Dr Nicholas Kitchen

Nicholas Kitchen is Philippe Roman Fellow in International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy. He is Editor of IDEAS Reports and Programme Coordinator of the LSE IDEAS Transatlantic Relations Programme.

Dr Kitchen earned his PhD in International Relations from the LSE in 2009.  Supervised by Professor Michael Cox, his doctoral thesis focused on American grand strategy debates in the 1990s.  His current research interests include classical and neoclassical realism, US Foreign Policy, and the role of ideas in international relations. He holds an MRes in International Relations from Keele University and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University.

Areas of Expertise

• US Foreign Policy
• International Relations since the end of the Cold War
• Realism
• Grand Strategy
• Relationship between power and ideas in IR

Recent Publications

• "Just Another Liberal War? Western Interventionism and the Iraq War" in Acharya and Katsumata (ed.) Beyond Iraq: the Future of World Order, World Scientific (2010) (with Michael Cox)
• "Systemic Pressures and Domestic Ideas: A Neoclassical Realist Model of Grand Strategy Formation", Review of International Studies, 36 no. 1 (2010), 117-143
• "Illusions of Empire and the Spectre of Decline" in Parmar, Ledwidge and Miller (ed.) New Directions in US Foreign Policy, Routledge, 2009 (with Michael Cox)
• "The Return of History: the United States and World Order after Bush"; Biblioteca della libertà 193, October-December 2008 [in Italian] (with Michael Cox)
  

