HENRY A. KISSINGER served as national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He negotiated nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missile treaties with the Soviet Union and laid the groundwork for President Nixon’s breakthrough visit to China in 1972. He also negotiated for the United States at the Paris peace talks that led to the end of the Vietnam War.
A former Harvard University professor of government, Kissinger has remained an influential observer of international affairs. He is the author of 18 books and is founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm. Kissinger has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal of Liberty.
HAL BRANDS is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author, most recently, of American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump (2018). He has also written or edited several other books, including Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (2016), What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (2014), Latin America’s Cold War (2010), From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (2008), and The Power of the Past: History and Statecraft (co-edited with Jeremi Suri, 2015).