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Expert Bio
Charles Kupchan is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government.
From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in the Barack Obama administration. He was also director for European affairs on the NSC during the first Bill Clinton administration. Before joining the Clinton NSC, he worked in the U.S. Department of State on the policy planning staff. Previously, he was an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.
Kupchan is the author of Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself From the World (2020), No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (2012), How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (2010), The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century (2002), Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order (2001), Civic Engagement in the Atlantic Community (1999), Atlantic Security: Contending Visions (1998), Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe (1995), The Vulnerability of Empire (1994), The Persian Gulf and the West (1987), and numerous articles on international and strategic affairs.
Kupchan has served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, Columbia University's Institute for War and Peace Studies, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Centre d'Étude et de Recherches Internationales in Paris, and the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo. From 2006 to 2007, he was the Henry A. Kissinger scholar at the Library of Congress and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 2013 to 2014, he was a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy.
Kupchan received his BA from Harvard University and MPhil and DPhil from Oxford University.
Affiliations:
- Academic Exchange, executive committee of academic board
- Alfred Herrhausen Society, board member
- American Council on Germany, board member
- Aspen Italia, board member
- Georgetown University, professor of international affairs
- La Repubblica, occasional columnist
- Project Syndicate, occasional columnist
Current Projects
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Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a geopolitical earthquake that will cause repercussions far beyond Europe. But the Russian president might be planting the seeds for the demise of his regime by overreaching.
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Separatist rhetoric among Bosnian Serb leadership is raising concerns about the dissolution of Bosnia. It’s part of a nationalist wave across the Balkans that threatens a return of ethnic conflict.
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AUKUS, a deal for the United States and United Kingdom to provide Australia with submarines, has infuriated France at a time when transatlantic coordination to deal with China’s rise is crucial.
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The transatlantic alliance is enjoying a period of restoration following the damage done by former U.S. President Donald Trump. But as the West’s messy exit from Afghanistan has made clear, the United States and its European allies must undertake determined efforts to prepare for the formidable challenges it now faces.
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Allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific will be the beneficiaries of an overdue strategic realignment.
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The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and governing institutions largely substantiates US President Joe Biden’s skepticism that US-led efforts would ever have enabled the government to stand on its own feet. Even two decades of steady support failed to create Afghan institutions capable of holding their own.
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By defining today’s geopolitics as a clash between democracy and autocracy, the Biden administration risks both empowering America’s adversaries and undercutting its allies.