News

• Obama’s Foreign Policy in a Transforming Middle East
  IDEAS' Transatlantic Programme Coordinator Dr. Nicholas Kitchen will be participating in a panel discussion at Warwick University on May 10th 2012. He will be addressing the question 'is the war on terror over?' The event is hosted by the AHRC Research Network on the Presidency of Barack Obama.
• Conference Paper - The Clinton Synthesis: Domestic Pressures and Grand Strategy Formation
  Dr. Nicholas Kitchen presented this paper at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association, in San Diego, April 2012. It explores the Clinton administration's search for a grand strategy in the context of a domestic debate about America's foreign policy purpose following the end of the Cold War.
• The Contradictions of Hegemony: The United States and the Arab Spring
  In his article for the IDEAS Special Report 'After the Arab Spring: Power Shift in the Middle East?' Dr. Nicholas Kitchen looks at the American perspective on these political changes in the context of its broader regional and international strategic interests.
• Dr. Nicholas Kitchen Reviews Peter Trubowitz for International Affairs
  Politics and strategy: partisan ambition and American statecraft. By Peter Trubowitz. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2011. P. 677.
• IDEAS Book Launch - US Foreign Policy Second Edition
  Thursday 10th May 2012, 6.30pm, COL 2.01 Columbia House Speakers: Professor Michael Cox, Dr Doug Stokes Chair: Dr Nicholas Kitchen
• India: The Next Superpower? New Special Report
  India's remarkable growth has seen expectations grow that India might become a superpower. But is India ready to expand its influence abroad, or should it focus on the fissures within its borders?
• Video Debate: Is the United States in Decline?
  On February 2nd 2012, Professor Michael Cox and Dr. Nicholas Kitchen of LSE IDEAS attended a debate at the Institute for the Studies of the Americas (ISA), where they argued against the motion that America is in decline. Arguing for the motion were: Dr Adam Quinn (University of Birmingham) and Professor Iwan Morgan (ISA). Chairing the debate was Dr. Matthew Hill (ISA).
• ISA Event: Professor Michael Cox and Dr. Nicholas Kitchen will debate American decline
  Dr Adam Quinn (Birmingham) and Professor Iwan Morgan (ISA) will be arguing the case for decline while Professor Mick Cox (LSE) and Dr Nick Kitchen (LSE) will be arguing the case against decline. Venue: Room 349, 3rd Floor Senate House. 02 February 2012, 17:30 - 19:30
• The United States After Unipolarity
  As the United States’ dominance of the international system comes increasingly under threat, this report assesses the challenges the Obama administration has faced in rebalancing American foreign policy to a world that is no longer 'unambiguously unipolar'.
• New Video: Roundtable on America, Britain and Rising Powers
  In this wide-ranging roundtable, Joseph Nye speaks about the future of American power, Michael Cox offers a spirited rebuttal of the decline thesis, and Stephen Burman assesses where Britain's rising power strategy will take it. Lisa Aronsson looks at the military commitments of the transatlantic alliance, and Inderjeet Parmar asks whether there is an 'Obama Doctrine'.
• New Special Report: Turkey's Global Strategy
  As we approach the Turkish parliamentary elections, this major new research report analyses Turkey's 'zero problems with neighbours' foreign policy.
• Obama’s London visit comes amid British reckoning
  IDEAS' Nicholas Kitchen tells the Washington Post that “The British problem isn’t a lack of ambition, but to be blunt, it’s that we’ve run out of cash”.
• Still the American System: Structural Power and the durability of Hegemony
  Nicholas Kitchen presented a paper at the British International Studies Association annual conference in Manchester.
• Transatlantic Programme Symposium in European Political Science
  Authors from the LSE IDEAS Transatlantic Programme debate the future prospects for the Transatlantic relationship in March's issue of European Political Science
• Just Another Liberal War? Western Interventionism and the Iraq War
  Nicholas Kitchen and Michael Cox argue that the roots of the Iraq war lie in the post-Cold War dominance of liberal ideas, and warn that by failing to recognise the liberal character of the Iraq war, the West may repeat the same errors. 
• Strategic Flexibility: the Obama Administration after Egypt
  A month on from President Ben Ali’s ouster in Tunisia, a wave of protest has swept across the Arab world. With varying degrees of popular support, protests against ruling elites have sprung up in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Iran, and of course Egypt, where weeks of protest culminated in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak.
• The Obama Doctrine - Detente or Decline?
  Nicholas Kitchen writes in European Political Science on the emerging Obama doctrine.
• IDEAS Today: The Tea Party in International Perspective
  plus Do Nations Need Strategies?, The Global 1989, Reappraising the Iran-Iraq War, Organised Crime and more
• The Future of UK Foreign Policy
  Upon assuming power in May, the United Kingdom’s historic coalition government set in motion three exercises that together aimed to reshape British foreign policy. Taken together, the new National Security Strategy (NSS), the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), seek to lay down the bounds of Britain’s...
• IDEAS Today - Issue 4: June 2010
  The Big Idea: Russian Transition and the West by Dominic Lieven; Can Greece Meet the Challenge? by Eirini Karamouzi & Vassilis Paipais; The Great Fears of Afghanistan: How wild rumours shape politics by Antonio Giustozzi; Mongolia between Russia and China by Sergey Radchenko; Programme in Focus: Russia Studies Programme; "Solid not Slavish": UK-UK Relations under Cameron and Clegg by Nick Kitchen
• BISA US Foreign Policy Conference
  Registration for the 5th Annual BISA US Foreign Policy Conference is now open. The conference includes a roundtable on IDEAS Director Professor Michael Cox's 'Soft Power and US Foreign Policy', and Transatlantic Programme Fellow Dr Nicholas Kitchen is presenting a paper on Leadership in American Grand Strategy after the Cold War.
• Transatlantia Blog Post: “The Connection Was Reset”: Google goes to War for the West
  IDEAS Fellow Dr Nicholas Kitchen argues that Google's decision to stop censoring its search engine results in China is a significant step forward for political liberalism in China.
• ECPR/Transatlantic Relations Roundtable, APSA, 3-6 September 2009, Toronto
  The LSE IDEAS Transatlantic Relations Programme organised a roundtable at the American Political Science Association on the topic of "Terrors in Transatlantia- still? Europe and the United States from Bush to Obama".
• Nicholas Kitchen Awarded Doctorate
  Transatlantic Relations Fellow Nicholas Kitchen was awarded his doctorate from the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics for his thesis entitled 'American Power: For What? Ideas, Unipolarity and America's Search for Purpose Between the 'Wars'. 1991-2001'. Supervised by Professor Michael Cox, Dr Kitchen's thesis traces the grand strategy debates that took place in the United States in the post-Cold War period, and assesses their impact on US foreign policy within a neoclassical realist framework. His examiners were Professor John Dumbrell (Durham) and Dr Toby Dodge (Queen Mary)
• Systemic pressures and domestic ideas: a neoclassical realist model of grand strategy formation
  Nicholas Kitchen's latest article in Review of International Studies sets out to incorporate the impact of domestic political ideas within the realist framework of international relations theory.
• Obama Nation? US Foreign Policy One Year On
  January 2010: To mark one year since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, this Special Report brings together distinguished authors from the LSE and beyond to discuss how successfully the United States has reconfigured its foreign policy in the past year. Obama came to office facing a daunting array of specific policy challenges which were compounded by the twin overriding objectives to repudiate the Bush years and restore American legitimacy whilst focusing on economic renewal in the wake of the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression. The picture of his first year in office is one of mixed success but of striking ambition.
• Resource Article - The End of the Cold War
  Nick Kitchen: The end of the Cold War is arguably the most important event to hit the discipline of international relations since the first chair in the subject was created at Aberystwyth in 1919. Academics in the field almost universally failed to predict it and our theories didn't appear to explain it, and this spawned both heated debate and new thinking within the field. What follows is a brief sketch with pointers to resources on the topic - some well known, others less so.