How does the United States make major foreign policy shifts—and how much could its foreign policy change in the next four years?
A growing number of analysts argue that the era of U.S. hyperpower is over and that the country needs a strategic reorientation. But major changes in U.S. foreign policy are difficult to achieve and have occurred only rarely in history.
Carnegie’s American Statecraft Program has examined key moments since World War II when the United States has adopted new strategies, and has identified the ingredients any future president would need to steer foreign policy in a new direction.
To launch Carnegie’s report, Strategic Change in U.S. Foreign Policy, scholars and practitioners will come together to explain these ingredients and debate their implications for the next presidential administration. Please join two of the report’s authors—Christopher S. Chivvis, who directs the American Statecraft Program, and Stephen Wertheim, a historian and senior fellow in the program—and Beth Sanner, who served in the U.S. national security community for three decades, including as deputy director for national intelligence from 2019 to 2021, and is currently the director for geopolitics at International Capital Strategies and a distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
