A Defense of the US-led Global Order (March 28, 2021)
If you are reading this, then you live and work in a world made by the post-war international liberal consensus. This consensus was shaped by thinkers such as Paul H. Nitze, the founder of the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, and its dean, Professor Eliot Cohen, a renowned scholar of military history and one-time counsellor to former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. In this episode, Cohen reflects on the increasing importance of cyber warfare, whether the West could have better anticipated China’s trajectory, the changing role of the US with the rise of regional powers, and finally, why he’s still an optimist about America.
Eliot A. Cohen is the Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies and Dean of Johns Hopkins SAIS. After receiving his BA and PhD degrees from Harvard, he taught there and at the US Naval War College before coming to Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1990. His books include, most recently, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force (2017) as well as Conquered into Liberty: Two Centuries of Battle along the Great Warpath that Made the American Way of War (2012) and Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (2003), among others. He served in the US Army Reserve, was a director in the Defense Department’s policy planning staff, led the US Air Force’s multi-volume study of the first Gulf War, and has served in various official advisory positions. In 2007-2009 he was Counselor of the Department of State, serving as Senior Adviser to Secretary Condoleezza Rice, focusing on issues of war and peace, including Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, and his commentary has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and on major television networks.
