SIS Book Launch: Josh Rovner, Chaos Reconsidered

The shock of Donald Trump’s election caused many observers to ask whether the liberal international order—the system of institutions and norms established after World War II—was coming to an end. The victory of Joe Biden, a committed institutionalist, suggested that the liberal order would endure. Even so, important questions remained: Was Trump an aberration? Is Biden struggling in vain against irreparable changes in international politics? What does the future hold for the international order?

The essays in Chaos Reconsidered answer those questions. Leading scholars assess the domestic and global effects of the Trump and Biden presidencies. The historians put the Trump years and Biden’s victory in historical context. Regional specialists evaluate U.S. diplomacy in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Others foreground topics such as global right-wing populism, the COVID-19 pandemic, racial inequality, and environmental degradation. International relations theorists reconsider the nature of international politics, pointing to deficiencies in traditional IR methods for explaining world events and Trump’s presidency in particular. Together, these experts provide a comprehensive analysis of the state of U.S. alliances and partnerships, the durability of the liberal international order, the standing and reputation of the United States as a global leader, the implications of China’s assertiveness and Russia’s aggression, and the prospects for the Biden administration and its successors.

Joshua Rovner is an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University. In 2018 and 2019 he served as scholar-in-residence at the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. He was previously the John Goodwin Tower Distinguished Chair in International Politics and National Security at Southern Methodist University, where he also served as director of studies at the John G. Tower Center. His previous co-edited book is Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the 21st Century (Columbia University Press, 2018) and his published book chapters include “Strategy and Grand Strategy in New Domains,” in Hal Brands, ed., New Makers of Modern Strategy (2023); "The Elements of an Intelligence Contest," in Robert Chesney and Max Smeets, eds., Deter, Disrupt, or Deceive? Assessing Cyber Conflict as an Intelligence Contest (2023); and "Spies as Agents of Peace," in Kurt Almqvist, Alastair Benn, and Mattias Hessérus, eds., Man and Technology: How Humanity Thrives in a Changing World (2022).

Jim Goldgeier is a Professor of International Relations and served as Dean of the School of International Service at American University from 2011-17. He is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Center on International Security and Cooperation and a Visiting Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. He serves as the chair of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee and is a member of the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board. He was a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2017-19, and in 2018-19, he held the inaugural Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-Russia Relations at the John W. Kluge Center. Previously, he was a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He also taught at Cornell University, and has held a number of public policy appointments, including Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, and Edward Teller National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2001-2005, he directed George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. His most recent books are Evaluating NATO Enlargement: From Cold War Victory to the Russia-Ukraine War (co-edited with Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson) and Foreign Policy Careers for PhDs: A Practical Guide to a World of Possibilities (co-authored with Tamara Cofman Wittes).

Sarah B. Snyder is a historian of U.S. foreign relations who specializes in the history of the Cold War, human rights activism, and U.S. human rights policy. She is the author of From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 2018), which explains how transnational connections and 1960s-era social movements inspired Americans to advocate for a new approach to human rights. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2019 Robert H. Ferrell Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of American foreign relations. Snyder received her Ph.D. from Georgetown, a M.A. from University College London, and a B.A. with honors from Brown University.

Angela Stent is Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. During the academic year 2015-2016 she is a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund. From 2004-2006 she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. Stent’s academic work focuses on the triangular political and economic relationship between the United Sates, Russia and Europe. Her latest book is The Limits of Partnership: US-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014), for which she won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon prize for the best book on the practice of American Diplomacy. Dr. Stent received her B.A. from Cambridge University, her MSc. with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her M.A. and PhD. from Harvard University.

Christy Thornton is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She spent a year as a fellow at the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University, and at Hopkins serves as a core faculty member for the Latin America in a Globalizing World Initiative. In 2021–22 she was the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. She was previously an assistant professor of history and international studies at Rowan University, having received her PhD from New York University in 2015. She also holds a BA from Barnard College and Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University. Before graduate school, Thornton was for five years the Executive Director of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), a 50-year-old research and advocacy organization. Her research interests include global inequality and development, labor and social movements, and Latin American political economy, with an emphasis on Mexico.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Abramson Family Founders Room, American University School of International Service, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington, United States