Michael Mandelbaum

Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy program at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is also Director of the SAIS American Foreign Policy program. He has written 10 books on American foreign policy and the edited 12 more. He most recently co-authored That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back with The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

Career

Mandelbaum was named one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine "for teaching America how to be a hegemon on the cheap." He is on the Board of Directors of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Mandelbaum worked on on security issues at the U.S. Department of State from 1982-1983 on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in the office of Under Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger. He served as an adviser to Bill Clinton. Speaking on behalf of the United States Information Agency for more than two decades, Mandelbaum has explained American foreign policy to groups throughout Europe, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Middle East.

For 17 years, starting in 1986, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where he was also the director of the Council’s Project on East-West Relations. Mandelbaum was a Carnegie Scholar (in 2004-2005) of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. From 1984-2005 he was the associate director of the Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program on Relations With the Former Communist World.

He has taught at Harvard University, Columbia University and at the U.S. Naval Academy. He also has taught business executives at the Wharton Advanced Management Program in the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mandelbaum is a frequent commentator on American foreign policy. From 1985-2005 Mandelbaum wrote a regular foreign affairs analysis column for Newsday. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time and The Los Angeles Times. He has appeared as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Charlie Rose (talk show), Nightline, and PBS NewsHour.

Mandelbaum earned a PhD, political science, Harvard University. He was also educated at Yale University and King's College, Cambridge where he was a Marshall Scholar.

Writing

Published in 2011, That Used To Be Us addresses the 4 major problems America faces today and their solution. These problems are: globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption.

Mandelbaum, in 2010, wrote The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era., in which he argued the 2008 economic crisis and United States economic obligations will redraw the boundaries of American foreign policy. Of Frugal Superpower, journalist and author Fareed Zakaria said, "Mandelbaum brings to this discussion a clear eye, a sharp mind, and lucid prose."

He wrote The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first Century, in which he argues that United States dominance in global affairs is better than the alternatives. Mandelbaum appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 23 March 2006 to promote his book.

In 2005 he wrote The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Basketball and Football and What They See When They Do.

Mandelbaum published The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Centuryin 2002. Of it, The New York Times Book Review wrote, "A formidable and thought-provoking tour d'horizon. Best of all, it gives readers something to argue about."

Mandelbaum wrote The Dawn of Peace in Europe in 1996. Of it, Walter Russell Mead in The New York Times Book Review called it a "brilliant book that combines the most lucid exposition yet of the post-cold-war order in Europe with a devastating critique of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy."

In 1988 Mandelbaum publishedThe Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Publishers Weekly said "Mandelbaum's book is brilliant and enjoyable...[he] charts how nations find ways of acting together in diplomatically organized groups for defensive purposes, and he analyzes certain countries' specific roles and histories. His knowledge of philosophy, politics, history and economics results in a stunning delineation of centuries of military actions, political maneuverings and cultural uprisings."

He also published The Nuclear Revolution (1981), The Nuclear Future (1983), and he co-wrote Reagan and Gorbachev (1987) and The Global Rivals (1988).

His first book "The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons", was published in 1979. The Economist called it “an excellent history of American nuclear policy...a clear, readable book.”

In 1996, Mandelbaum wrote in Foreign Affairs “Foreign Policy as Social Work” about the Clinton Administration foreign policy.

On the Gas Tax

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman quoted Michael Mandelbaum in his article "Win, Win, Win, Win, Win..." on December 27, 2008, praising the gas tax:

“

A gasoline tax "is not just win-win; it's win, win, win, win, win," says the Johns Hopkins author and foreign policy specialist Michael Mandelbaum. "A gasoline tax would do more for American prosperity and strength than any other measure Obama could propose."

”

Bibliography

• The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons (1979)
• The Nuclear Revolution (1981)
• The Nuclear Future (1983)
• Reagan and Gorbachev (Co-written with Strobe Talbott 1987)
• The Global Rivals (Co-written with Seweryn Bialer 1988)
• The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1988)
• The Dawn of Peace in Europe (1996)
• The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century (2002)
• The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Basketball and Football and What They See When They Do (2005)
• The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first Century (2006)
• The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (2010)
• That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (Co-written with Thomas Friedman 2011)

External links

• Booknotes interview with Mandelbaum on The Ideas That Conquered the World, October 20, 2002.