experts
Stephen Wertheim
Senior Fellow, American Statecraft Program

about

Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a historian of U.S. foreign policy and analyzes contemporary problems in American strategy and diplomacy. Wertheim is also a visiting lecturer at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

He is the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (Harvard University Press, 2020), which reveals how U.S. leaders, in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, decided to pursue global military dominance as an effectively perpetual project. Wertheim has published scholarly research on a range of subjects and concepts in U.S. foreign policy, including humanitarian intervention, international law, international organization, colonial empire, public opinion, and “isolationism.”

Named one of “the world’s 50 top thinkers for the Covid-19 age” by Prospect magazine, Wertheim regularly comments on current events. His essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Foreign AffairsForeign Policy, the Guardian, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He has also appeared on C-SPAN, Deutsche Welle, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS. His commentary may be viewed here.

During the 2022-23 academic year, Wertheim was a distinguished lecturer in history at Catholic University and a visiting lecturer in law at Yale Law School. He previously held faculty positions in history at Columbia University and Birkbeck, University of London, and postdoctoral research fellowships at Princeton University and King’s College, University of Cambridge. Before coming to Carnegie, Wertheim was director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think-tank he co-founded in 2019.

He received a PhD from Columbia University in 2015 and an AB summa cum laude from Harvard University in 2007.

education
PhD, MPhil, MA; Columbia University, AB, Harvard University      
languages
English

All work from Stephen Wertheim

filters
114 Results
In The Media
in the media
Bipartisan Empire: Foreign Policy, Regional War, and the 2024 Election

A discussion about foreign policy and the 2024 presidential election.

· November 5, 2024
The Jewish Currents’ On the Nose Podcast
In The Media
in the media
On U.S. Isolationism

A conversation about the origins of “isolationism,” the United States’ relative interests in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, Ukraine and Taiwan, and an “America first” policy for the Democratic party, among other subjects.

· November 1, 2024
Monterey Trialogue
podcast
Will America’s Next President Bring Real Change in Foreign Policy?

Sophia Besch sits down with Chris Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim to discuss why meaningful change in U.S. foreign policy is so difficult to achieve—and what it would take for the next American president to make such a change happen.

Video of Stephen Wertheim discussing new conceptual frameworks for America's China strategy
video
After Engagement, What? New Conceptual Frameworks for America's China Strategy

Over the past decade, leaders across the political spectrum have rejected the conceptual framework known as “engagement” that had guided U.S. policy toward China since the mid-1990s. Stephen Wertheim outlines the benefits of identifying a positive framework for U.S.-China relations and explores four conceptual frameworks for America's China strategy for the 2030s.

· October 24, 2024
In The Media
in the media
How Kamala Harris Should Put America First — for Real

The era of unrivaled American primacy, in the shadow of the Soviet collapse, may be over. But a new era of responsible American leadership can begin.

· October 21, 2024
New York Times
event
Navigating a Way Forward on U.S.-China Relations
October 17, 2024

U.S.-China relations have deteriorated to the point that war is a possible outcome. What strategic options exist for the next U.S. president on China? And what pathways exist towards more positive bilateral relations by 2035?

U.S.-China Relations for the 2030s
research
U.S.-China Relations for the 2030s: Toward a Realistic Scenario for Coexistence

It has become difficult to imagine how Washington and Beijing might turn their relationship, which is so crucial to the future of world order, toward calmer waters. If there is to be any hope of doing so, however, policy experts need some realistic vision of what those calmer waters might look like.

  • +11
· October 17, 2024
In The Media
in the media
America’s Foreign Policy Inertia

Since World War II, many U.S. leaders have attempted to change the country’s foreign policy, and their efforts have often fallen short. Inertia is a powerful force.

· October 14, 2024
Foreign Affairs
event
Pivotal States: No Choice but Crisis? The Next President’s Options for North Korea
September 20, 2024

The United States faces a looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Diplomacy has broken down, and the United States has focused mainly on strengthening its alliances with South Korea and Japan as the Kim regime grows more threatening. What options does the United States have to prevent war on the Peninsula?

  • +1