Thomas Wright
Director - Center on the United States and Europe
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy
Thomas Wright is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He is the author, with Colin Kahl, of "Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order," which was published by St Martin's Press in 2021. His first book, “All Measures Short of War: The Contest For the 21st Century and the Future of American Power,” was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Wright also works on U.S. foreign policy, great power competition, the European Union, Brexit, and economic interdependence.
Wright has a doctorate from Georgetown University, a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University, and a bachelor's and master's from University College Dublin. He has also held a pre-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton University. He was previously executive director of studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a lecturer at the University of Chicago's Harris School for Public Policy.
Thomas Wright is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He is the author, with Colin Kahl, of “Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order,” which was published by St Martin’s Press in 2021. His first book, “All Measures Short of War: The Contest For the 21st Century and the Future of American Power,” was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Wright also works on U.S. foreign policy, great power competition, the European Union, Brexit, and economic interdependence.
Wright has a doctorate from Georgetown University, a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University, and a bachelor’s and master’s from University College Dublin. He has also held a pre-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton University. He was previously executive director of studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Harris School for Public Policy.
Aftershocks is both a riveting journalistic account of one of the strangest years on record and a comprehensive analysis of the pandemic’s ongoing impact on the foundational institutions and ideas that have shaped the modern world. This is the first crisis in decades without a glimmer of American leadership and it shows—there has been no international cooperation on a quintessential global challenge. Every country has followed its own path — nationalizing supplies, shutting their borders, and largely ignoring the rest of the world. The international order the United States constructed seven decades ago is in tatters, and the world is adrift.
If the only thing [the Summit for Democracy] accomplishes is drawing China into a public debate on which system works best then it will have been worth it.
[Post-Brexit, Britain and France risk turning into] the Japan and South Korea of Europe [two close American allies that are also bitter rivals].
I wouldn’t say I’m hugely hopeful about [Biden's trip to Europe for the G-20 and COP26 summits]. I think it’s a test.
Reviving travel in the COVID-19 era: Assessing the challenges
[Tension between the United States and China will make it harder for the G-20 to reach consensus...] Can these organizations still function? Can they still make progress on pressing challenges?
Biden doesn’t bear Boris Johnson any grudge, and he’s willing to work with the U.K. But he also cares deeply about the Good Friday Agreement, and unilaterally pulling the plug on the protocol on an issue of principal could materially affect the relationship in a negative way.
Three weeks ago, a lot of the conservative British press was saying it was the total collapse of the relationship and the worst ever. I guess tomorrow they’ll say it’s a huge breakthrough. I don’t think either is true. [...] Aukus really shows what the UK has to contribute and it’s effective because it is in the high-end technology area that the UK has specialised in. There’s an alignment there and it has something big to contribute. That’s a very positive thing. [...] Talk of an Anglosphere or anything like that as an organising principle for the relationship or for US foreign policy is very ill-advised. I don’t think that’s helpful or accurate in terms of where things are headed. [...] There are very significant challenges [to a US-UK free trade deal] and I don’t think those are going to be wiped away.
Biden’s overarching message [in an address to the U.N. General Assembly] . . . was that strategic competition with China will not in any way diminish America’s commitment to working with other nations to tackle shared existential threats like climate change and pandemics. [The challenge for the U.S. president is to find a way of tackling shared threats in an era of great power rivalry and nationalism...] He will try to work with China but he also needs a back-up plan if that fails to materialise. Today’s speech was a first step in that direction.
Over the past few months the travel ban went from a minor irritant in the transatlantic relationship to an existential threat to Biden's Europe policy.