as to how the United States will conduct its foreign affairs.
What is the Status Quo for the Climate?
I have been reading an interesting book by Sarah Parcak called Archaeology from Space: How The Future Shapes our Past.
