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Jakub Grygiel

Senior Advisor


Dr. Jakub J. Grygiel is a Senior Advisor at The Marathon Initiative, a policy initiative focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. He is also a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America (Washington, DC).

Previously, Grygiel was a Senior Advisor in the Office of Policy Planning at the Department of State from 2017-2018. Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and on the faculty of SAIS-Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

He is the author of Return of the Barbarians (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (JHU Press, 2006), and co-author with Wess Mitchell of The Unquiet Frontier (Princeton University Press, 2016). His writings on international relations and security studies have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, The National Interest, Commentary, Parameters, as well as several U.S. and foreign newspapers. He earned a Ph.D., M.A., and an MPA from Princeton University, and a BSFS Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University.


Work

Classics and Strategy

The Marathon Initiative | Classic texts – whether by Roman historians such as Tacitus or Greek tragedians such as Aeschylus or Florentine diplomats such as Francesco Guicciardini – give us important, and even unusual, insights into strategy........

Illusions of US Foreign Policy

The Marathon Initiative | Built on the conviction that political order is engineered through a top-down process, Western foreign policy assumes that the state apparatus creates domestic order, while international institutions and rules build global order…......

Work

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The New Yorker

The New Yorker | “I don’t share the fear of some Europeans that the United States is out to abandon them, but if that fear leads them to finally take defense more seriously, then maybe it’s not a bad thing. I’ve yet to see anything else that works.”........

Strategic Sequencing, Revisited

The Marathon Initiative | The United States faces a growing risk of multi-front war against Russia, China and Iran. The optimal response to this danger would be a sequential strategy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine on a faster timeline than China is prepared to move against Taiwan.........

CSDS Brussels: Roundtable

Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy | Dr. Mitchell spoke at the Brussels School of Governance about how great powers use diplomacy throughout history in a talk titled "Skillful Statecraft Across the Ages."....

Wess Mitchell Interviewed on WBUR

WBUR | "It's startling the change in public outlook in these countries," Wess Mitchell, former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, says. "And the calculation is that if they don't come into NATO, they're worried that they could be a tempting target."..........

Wess Mitchell Interviewed in Echo24

Echo24 | nder Donald Trump, Wess Mitchell was the top official in Europe at the State Department. Today, he works in a think-tank that profiles itself on the turn to Asia. But now war has broken out in Europe in the terrain he knows........

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The Economist

The Economist | "But such bilateral deals are bad news for nato," says Wess Mitchell, an American former state department official who co-chaired a reflection group for the alliance last year. The new pact “will be viewed in nato and especially by eastern members of the alliance as implicitly undermining Article Five,” he says.......

Wess Mitchell Quoted in Bloomberg

Bloomberg Quint | “For all of Biden’s rhetoric about not being Trump, once he gets into office the reality is we have to make decisions that our allies may not like, and that doesn’t go away just because he shows up and proclaims this nirvana moment,”......

Wess Mitchell quoted in The Economist

The Economist | “We urgently need European nato to be able to handle more of the conventional deterrence burden in Europe,” says Wess Mitchell, a former American official who co-chaired a reflection group for Mr Stoltenberg last year, “so that in the event of a major crisis the United States can focus on China without calling into question the stability of the European theatre.”.......

Panel: Wilson Center – Wess Mitchell

Wilson Center | Former German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell in conversation with Dan Hamilton about their independent Reflection Group report "NATO 2030: United for a New Era."...

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal | “China has become plank number one for the U.S. in our diplomatic conversations with Europeans,” said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Wess Mitchell, who stepped down last year. “Our best ally in the effort to make China an issue is China’s own behavior.”...

Wess Mitchell Quoted in Washington Post

Washington Post | “Most Europeans know that beneath the headlines of European euphoria on Biden, the U.S. and Europe still have significant differences of interest that cannot be waved away,” said A. Wess Mitchell, a former assistant secretary of state for European Affairs. He cited long-standing U.S. opposition to a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, the U.S. push for Europeans to spend more on defense and an uneven playing field in trade....

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The New York Times

New York Times | “We intend to be candid about the challenges to NATO, with a tone of well-grounded optimism,’’ Mr. Mitchell said. The main message, he said, is that “NATO has to adapt itself for an era of strategic rivalry with Russia and China, for the return of a geopolitical competition that has a military dimension but also a political one.’’.....

Additional Articles

Books

Book Chapters and Reports