Past Kissinger Chairs, 2017-2020

*Berlin, seat of a great power. Stereographs Collection*. 1903. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

From 2017-2020, the scholars Constanze Stelzenmüller, Ivan Krastev, and Barry Posen individually held the position of Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations.

The research topics that these scholars focused on during their tenure included:

Germany’s role in a changing world
Post-Cold War political balance
United States multipolar political order

The sections below provide a brief biography for each scholar and include webcasts of their Library of Congress lectures and programs, as well as selected bibliographies of their print publications.

Constanze Stelzenmüller is an expert on German, European, and transatlantic foreign and security policy and strategy. She was a Robert Bosch senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States. At the Kluge Center, she worked on a book project titled “The Dilemma of German Power,” examining Germany’s role in a changing world of competition among the great powers.

Featured Videos

June 10, 2020

Constanze Stelzenmüller and Andrew Weiss discuss what systems are handling the pandemic better and why, how the European Union is dealing with the pandemic, internal politics in Russia, and how all of this impacts the United States. John Haskell, director of the Kluge Center, moderated.

December 5, 2019

On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Constanze Stelzenmüller, 18th Kissinger Chair, and Hope M. Harrison, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, discussed the historic event and its ongoing significance for the future of democracy. The conversation was moderated by Kluge Center director, John Haskell.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

Shaper Nations by (Editors) William I. Hitchcock; Melvyn P. Leffler; Jeffrey W. Legro; (Contributor) Constanze Stelzenmüller
Call Number: JZ1313 .S534 2016
ISBN: 9780674660212
Published/Created: 2016-04-05
"Shaper Nations" provides illuminating perspectives on the national strategies of eight emerging and established countries that are shaping global politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Constanze Stelzenmüller's contributed with the chapter "Germany: between power and responsibility". In seven key countries--Brazil, China, Germany, India, Israel, Russia, and Turkey--strategy is dominated by non-state threats, domestic politics, the distorting effect of history and national identity, economic development concerns, and the sheer difficulty, in the face of many powerful internal and external constraints, of pursuing an effective national strategy. The shapers represent a new trend in the international arena with important consequences. Among them is a more uncertain world in which countries concentrate on their own development rather than on shared problems that might divert precious resources, and attend more to regional than to global order. In responding to these shaper states, the United States must understand the sources of their national strategies in determining its own role on the global stage.
European Union: The Next Fifty Years by Author: Maurice Fraser. Contributor: Constanze Stelzenmüller
Call Number: JN30 .E94214 2007
ISBN: 0900671815
Published/Created: 2007

Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group. At the Kluge Center, Krastev finished his book, “The Light that Failed: A Reckoning”, about why the West, after winning the Cold War, lost its political balance.

Featured Videos

February 18, 2020

Ivan Krastev discussed his book, “The Light That Failed”, co-authored with Stephen Holmes. The book analyzes why the West, after winning the Cold War, lost its political balance.

May 09, 2019

Kluge Center Director John Haskell interviewed Ivan Krastev on the connection between culture and politics in the European Union. The event was co-hosted by the European Delegation and the Embassy of Bulgaria as a part of the European Month of Culture.

November 01, 2018

Drawing on world-wide case studies, speakers at this event discussed the ideals of liberalism in foreign policy and considered recent critiques that the promotion of democracy is simply a pragmatic or hypocritical Western stance.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

