Book Talk | Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy

A rigorous understanding of the past should enable better decisions in the present, especially in the consequential realms of statecraft and strategy. The question is—how? In this talk, Francis J. Gavin will draw from his book Thinking Historically – A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy to demonstrate how historical knowledge can help us understand and navigate the complex, often confusing world around us.

Employing history to improve policy should seem obvious, but it is rarely done well. The past is often misused or exploited for problematic purposes, and historians and decision-makers seldom interact. This is unfortunate, as good historical work captures the challenges and complexities policymakers face. At its most useful, history is not a narrowly defined field of study but a practice—a mental awareness, a discernment, and a responsiveness to how the past unfolds into our present world.

Gavin will discuss how a historical sensibility helps us appreciate the unexpected, complicate our assumptions, make the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar, and, without suspending moral judgment, understand others on their own terms. He will argue that thinking historically allows policymakers to apply wisdom when encountering what is foreign to them.

Speaker/Author: Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Previously, he was the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies at MIT and the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. From 2005 until 2010, he directed The American Assembly’s multiyear, national initiative, The Next Generation Project: U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions. He is the founding Chair of the Board of Editors for the Texas National Security Journal.Gavin’s writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971; Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age; and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy (Brookings Institution Press), which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. His IISS-Adelphi book, The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era was published in 2024. In 2025, he published Wonder and Worry: Contemporary History in an Age of Uncertainty with Stolpe Press, 2025 and Thinking Historically – A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy with Yale University Press.

Moderator: Michael C. Horowitz is Director of Perry World House and Richard Perry Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Senior Fellow in Innovation and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2022 to 2024, Professor Horowitz served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities. He is the author of The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics, and the co-author of Why Leaders Fight. He won the Karl Deutsch Award given by the International Studies Association for early career contributions to the fields of international relations and peace research. He has published in a wide array of peer reviewed journals and popular outlets. His research interests include the intersection of emerging