Rajan Menon
Director of Grand Strategy
Areas of expertise: grand strategy, Russia, Ukraine, NATO, U.S. alliances, Afghanistan, Middle East, humanitarian intervention, arms control, nuclear weapons, China, Taiwan, diplomacy
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Rajan Menon is director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities and the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair Emeritus in International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York/City University of New York. He is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Menon has been a fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs and the New America Foundation, academic fellow at the Carnegie Corporation, research scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (the Wilson Center), and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His books include Soviet Power and the Third World (Yale University Press, 1986), The End of Alliances (Oxford University Press, 2007), Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order, coauthored with Eugene Rumer (MIT Press, 2015), and The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2016). His next book, Russia After Putin, co-authored with Eugene B. Rumer, is under contract to Oxford University Press.
In addition to publications in numerous academic journals, Menon has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest. He has appeared as a commentator on ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, NPR, France 24 Television, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Radio Australia.
While an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1989–90, Menon served as special assistant for national security (focusing on arms control) on the staff of the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Asia-Pacific Subcommittee.
Media Clips
Research and writing
NATO was founded to deter a Soviet attack on Western Europe. However, U.S. military presence in Europe today lacks a clear mission beyond sustaining U.S. dominance in Europe. Washington has frequently talked about the need for burden sharing with its European allies, but a more far-reaching approach of burden shifting is needed. The explainer presents recommendations for how to implement burden shifting and explains how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made burden shifting even more prudent.
Changes in the global balance of power and in Europe’s security environment demand prevailing U.S.-Europe strategy change fundamentally. What is needed is a reduction in U.S. security commitments on the continent. A drawdown of U.S. obligations will help the U.S. preserve resources and refocus on the Indo-Pacific. It will also benefit Europeans by encouraging them to pursue strategic autonomy. However, while European strategic autonomy is important, a reduction in U.S. commitments in Europe should not be predicated on Europeans’ readiness to defend themselves.