After Europe by Ivan Krastev
ISBN: 9780812252422
Published/Created: 2020-01-10
In this book, Ivan Krastev reflects on the future of the European Union--and its potential lack of a future. With far-right nationalist parties on the rise across the continent and the United Kingdom planning for Brexit, the European Union is in disarray and plagued by doubts as never before. Krastev includes chapters devoted to Europe's major problems (especially the political destabilization sparked by the more than 1.3 million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia), the spread of right-wing populism (taking into account the election of Donald Trump in the United States), and the thorny issues facing member states on the eastern flank of the EU (including the threat posed by Vladimir Putin's Russia).
The Light That Failed by Ivan Krastev
Call Number: JC574 .K74 2019
ISBN: 0241345707
Published/Created: 2019-11-31
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned out to be only the beginning of an Age of Imitation. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized. Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin's Russia and Orbán's Hungary into models for the United States.
L'impero diviso : dal comunismo al nazionalismo : le due Europe dalla caduta del muro a oggi by Federico Fubini, Ivan Krastev (Authors)
Call Number: D443 .F83 2019
ISBN: 9788828201236
Published/Created: 2019
Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest by Ivan Krastev
ISBN: 9780812223309
Published/Created: 2014-06-20
Since the financial meltdown of 2008, political protests have spread around the world like chain lightning, from the "Occupy" movements of the United States, Great Britain, and Spain to more destabilizing forms of unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Russia, Thailand, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Ukraine. In "Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest", commentator and political scientist Ivan Krastev proposes a provocative interpretation of these popular uprisings--one with ominous implications for the future of democratic politics. Challenging theories that trace the protests to the rise of a global middle class, Krastev proposes that the insurrections express a pervasive distrust of democratic institutions. Protesters on the streets of Moscow, Sofia, Istanbul, and São Paulo are openly suspicious of both the market and the state. They reject established political parties, question the motives of the mainstream media, refuse to recognize the legitimacy of any specific leadership, and reject all formal organizations. They have made clear what they don't want--the status quo--but they have no positive vision of an alternative future. Welcome to the worldwide libertarian revolution, in which democracy is endlessly disrupted to no end beyond the disruption itself.
The Anti-American Century by Ivan Krastev (Editor); Alan McPherson (Editor); Allen McPherson (Editor)
Call Number: E744 .A67 2007
ISBN: 9789637326806
Published/Created: 2007-04-15
This book interrogates the nature of anti-Americanism today and over the last century. It asks several questions: How do we define the phenomenon from different perspectives: political, social, and cultural? What are the historical sources and turning points of anti-Americanism in Europe and elsewhere? What are its links with anti-Semitic sentiment? Has anti-Americanism been beneficial or self-destructive to its "believers"? Finally, how has the United States responded and why?
Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption by Ivan Krastev; Aryeh Neier (Foreword by)
Call Number: JF1081 .K69 2004
ISBN: 9639241938
Published/Created: 2004-06-10
A global anticorruption crusade is underway. "As slavery was once a way of life and now has become obsolete and incomprehensible, so the practice of bribery will become obsolete," a modern-day moralist has said. But how is global consensus on corruption possible? Why are anticorruption campaigns running out of steam, and why are post-communist societies obsessed with corruption? This book is not a study of anti-corruption policies. Instead, it looks at the politics of anti-corruption. Policies are what institutions do. But in analyzing politics, this book seeks to discover why institutions do what they do. The author delves into political motivations at a time when "combating corruption" is the fashion among the academic community. Krastev argues that anticorruption sentiments are not driven by the actual level of corruption but by general disappointment with liberal reforms that cause rising social inequality. In this collection of essays, the author makes the provocative argument that the current corruption-focused policies are doomed.
Nationalism After Communism by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (Editor); Ivan Krastev (Editor)
Call Number: DJK51 .N359 2004
ISBN: 9789639241763
Published/Created: 2004-01-01
Drawing on lessons from post-communist Europe, this book provides a summary of the practical wisdom learned in the management of ethnic conflicts from the Balkans to Chechnya. Grounded in empirical - mostly comparative - research, the essays go beyond theoretical postulates and normative ideals and acknowledge the considerable experience that exists within the post-communist world on ethnic conflict, nation and state building. What does the post-communist experience have in common with other nationalisms and nation-related conflicts, and what, if anything, is unique about it? This book, written by academics with experience as policy advisors, is strongly policy-oriented. The primordial type hypotheses of ethnic social capital and ancient hatreds are tested on the basis of public opinion surveys on nationalism and ethnic cohabitation in various countries in east-central Europe. Power-sharing arrangements in the Balkans, the small separatist Republics of the post-Soviet world as well as ethno-federalism from the former Yugoslavia to the former Soviet Empire are discussed in the respective chapters.

Barry Posen is professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the MIT Security Studies Program. At the Kluge Center, Posen studied the implications for the United States of a multipolar international order.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy by Barry R. Posen
Call Number: JZ1312 .P67 2014
ISBN: 9780801452581
Published/Created: 2014-06-03
The United States, Barry R. Posen argues in "Restraint", has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics. Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that he calls "liberal hegemony," one that Posen sees as unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful. Written for policymakers and observers alike, Restraint explains precisely why this grand strategy works poorly and then provides a carefully designed alternative grand strategy and an associated military strategy and force structure. In contrast to the failures and unexpected problems that have stemmed from America's consistent overreaching, Posen makes an urgent argument for restraint in the future use of U.S. military strength. After setting out the political implications of restraint as a guiding principle, Posen sketches the appropriate military forces and posture that would support such a strategy. He works with a deliberately constrained notion of grand strategy and, even more important, of national security (which he defines as including sovereignty, territorial integrity, power position, and safety). His alternative for military strategy, which Posen calls "command of the commons," focuses on protecting U.S. global access through naval, air, and space power, while freeing the United States from most of the relationships that require the permanent stationing of U.S. forces overseas.
The Sources of Military Doctrine by Barry R. Posen
Call Number: U162 .P66 1984
ISBN: 0801416337
Published/Created: 1984-09-24
Barry R. Posen explores how military doctrine takes shape and the role it plays in grand strategy-that collection of military, economic, and political means and ends with which a state attempts to achieve security. Posen isolates three crucial elements of a given strategic doctrine: its offensive, defensive, or deterrent characteristics, its integration of military resources with political aims, and the degree of military or operational innovation it contains. He then examines these components of doctrine from the perspectives of organization theory and balance of power theory, taking into account the influence of technology and geography. Looking at interwar France, Britain, and Germany, Posen challenges each theory to explain the German Blitzkrieg, the British air defense system, and the French Army's defensive doctrine often associated with the Maginot Line. This comparative study, in which the balance of power theory emerges as the more useful, not only allows us to discover important implications for the study of national strategy today, but also serves to sharpen our understanding of the origins of World War II.
Israel's Strategic Doctrine by Yoav Ben-Horin; Barry Posen; Rand Corporation Staff (Contribution by)
Call Number: UA853.I8 B39 1981
ISBN: 0833003658
Published/Created: 1981-01-01