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Daniel S. Hamilton

Former Director, Global Europe Program; Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Distinguished Fellow

Daniel S. Hamilton was the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Distinguished Fellow and Director of the Global Europe Program at the Wilson Center from 2020 to 2021. He is one of the country’s foremost experts on modern Europe, the transatlantic relationship, and U.S. foreign policy. He testifies regularly before the Senate, the House, and various European parliaments, comments often in U.S. and international media, and is an award-winning author of scores of publications on European and transatlantic security, economic and political affairs, and on U.S. foreign policy issues. A former senior U.S. diplomat, he is also Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Expertise

  • Digital Revolution and Statecraft
  • Europe
  • Great Power Competition
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • U.S. Foreign Policy

Full Biography

Daniel S. Hamilton was the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Distinguished Fellow and Director of the Global Europe Program at the Wilson Center from 2020 to 2021. He is a widely-recognized expert on U.S. foreign policy and on European, Eurasian and transatlantic security, economic and political affairs. He is quoted frequently in major U.S., European and global media and has testified on numerous occasions before committees of the U.S. Congress and European parliaments.

He is also Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins SAIS, where he co-leads the School’s postdoctoral program on “The United States, Europe, and World Order.” He was the Founding Director of the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations, and for fifteen years served concurrently as Executive Director of the American Consortium for European Union Studies. He has also taught at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Innsbruck, and the Hertie School of Governance.

Dr. Hamilton is President of the Transatlantic Leadership Network and Richard von Weizsӓcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

He has held a variety of senior positions in the U.S. Department of State, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, responsible for NATO, OSCE and transatlantic security issues, Nordic-Baltic and Balkan Affairs; U.S. Special Coordinator for Southeast European Stabilization; Associate Director of the Policy Planning Staff for two U.S. Secretaries of State; Director for Policy in the Bureau of European Affairs; and Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador and U.S. Embassy in Germany.

In 2008 he served as the first Robert Bosch Foundation Senior Diplomatic Fellow in the German Foreign Office, where he worked in the Planning Staff for Foreign Minister (and now President) Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In 2012 he was a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ‘Futures Advisory Group’.

Dr. Hamilton is currently an advisory board member for a score of European and transatlantic institutions and publications. He has served as a consultant to Microsoft, the U.S. Business Roundtable, the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, the National Geographic Society, and RAND. He served as host of The Washington Post/Newsweek International’s online discussion feature Next Europe. 

He has been presented with Germany’s Cross of the Federal Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz); France’s Knighthood of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques; Sweden’s Knighthood of the Royal Order of the Polar Star; and Poland’s Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit.

He has a Ph.D. and M.A. with distinction from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an honorary doctorate from Concordia College. He received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Major Publications

The Transatlantic Economy 2021

The Digital Acceleration 

The Arctic and World Order

Uncommon Cause: The Future of the OSCE

First Resort: An Agenda for the United States and the European Union

Fixing Dayton: A New Deal for Bosnia and Herzegovina

Europe Whole and Free: Vision and Reality

Open Door: NATO and Euro-Atlantic Security After the Cold War

Exiting the Cold War, Entering a New World

Seismic Shift: The Transatlantic Digital Economy, 2020 

The Transatlantic Economy 2020 

It’s still the Atlantic, stupid! WirtschaftsWoche, April 11, 2020 [in English | in German]

Transatlantic Commerce: Ties That Bind, Berlin Policy Journal, March 23, 2020

Transatlantic Policy Impacts of the U.S.-EU Trade Conflict, Testimony before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, June 26, 2019

Nukleares Zeitalter: Risiko eines Atomwaffeneinsatzes steigtFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

A 3-Percent Solution for NATO

Domestic Determinants of Foreign Policy in the European Union and the United States

Creating the North Atlantic Marketplace for Jobs and Growth: Three Paths, One Detour, A U-Turn, and the Road to Nowhere (2018)

Is there life After TTIP? The future of transatlantic economic relations, Presentation to Bruegel, Brussels, February 2018

Next Steps in the ‘Special Relationship’: Impact of a US-UK Free Trade Agreement, Testimony before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, February 1, 2017

The Transatlantic Digital Economy 2017 

Rule-Makers or Rule-Takers? Exploring the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, edited with Jacques Pelkmans; named the “#1 Global Policy Study 2016” by the annual University of Pennsylvania peer-review survey of global think tanks.

The Geopolitics of TTIP: Repositioning the Transatlantic Relationship for a Changing World

1989 und das transatlantische Verhältnis. Selbstgefällig in die Krise

Forward Resilience: Protecting Society in an Interconnected World (2016)

The Eastern Question: Russia, the West, and Europe’s Grey Zone

Alliance Revitalized: NATO for a New Era (2016)

Global Flow Security (2015)

Advancing U.S.-Nordic-Baltic Security Cooperation (2014)

Dark Networks: Evolving Security Challenges in the Atlantic Basin (2014)

Open Ukraine: Changing Course Towards a European Future (2012)

Unfinished Business: The Western Balkans and the International Community (2012)