Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) — To help the United States navigate an exceptional period of crisis, perhaps the most dangerous since early in the Cold War, Hoover is setting up a series of workshops and recruiting two new scholars to examine urgent security choices of America and its partners.
Senior Fellow Philip Zelikow is launching the Workshops on Urgent Security Choices to engage veteran crisis managers and strategic thinkers in offering deep, practical analysis on specific policy questions that may arise in the next one or two years.
In his recent essay “Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking,” Zelikow argued the United States has some crucial choices to make over the next one to three years. He warns that we have entered an exceptionally volatile phase in global political life and that the period of maximum danger might come soon, with a serious possibility of worldwide warfare.
Meanwhile, while facing possible dangers in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, the United States also will have to make near-term choices for the global commons, to shape a security agenda on AI, help steer the energy transition, rethink the character of the open global economy, and transform allied defenses for the twenty-first century.
“The main challenge may be in the short term,” Zelikow says. “If the United States and its partners can weather the current international and domestic political crises, the broader fundamentals for the United States and the free world are promising.”
To aid these efforts, this new program welcomes the arrival of two new fellows to Hoover.
The Honourable John Bew, professor of history and foreign policy at King’s College London, will join Hoover as a distinguished visiting fellow. Between 2019 and 2024, Bew served as foreign policy advisor in the governments of British prime ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and Keir Starmer. Bew’s most recent scholarly work, his biography of former British prime minister Clement Attlee, Citizen Clem, won several awards in 2017, including the Orwell Prize.
Also joining Hoover to advance this new program is Alexander Bick. He is currently an associate professor of practice in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.
Bick served in the Obama and Biden administrations, including twice on the secretary of state’s Policy Planning Staff and as director for strategic planning at the National Security Council. He also helped craft the 2022 National Security Strategy of the United States and led the “Tiger Team” that planned the US government’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Together, Zelikow, Bew, and Bick will work with Hoover scholars already dealing with security challenges while also drawing on the expertise of other experts in the United States and other countries, not just to offer to offer general suggestions but also to tackle the “how”—the real test of statecraft.
Philip Zelikow is the Botha-Chan Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. For twenty-five years he held a chaired professorship in history at the University of Virginia. For seven years previously, he was an associate professor at Harvard University. An attorney and former career diplomat, Zelikow has worked in federal government service in the five administrations from Reagan through Obama and as a strategic consultant for the current Biden administration.
For coverage opportunities, contact Jeffrey Marschner, 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.
