Emma Ashford is a Senior Fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, where her work focuses on questions of grand strategy, international security, and the future of US foreign policy. She has expertise in the politics of Russia, Europe, and the Middle East. Ashford is also a columnist at Foreign Policy, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.
Her new book, First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy for a Multipolar World (Yale University Press, 2025), argues that America must fundamentally reconceptualize its role in the world, from global hegemon to shared leadership, and proposes a set of pragmatic, realist principles for policymakers. Her first book, Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2022.
Prior to joining the Stimson Center, Ashford was a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s New American Engagement Initiative, which focused on challenging the prevailing assumptions governing US foreign policy. She has also been a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Ashford’s long-form writing has been featured in publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Texas National Security Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the National Interest, and War on the Rocks, among others. She holds a PhD in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.
