HAL BRANDS
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Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
Scholar at American Enterprise Institute & Bloomberg Opinion Columnist
Unlock the power of insight and foresight with Hal Brands, one of the foremost authorities on foreign policy and world affairs. With his exceptional expertise, Hal illuminates the complexities of our ever-changing global landscape, empowering audiences to navigate the world's most pressing challenges with confidence.
Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Exclusively represented by BrightSight Speakers, he is also a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the author or editor of several books, including, most recently, The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us About Great-Power Rivalry, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, co-authored with Michael Beckley, and The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age. He is also the author of The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World (2025).
Hal has served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning and lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States. He is a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board and consults with a range of government offices and agencies in the intelligence and national security communities. His writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other outlets; he has lectured on foreign policy and global affairs to audiences in government, academia, and the private sector in dozens of countries on multiple continents. In 2023, he was named one of Washington's most influential people by Washingtonian magazine.
Speech topics
Speech topics
A Conversation: How Current Global Affairs Affect Your Organization
A Conversation: How Current Global Affairs Affect Your Organization
Hal Brands is available for special, personalized engagements in a conversation/panel format that address ongoing global trends/events, covering a range of topics, including:
US-China relations and the danger of conflict through the late 2020s and beyond
The war in Ukraine and its global implications
Advanced technology and the future of world affairs
Geopolitics and geoeconomics in a fracturing world
The future of American foreign policy (to include the question of what happens if we get a second Trump presidency)
The New Cold War: Russia, China, the United States and the Future of Global Order
HOW GEOGRAPHY SHAPES THE FATE OF NATIONS
HOW GEOGRAPHY SHAPES THE FATE OF NATIONS
This talk examines the most immutable factor in global affairs—geography—and its impact on geopolitics in a new era of conflict and turmoil.
Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China
Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China
We often hear that the US-China competition is a "superpower marathon" destined to last a century. But the most dangerous period in that rivalry will come in the second half of the 2020s. This is because China is not so much a rising power but a peaking power--a country whose military capabilities have grown quite formidable, but that faces profound, and worsening, economic and strategic challenges. Historically, peaking powers have been the most dangerous actors in international affairs--they have brought on some of the most devastating wars of the last 100 years. China increasingly fits this profile today. To avoid a catastrophic war that could derail the global economy, the United States will need a strategy for navigating the danger zone that lies ahead.
Global Risk in the 2020s and Beyond
Global Risk in the 2020s and Beyond
The post-Cold War era is over, and a tumultuous new period has begun. Countries and firms face an international environment that features a rising danger of great-power conflict, revolutionary advances in technology, deepening disruptions to a globalized economy, and intensifying challenges from transnational issues such as climate change and food insecurity. These issues interact and exacerbate each other: Geopolitical tensions complicate global cooperation on climate change, for example, while creating greater inflationary pressures for countries around the world. This talk provides a risk map for the coming decade and beyond, examining key sources of disruption in the emerging geopolitical environment and offering principles for addressing them.
Books
Books
The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World
An urgent and incisive new framework for understanding the origins―and stakes―of global conflict with China, Russia, and Iran.
The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today
A leading historian’s guide to great-power competition, as told through America’s successes and failures in the Cold War
The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order
A “brilliant” examination of American complacency and how it puts the nation’s—and the world’s—security at risk (The Wall Street Journal).
Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China
It has become conventional wisdom that America and China are running a “superpower marathon” that may last a century. Yet Hal Brands and Michael Beckley pose a counterintuitive question: What if the sharpest phase of that competition is more like a decade-long sprint?
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