Photo: Robert A Lisak

Paul Kennedy is currently the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director of International Security Studies at Yale University, and internationally known for his writings and commentaries upon global political, economic and strategic issues.

Born in June 1945 in the northern-English town of Wallsend, Northumberland, Professor Kennedy obtained his B.S. at Newcastle University and his doctorate at the University of Oxford. He is a former Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Bonn. Professor Kennedy holds many honorary degrees and fellowships, including that of the Royal Historical Society and of the American Association of Arts and Sciences. He is on the editorial board of numerous scholarly journals and writes for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and many foreign-language newspapers and magazines.

Professor Kennedy is the author and editor of thirteen books, including
STRATEGY AND DIPLOMACY, THE RISE OF ANGLO-GERMAN ANTAGONISM, THE WAR PLANS OF THE GREAT POWERS, and THE REALITIES BEHIND DIPLOMACY. His best-known work is THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT POWERS, which provoked an immense debate upon its appearance in 1988 and has since been translated into over 20 languages. In 1991 he edited a collection entitled GRAND STRATEGIES IN WAR AND PEACE.

He helped draft a report for an international commission on “The United Nations in its Second Half-Century," which was prepared for the 50th anniversary UN debate on how to improve the world organization.

Professor Kennedy has recently co-edited two large collections of papers
relating to contemporary strategic issues; the first, entitled THE PIVOTAL STATES: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR US POLICY IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD, was published by W.W. Norton in 1999, and the second, entitled From WAR TO PEACE: ALTERED STRATEGIC LANDSCAPES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, was published by Yale University Press in November 2000.

He contributed a chapter to THE AGE OF TERROR, an edited collection published by the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

In the course of the twentieth century, there occurred a development unique in the story of humankind. States, which had defined themselves from Thucydides to Bismarck by their claims to sovereign independence, gradually came together to create international organizations to promote peace, curb aggression, regulate diplomatic affairs, devise an international code of law, encourage social development, and foster prosperity. The emergence of this network of forms of global governance was not straightforward, and the debate about its role is just as heated today as it was generations ago.

In this long-awaited new book, Paul Kennedy, probably the best-selling historian now living, examines this key development in the history of our century. Beginning with the earliest forms of international organisation, he goes on to trace the creation and changing role of the UN in the post-war era, and finally suggests how, in the face of new threats to security and the continued vigour of at least some nation states, the institution will need to change over the course of the 21st century, arguing that we all share the responsibility to make the only world organisation we possess work, as well as possible.