Walter Russell Mead

Walter Russell Mead (1952) is James Clarke

Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and

Humanities at Bard College (Annandale-on-

Hudson, New York) and Editor-at-Large of The

American Interest magazine.

Beside this, he also teaches American foreign

policy at Yale University and he is a co-founder of

the New America Foundation think tank.

Mead writes a daily blog, Via Meadia, on the website of The American Interest in which he

comments on American foreign and domestic policy.

Mead regularly writes for newspapers and journals like Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, The

Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Until 2010, Mead was the Henry A. Kissinger

Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations

Two of his best-known books are Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it

Changed the World (2001) and Power, Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy in a

World at Risk (2005).

In Special Providence he distinguishes four schools of thought with regard to American

foreign policy: Hamiltonians are in favor of a powerful state apparatus and the protection of

America’s commercial interests. Wilsonians are guided by moral principle and believe in the

export of democratic values and the power of international law. Jeffersonians advocate the

preservation of domestic democratic principles and are skeptical about any involvement

abroad. Finally, Jacksonians want to protect the physical security and economic well-being

of the American people.

In Power, Terror, Peace and War, Mead elaborates on the concept of ‘soft power’ that was

introduced by Joseph Nye. He adds concepts such as sharp power, sticky power and sweet

power that should ultimately lead to hegemonic power and harmonic convergence.