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
American Engagement: When It Comes to Foreign Policy, Does America Deserve Trump?
In a recent op-ed, two former American Foreign Service officers made a very compelling argument in support of greater American engagement globally and renewed U.S. democracy support abroad. Amb. Adrian Basora and Amb. Ken Yalowitz argue that the current global authoritarian offensive is a U.S. national security threat and conclude that “business and economic thought […]
State of the Union: The Era of the Liberal Leviathan Is Over
In his first State of the Union address, Donald Trump used the rostrum to again break with some of the precepts which have defined the so-called “bipartisan American foreign policy consensus.” At the same time, he continued reframing some of the policies generated under that consensus in terms of a more “America First” approach.
Trump at Davos: Trickle-Down American Engagement
In many ways, the vision of American leadership within the global community of nations resembles a form of trickle-down theory.
A New World? Changes in the Global Order
This past week, I had the opportunity to host Lowell Schwartz at the Naval War College, and his comments about the shifts he is observing in the global order made a real impression. He posits that we are in the midst of a major shift–that the prevailing assumptions of the last twenty-five years about the […]
America’s Selective Burden Shedding?
At the December meeting of the Loisach Group, I was intrigued by the description of where U.S. foreign policy seems to be headed under the Trump administration offered by my colleague Daniel Hamilton–“selective burden shedding.” This term is a riff off the the more standard proclamation that the United States seeks its partners and allies […]
American Withdrawal from the World?
Even before the 2016 elections, many of us were predicting that the U.S. would go through a period of retrenchment in terms of its global engagement–that a combination of rising costs and the emergence of alternative power centers in the international system would impose limits on America’s freedom of action to set the global agenda–but […]
Can America Still Find a Purpose?
Can the United States, which played such a critical role in the development of the institutions that shaped the post-World War II environment, repeat that feat in this century as well?
Self-Determination versus State Integrity: Catalan and Kurdish Issues
Two crises are brewing, one in Iraq and one in Spain, over the perennial problem of whether self-determination takes precedence over territorial integrity.
