Daniel Runde: The American Imperative - Reclaiming Global Leadership through Softpower

Abstract

What should our global strategy look like in an age of renewed great power competition? And what must America offer to a newly empowered developing world when we’re no longer the only major player?

In The American Imperative, Washington insider Daniel Runde makes the case for building a new global consensus through vigorous internationalism and the judicious use of soft power. Runde maps out many of the steps that we need to take –– primarily in the non-military sphere –– to ensure an alliance of stable and secure, like-minded, self-reliant partner nations in order to prevent rising authoritarian powers such as China from running the world.

Biography

Daniel F. Runde is a senior vice president, director of the project on prosperity and development (PPD), and holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading global think tank. Mr. Runde also serves as the director of the CSIS Americas Program. His work is oriented around U.S. leadership in building a more democratic and prosperous world.

He has been a leading voice on the role and future of the World Bank Group and U.S. leadership in the multilateral system. Prior to CSIS, Mr. Runde held leadership roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank Group. Earlier in his career, Mr. Runde worked in commercial banking at Citibank in Argentina and in investment banking at Alex Brown & Sons.

Currently, he serves on the board of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), the Spirit of America, and the Ashesi University Foundation. Mr. Runde is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bretton Woods Committee.

He is also a columnist for The Hill and hosts a CSIS podcast series, Building the Future: Freedom, Prosperity, & Foreign Policy with Dan Runde. He previously chaired two U.S. government advisory committees: the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Assistance at USAID and the Sub-Saharan Advisory Committee at the U.S. EXIM Bank. Fluent in Spanish, he graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College and holds a master’s in public policy from Harvard University.

Mr. Runde was granted the Officer’s Cross in the Order of Isabel la Católica, a Spanish civil order.