Paul Kennedy

Paul Kennedy, the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, Director of International Security Studies at Yale, and Distinguished Fellow of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, coordinates the ISS programs funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation. He is internationally known for his writings and commentaries on global political, economic, and strategic issues.

Born in June 1945 in the northern English town of Wallsend, Northumberland, he obtained his BA at Newcastle University and his DPhil at the University of Oxford. He is a former Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Bonn. He holds many honorary degrees, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in 2000 for services to History and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in June 2003.

Kennedy’s monthly column on current global issues is distributed worldwide by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media Services. He is the author or editor of nineteen books, including The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, The War Plans of the Great Powers, The Realities Behind Diplomacy, and Preparing for the Twenty-First Century. His best-known work is The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which provoked an intense debate on its publication in 1988 and has been translated into over twenty languages.

In 1991, he edited a collection entitled Grand Strategies in War and Peace. He helped draft the Ford Foundation-sponsored report issued in 1995, The United Nations in Its Second Half-Century, which was prepared for the fiftieth anniversary of the UN. His 2006 book The Parliament of Men contemplates the past and future of the United Nations. Prof. Kennedy’s most recent book Engineers of Victory, history through the eyes of problem-solvers during the Second World War, was published in 2013. He is currently writing a book about seapower and global transformations during World War Two.

• The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present and Future of the United Nations (2006)
• Preparing for the Twenty­-First Century (1993)
• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500­-2000 (1988) 
• Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870­-1945: Eight Essays (1983) 
• The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy 1865­1980 (1981) 
• The Rise of the Anglo­-German Antagonism 1860­-1914 (1980) 
• The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (1976, paperback reissue 2001, 2004)
• The Samoan Tangle: A Study in Anglo-­German­-American Relations 1878­1-900 (1974)
• Conquest: The Pacific War 1943­-45 (1973) 
• Pacific Onslaught 1941­-43 (1972)

• Global Trends & Global Governance (with Dirk Messner and Franz Nuscheler, 2002) 
• From War to Peace, Altered Strategic Landscapes of the Twentieth Century (with William Hitchcock, 2000) 
• Pivotal States, A New Framework for US Foreign Policy (with Emily Hill and Robert Chase, 1998) 
• Global Trends, The World Almanac of Development and Peace (with Ingomar Hauchler, 1994, and 2001) 
• Grand Strategies in War and Peace (1991) 
• Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany Before 1914 (with A.J. Nicholls, 1981) 
• Appeasement (with Jack Spence, 1980) 
• The War Plans of the Great Powers 1880­-1914 (1979) 
• Germany in the Pacific and Far East 1870­-1914 (with John A. Moses, 1977)