Atlantic Council

Biography

Banning Garrett

Dr. Banning Garrett is the Strategic Foresight senior fellow for innovation and global trends for the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative. He directs the SFI’s long-term cooperation with the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in production of the NIC’s unclassified, quadrennial long-term global trends assessments, including the Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, released in December 2012. He also directs SFI’s program on the foreign policy implications of emerging technologies; the Urban World 2030 program; and the US-China Joint Assessment of long-term global trends project.

Dr. Garrett was with the Council from 2003 through 2006. He was founding executive director of the Institute for Sino-American International Dialogue (ISAID) at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver in 2007 and was director of the Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate at the Asia Society’s Center for US-China Relations from 2008 until early 2009 when he rejoined the Atlantic Council.

Before joining the Council in 2003, Dr. Garrett was a consultant for 22 years to the Department of Defense and other US Government agencies carrying on a strategic dialogue with China. He was also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a founding board member of the US Committee for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (USCSCAP) and an adjunct professor of political science at The George Washington University. Garrett has written extensively on a wide range of issues, including long-term global trends, the implications of technological for US foreign policy, US-China relations and cooperation on climate change, energy, and other strategic issues; US strategy toward China; Chinese foreign policy and views of the strategic environment; globalization and its strategic impact; US defense policy and Asian security; and arms control and nuclear strategy. Garrett has published in numerous journals and media outlets, including Arms Control Today, Asian Survey, The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, Chinadialogue, China-US Focus, CNN.com, The Far Eastern Economic Review, The Globalist, Global Times, International Security, Journal of Contemporary China; Journal of Asia Contemporary Southeast Asia, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Le Monde Diplomatique, The New York Times, The Washington Quarterly, and YaleGlobal, and has contributed to many edited volumes on Asian and strategic affairs and is the co-author of War and Peace: The Views from Moscow and Peking (1984).

Garrett received his BA from Stanford University and his PhD from Brandeis University. He has made nearly 60 trips to China since 1981 for consultations with Chinese officials and analysts as well as numerous similar visits to Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea in East Asia. He has also traveled with the NIC to most of the G-20 countries for global trends consultations.