Hall Gardner is an international relations theorist, editorialist, TV commentator, poet, and novelist. His many books on global politics, including Toward an Alternative Transatlantic Strategy (2021) in French and English; IR Theory, Historical Analogy, and Major Power War (2019); Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History (2015); NATO Expansion and the U.S. Strategy in Asia (2013); and American Global Strategy and the “War on Terrorism” (2005), blend a historical and theoretical approach with contemporary international affairs and concentrate on questions involving NATO and European Union enlargement, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its impact upon China and Eurasia in general, the new arms race, and the global ramifications of the “war on terrorism.”

Gardner’s book World War Trump (2018) forewarned of Trump’s January 6, 2021, coup attempt. That book argues that Trump took an essentially neo-conservative approach toward US global strategy in his first term, even toward Russia. Now, however, in his second term, Trump appears, at least on the surface, to be following some of the policy recommendations made in World War Trump with respect to seeking peace between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Iran, but he has yet to seek to implement a sustainable peace settlement with respect to the Palestinians and between China and Taiwan, among other conflicts.

Gardner’s book, The Failure to Prevent World War I, explored the causes of the so-called “War to End all Wars,” with a long-term focus on French strategy since the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. His first two books, Surviving the Millennium (1994) and Dangerous Crossroads (1997), both forewarned of a dangerous Russian backlash, war with Ukraine, and the possibility of major power war if the U.S., NATO, and the European Union could not implement a new system of European security that incorporated Russian security concerns. Dangerous Crossroads was republished as a paperback by Bloomsbury in early 1995.

The latter works likewise warned that Russia and China would adopt a closer geostrategic strategic partnership going beyond a “marriage of convenience” in response to the revitalization of the US doctrine of “containment,” while China, in turn, would continue to pursue its goal of unifying with Taiwan with tacit Russian backing. Gardner’s next books, Averting Global War: Regional Challenges, Overextension, and Options for American Strategy (2007), which had warned of the Georgia-Russia and Ukraine-Russia wars, and NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia (2013), both outlined a strategy to prevent major power war, as did World War Trump and Toward an Alternative Transatlantic Strategy.

His edited book, The Ashgate Research Companion to War: Origins and Prevention (2013), researched the origins of global wars in history. In this book, Gardner develops a theory of polemology and critiques long cycle theory. His other edited books, Geopolitical Turmoil in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean (2024); NATO and the European Union: New World, New Europe, New Threats (2004); The New Transatlantic Agenda: Facing the Challenges of Global Governance (2001); and Central and Southeastern Europe in Transition: Perspectives on Success and Failure since 1989 (Westport, CT: Praeger, March 1999), all deal with the political, economic, and social problems confronted by the new post-Cold War Europe.

His articles and editorials have appeared in The Realist Review, MEER, Other News, The Hill, The National Interest, American Affairs, La Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, NATO Watch, NATO Defense College, Russian International Affairs Council, and in the L.A. Times, Open Democracy, among many others. Gardner has been interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor, Courthouse News, The Pulse, TNT, Japanese Public Television (NHK): Global Debate Wisdom; Associated Press (AP), FRANCE 24, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, Reuters, Radio France International (RFI), Bloomberg News, RFO “Toutes les France,” Voice of Russia, Russia Today, Sputnik, Izvestia, VOA-China, VOA-Iran, C-NBC TV News, BBC World News (radio), MacLean’s (Canada), O Globo (Brazil), Agence France Press, and EuroNews, among others.

Gardner’s poems have been published in numerous anthologies, such as The Peace or Perish Crisis Anthology, Fire Readings, The Paris Atlantic, and on the MEER website. His poem “Vincent’s Room,” and its translation by Anne Gayet Turner, was chosen for National Translation Month (September 2021). His book of poems, The Wake-Up Blast (2008), represents 30 years of poetic protest. A selection of his poems, A Sub-Urban Landscape (Un-paisaje-sub-urbano), has been translated into Spanish by Camilia Rocca.

His first novel, Year of the Earth Serpent Changing Colors —which explores in literary forms the social and geopolitical transformations taking place in China and the world at the time of the Chinese democracy movement (April-June 1989)—was published in January 2023. In the novel, Mylex H. Galvin, an American Maoist who has been teaching English as a foreign language in Beijing since September 1988, finally begins to realize that no one in China really believes in Mao anymore (“Mao is Dead! Long Live Mao!”)…

The sequel, Year of the Horseshoe Bat—in Exile, was published in 2024, likewise by Edition Noema, Ibidem-Verlag, and distributed by Columbia University Press. The protagonist is Chia Pao-yu—a Chinese dissident who was rumored to have been captured and executed in China in the first novel after leading protests on Tiananmen Square. The rumors are a mere smokescreen: Chia was able to escape to Paris with the help of US and French secret services, religious groups, Chinese triads (mafias), and human rights NGOs. One group, the Foundation for Human Values Forever, hires Chia to work in Paris… Chia unexpectedly finds himself caught in a web of corrupt fundraising in the name of human rights…

Now professor emeritus of the American University of Paris, Gardner is working on two new books on global politics, a third novel to form a trilogy, articles on diverse subjects, as well as several books of poems.