Klaus Larres to Discuss Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and China in Lecture at Institute for Advanced Study

Klaus Larres, Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study Member in the School of Historical Studies and Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor of History and International Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will give a public lecture, “Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and China: The Dawning of a New Global Order?,” on Wednesday, March 8. This lecture, which is sponsored by the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study, will take place at 6:00 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus.

German and U.S. foreign and economic policy toward China differ in important aspects regarding both substance and style. Still, despite the competition and rivalry between the countries, there is a significant amount of transatlantic agreement on the challenges posed by China’s rise as a formidable global power. The Trump administration, however, has injected a great deal of uncertainty into German-American and wider transatlantic cooperation. In this context, Berlin’s role in global affairs is much more precarious than it seems. In this lecture, Larres examines the factors uniting and separating the transatlantic allies on China and other issues.

Larres’s research focuses on contemporary United States and German/European Union foreign and security policies toward the transatlantic world and China and Southeast Asia. He writes and lectures on post-Cold War geopolitics, European integration, including Brexit, and the politics, economics, and security policies that shape the United State-Germany-China triangle. He also has a great interest in the history of the Cold War and the politics of Winston Churchill.

Larres has written and edited over 100 scholarly articles, essays, and books. Among his book publications are The U.S. Secretaries of State and Transatlantic Relations (ed., Routledge, 2010), Churchill’s Cold War. The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (Yale University Press 2002), and Uneasy Allies: German-British Relations and European Integration (ed., Oxford University Press 2000). While at the Institute, he is working on a book provisionally titled, Germany-US-China: the Search for Order and National Advantage. He is also completing a manuscript for Yale University Press, Enlightened Self-Interest? The U.S. and the Unity of Europe from Truman and Nixon to Trump and two co-edited volumes, Global Politics: Understanding International Affairs (Routledge) and The Oxford Handbook on German Politics (Oxford University Press).

Recently, Larres has been asked to temporarily join the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Beijing, China, as a Counselor and Senior Policy Advisor. He is the former holder of the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Larres was also a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Prior to his position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he held positions at Yale, Johns Hopkins University, Queen’s University Belfast, and the University of London. Larres received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Cologne.

This event is free and open to the public. To register for this lecture visit, https://www.ias.edu/events/larres-publiclecture. For more information on other events at the Institute, visit www.ias.edu/events.