Emma Ashford

Emma Ashford was a resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, which focused on challenging the prevailing assumptions governing US foreign policy and sought to develop effective solutions that preserved America’s security and prosperity. She was also a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Emma’s work focused on questions of grand strategy, international security, and the future of US foreign policy. She had expertise in the politics of Russia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Previously, she was a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, where she worked on a variety of issues including the US-Saudi relationship, sanctions policy, US policy towards Russia, and US foreign policy and grand strategy more broadly. She founded and co-hosted the Power Problems podcast. Her long-form writing has been featured in publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Texas National Security Review, and Strategic Studies Quarterly, and her opinion writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, Vox, The National Interest, and War on the Rocks, among others.

Ashford writes a bi-weekly column, “It’s Debatable,” for Foreign Policy, and is a regular contributor to Inkstick. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and holds a PhD in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.