Featuring Michael Brenes, Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, we’re taking a closer look at the powerful force that is U.S. diplomacy.
The World Affairs Council of Connecticut and the Pequot Library invite you to a special evening exploring the evolution of U.S. diplomacy – from pivotal decisions to defining figures and from the impact of U.S. leadership on world history to where the U.S. is headed in the century ahead.
How did diplomacy shape the nation into a superpower and where is the U.S. headed next? RSVP to find out.
Details
Thursday, January 15, 2026 | 6pm – 7:30pm
Pequot Library, 720 Pequot Ave, Southport
Tickets: No Charge, RSVP Required
With Special Guest
Michael Brenes is co-director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and lecturer in history at Yale University.
His research interests include 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, published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2020, and the co-editor (with Daniel Bessner) of Rethinking U.S. Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations, published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2024. His next book, co-authored with Van Jackson, is titled The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, and will be published by Yale University Press in January 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, Foreign Policy, Politico, Dissent, Boston Review, The Nation, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
He is currently writing a history of the War and Terror from the 1990s to the present, to be published by Grove/Atlantic. He is also finalizing a co-edited volume with Daniel Bessner on Cold War liberalism, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.
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