Thomas J. Wright (American scholar)

Thomas J. Wright is an American international relations scholar currently serving as Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the United States National Security Council (NSC) in the Biden administration. He was part of a team instrumental in putting together the 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy, released in October 2022.

Education
Wright holds a BA in history (1996) and a MA in comparative politics (1997) from University College Dublin, a M.Phil. from University of Cambridge (1999), and a PhD in government (international relations) from Georgetown University (2007). His thesis is titled "Great Power Responses to Threat Transitions and the Legitimacy Burden: U.S. Soviet Relations 1943–1950".

Career
Prior to joining the NSC, Wright was a senior fellow and director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Between 2008 and 2011, he was executive director of studies at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.

Wright has served as a predoctoral fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center and a postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. He has also taught at the University of Chicago's Harris School for Public Policy.

Views on China and technology
In a December 2021 Brookings written exchange on technology's role in US-China strategic competition, Wright wrote: "Beijing is likely to continue to use its enormous economic power to build asymmetrical ties to companies and countries that serve its interests but it will struggle to provide an alternative to the U.S. model of international cooperation on technology. It would have more levers it could pull to slow down a formal alliance but it will find it difficult to undermine a more diffused approach."

Books

 * All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power, Yale University Press, May 23, 2017
 * All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power, Yale University Press, May 23, 2017

Articles

 * The Center Cannot Hold, Foreign Affairs, August 24, 2021
 * If Biden Wins, He'll Have to Put the World Back Together, The Atlantic, April 13, 2020 (co-authored with Kurt M. Campbell)
 * The Folly of Retrenchment, Foreign Affairs, February 10, 2020
 * The Moment the Transatlantic Charade Ended, The Atlantic, February 19, 2019
 * Trump's Foreign Policy Is No Longer Unpredictable, Foreign Affairs, January 18, 2019
 * Trump, Unchecked, The Atlantic, December 21, 2018
 * Trump's Mystifying Victory Lap at the UN, The Atlantic, September 26, 2018
 * No Exit, Foreign Affairs, June 30, 2015 (co-authored with David Gordon)
 * Syriza Stumbles, Foreign Affairs, March 26, 2015 (co-authored with David Gordon)
 * Outlaw of the Sea, Foreign Affairs, August 7, 2012