Bruce Jones

Bruce Jones

Director, Project on International Order and Strategy of the Foreign Policy | Brookings Institution

Bruce Jones is director and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution; he also works with the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at Yale University. Jones previously served as the Vice President and Director for the Brookings Foreign Policy program for five years.

Jones’ research expertise and policy experience are in international security. His current research focus is on U.S. strategy, international order, and great power relations. His most recent book on the topic is the bestselling “To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers.” Earlier works include “The Marshall Plan and the Shaping of American Strategy,” (Brookings Institution Press, 2017) and “Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension between Rivalry and Restraint” (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). He is also co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of “Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats” (Brookings Institution Press, 2009).

Jones has written for, appeared with, or been cited by: The Wall Street Journal; the Washington Post; the New York Times; Foreign Affairs; Foreign Policy; Survival; CNN; BBC World Service; Los Angeles Times; NPR; The Huffington Post; Nikkei Asian Review; Project Syndicate; Noema; “The Tavis Smiley Show”; Al Jazeera English; Reuters; Voice of America; CCTV and Sky News.

Jones has conducted research focused on the geopolitics of energy and climate change. He co-authored with David Victor a report titled, “Undiplomatic action: A practical guide to the new politics and geopolitics of climate change” (Brookings, February 2018). Other publications include: with David Steven, “The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security and the Energy Revolution” (Brookings Institution Press, November 2014); with David Steven and Emily O’Brien, “Fueling the New Order” (Brookings, April 2014); and with David Steven and Andrew Hart, “Chill Out: Why Cooperation is Balancing Conflict Among Major Powers in the New Arctic” (Brookings, 2012).

Jones has extensive experience and expertise on peacemaking and crisis management. He served in the United Nations’ operation in Kosovo, and was special assistant to the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. He is co-editor with Shepard Forman and Richard Gowan of “Cooperating for Peace and Security” (Cambridge University Press, 2009); and author of “Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures” (Lynne Reinner, 2001). He has also served in advisory positions for the U.S. State Department and the World Bank on fragile states, including as senior external advisor to the World Bank’s “2011 World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development.”

Jones also has significant expertise on multilateral institutions. He was a senior advisor to Kofi Annan on U.N. reform and served as deputy research director to the U.N.’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, as well as lead scholar for the International Task Force on Global Public Goods. Related publications include “Managing the New Threat Landscape: Adapting the tools of International Peace and Security” (Brookings, September 2018); with Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order” (Brookings Press, 2013); “Beyond Blocs: The West, Rising Powers and Interest-Based International Cooperation” (The Stanley Foundation, October 2011); “Libya and the Responsibilities of Power” (Survival, June 2011); and “The G8 and the Threat of Bloc Politics in the International System” (Brookings, May 2011).

He holds a doctorate from the London School of Economics and he was the Hamburg fellow in conflict prevention at Stanford University.