Michael Brenes

Michael Brenes is Co-Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History. His research interests include 20th-century United States foreign policy, political history, and political economy. He is the author of For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020) and the co-editor (with Daniel Bessner) of Rethinking U.S. Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024). His next book, co-authored with Van Jackson, is titled The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy (Yale University Press, forthcoming in 2025). In addition to his academic articles and book chapters, his work has been published in The New York Times, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Politico, Dissent, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Bio recorded December 16, 2024