Josef Joffe

Research Fellow
Biography: 

Josef Joffe, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is publisher/editor of the German weekly Die Zeit.

His areas of interest are US foreign policy, international security policy, European-American relations, Europe and Germany, and the Middle East.

His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Commentary, New York Times Magazine, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Newsweek, Time, and Prospect (London).

His second career has been in academia. A professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford, he is also a senior fellow at Stanford's Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. In 1990–91, he taught at Harvard, where he remains affiliated with the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. He was a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins (School of Advanced International Studies) in 1982–84. He has also taught at the University of Munich and the Salzburg Seminar.

His scholarly work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, National Interest, International Security, and Foreign Policy. He is the author of The Limited Partnership: Europe, the United States and the Burdens of Alliance and The Future of International Politics: The Great Powers (1998) and coauthor of Eroding Empire: Western Relations with Eastern Europe. His most recent book is Über-Power: The Imperial Temptation in America (W.W. Norton). In 2013, Norton will publish At the Cassandra Crossing: The False Prophecies of American Decline.

Joffe serves on the boards of the American Academy, Berlin; Aspen Institute, Berlin; Leo Baeck Institute, New York; and Ben Gurion University, Israel. He is chairman of the Abraham Geiger College, Berlin.

In 2005, he founded the American Interest (Washington, DC) with Zibigniew Brzezinski, Eliot Cohen, and Francis Fukuyama. He is also a board member at International Security, Harvard University, and Internationale Politik, Berlin.

Among his awards are honorary doctoral degrees from Swarthmore College in 2002 and Lewis and Clark College in 2005; the Theodor Wolff Prize (journalism) and Ludwig Börne Prize (essays/literature), Germany; the Scopus Award of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; and the Federal Order of Merit, Germany.

Raised in Berlin, he obtained his PhD degree in government from Harvard.

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Featured Commentary

A Non-nuclear Germany: Today, Tomorrow, Forever

by Josef Joffevia Strategika
Friday, December 4, 2015

Those who used to worry endlessly about the “N + 1” problem—rampant proliferation—in the Sixties would be quite surprised some fifty years later. As the consensus of the strategic community had it at the time, there were some twenty countries with the industrial base capable of building nuclear weapons—and would do so in short order.

Featured AnalysisFeatured

How To Prevail: Do What The West Does Best And Turn Asymmetrical Warfare Against Terror International

by Josef Joffevia The Caravan
Friday, December 4, 2015

A word of comfort first: Terror, no matter how spectacular, cannot score strategic victories against the West. “Strategic failure” means ISIS cannot break a nation-state’s will, nor render it defenseless the way Hitler’s armies subjugated France and Poland in a matter of weeks.

Featured

The Man Who Saved Germany’s New Democracy

by Josef Joffevia Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Helmut Schmidt saw his country through terrorism and Soviet intimidation with its liberty intact.

Analysis and Commentary

Book Review: The End Of Tsarist Russia By Dominic Lieven

by Josef Joffevia Gulf News (Dubai)
Wednesday, October 14, 2015

A scholar approaches the First World War from the standpoint of Russian foreign policy.

Featured

Germany Is Allergic To Power

by Josef Joffevia Prospect Magazine (UK)
Thursday, September 17, 2015

Germany looks strong only because other European countries are so weak.

Featured

Germany’s Welcoming Miracle

by Josef Joffevia The Wall Street Journal
Thursday, September 10, 2015

Two decades after its last refugee crisis, the country’s attitude toward foreign migrants is surprisingly positive—for now.

Featured

‘The End Of Tsarist Russia,’ By Dominic Lieven

by Josef Joffevia The New York Times
Wednesday, August 26, 2015

World War I was the greatest empire slayer of all time. Down went the Ottoman Empire, ruling from Bosnia to Basra.

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Analysis and Commentary

Chronicler Of Evil

by Josef Joffefeaturing Robert Conquestvia Politico
Wednesday, August 5, 2015

A tribute to Robert Conquest, who first told the truth about Stalin.

The impact of the cultural obstacles created by the euro’s implementation  is on
Analysis and Commentary

Europe’s Headaches Are Just Beginning

by Josef Joffevia Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Even if it leaves the euro, Greece will still have access to billions of EU money. That’s a fine precedent to set for Portugal and Spain.

Memo To The “Great Satan”

by Josef Joffevia Hoover Digest
Friday, June 19, 2015

Iran isn’t reasonable—revolutionary states never are. The United States should seek not to appease Iran but to contain it.

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