Dr. Christopher Preble is the Senior Fellow and Director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center and formerly was the Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. His 30-year career also includes time spent as a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Navy.
Dr. Christopher Preble is the Senior Fellow and Director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. In his role, he leads a team of scholars who challenge prevailing assumptions surrounding US foreign policy, and who offer a range of policy options that go beyond the use of force and coercion. His own work focuses on the history of US foreign policy, contemporary US grand strategy and military force posture, alliance relations, and the intersection of trade and national security.
He was previously the Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato, he taught history at St. Cloud State University and Temple University. He was also a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Navy, and served aboard the USS Ticonderoga (CG-47) from 1990 to 1993.
He is the author of The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free, Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy, and John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap. He co-authored, with John Glaser and A. Trevor Thrall, Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse. He co-edited, with John Mueller, A Dangerous World? Threat Perception and U.S. National Security; and, with Jim Harper and Benjamin Friedman, Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It. Preble has also published articles in major publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, National Review, The National Interest, and Foreign Policy, and is a frequent guest on television and radio.
Dr. Preble graduated from The George Washington University in 1989 and received a PhD in history from Temple University in 2002.
Articles
A Credible Grand Strategy: The Urgent Need to Set Priorities
"[T]he era of U.S. global dominance is over. The ends and means of U.S. foreign policy are not aligned; recalibration must start with setting priorities....
“Introducting Net Assessment”
Originally posted on War on the Rocks. Listen to the full podcast here. “In the first episode of this bi-weekly series, our hosts introduce themselves...
“Remembrance of War as Warning”
This reflective commentary examines the history of the draft, and proposes a new approach to war memorials - one that holds decision-makers more accountable. ...
How Americans Feel About Going to (Nuclear) War
Two years ago, long before a U.S. president threatened to rain “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea (channeling, perhaps...