Paul van Hooft

Paul van Hooft (1978) joined the Amsterdam School for Social Research (ASSR) in February 2009, as part of its Rethinking Politics cluster. After graduating at the University of Amsterdam (UVA) in 2004 with a Master’s degree in Political Science, and a specialty in International Relations, he has worked as a free lance researcher. Since 2007 he also taught International Relations and Political Economy at the UVA as a Junior Lecturer. From 2008 onwards Paul has been employed as a Policy Analyst at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS), working in the Defence Transformation Programme, a.o. on a project on strategic performance management and capability planning for the Dutch Ministry of Defense.

Paul’s PhD project is on the origins of grand strategy and military doctrine, and the extent to which these are shaped by a country’s past wartime experiences. It is the expectation that due to the epoch-defining nature of these experiences a consistent approach towards the elements of grand strategy will remain in place over decades and that this consistency constitutes a strategic culture of sorts. To show this consistency, in the project the foreign policy and defense policy of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and (West) Germany, will be considered over the course of the Cold War as well as in the current strategic environment, with a specific focus on international crises as case studies. The approach taken is a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis of multiple sectors, including defense expenditures and acquisition, military doctrines, foreign policy texts and debates, education and text books, print media and public opinion surveys.