Alfredo Toro Hardy

 Alfredo Toro Hardy

Alfredo Toro Hardy was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1950. He has a B.A. in Law from the Central University of Venezuela with a Doctor’s degree on International Relations from the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Master degrees on International Law and International Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and the Central University of Venezuela; postgraduate degrees in Diplomacy and International Law from the Ecole Nationale d´Administration, ENA, and the University of Paris II; and an attestation on International Negotiations from Harvard University.

Alfredo was a Venezuelan career civil servant for more than three decades, with the majority of that time devoted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from which he resigned in 2017 in protest for the authoritarian outreach of the government. Between 1991 and 2017 he served as the Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Ireland and Singapore, as well as Director of the Venezuelan Diplomatic Academy.

Between 1986 and 1987, Alfredo was a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. In 1992 he retired with the rank of Associate Professor from the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas where, from 1989 to 1992, he served as Director of the Center for North American Studies and Co-ordinator of the Institute for Higher Latin American Studies. In 1995-1996, while Ambassador in Brazil, he was “Andres Bello Chair Professor” at the University of Brasilia. Elected as “Simon Bolívar Chair Professor for Latin American Studies” for the period 2006-2007 by the Council of Faculties of the University of Cambridge, but unable to accept election due to diplomatic constrains. In 2004, while Ambassador in the U.K., he was appointed a member of the Academic Advisory Committee on Diplomatic Studies of the University of Westminster. In 2004-2005 he was an on-line Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Barcelona. In September 2011 and October 2017, he was a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Scholar. Between 2014 and 2015 he was a member of the Nominations Committee of the Bellagio Center, and since 2023 he is member of the Experts Panel of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2019 he was made Honorary Research Fellow of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations. He has lectured extensively at universities and think tanks from the Americas, Europe and Asia.#

Alfredo has authored 21 books and co-authored 15 more on international affairs, while authoring 30 peer reviewed papers in arbitrated journals on the same subject. Twice recipient of the “Latino Book Award” at the ExpoBook America fairs of Chicago and Los Angeles in 2003 and 2008. His latest book was published in 2022 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Post Archive

03 December 2024
In this column, Alfredo Toro Hardy resorts to Isaiah Berlin’s metaphor of the hedgehog and the fox to examine China’s contrasting strategies of the last decades. Isaiah Berlin…
13 November 2024
In his monthly column, Alfredo Toro Hardy explains why the risk of nuclear war looks more ominous today than it did during the Cold War. After the interlude brought over by the…
07 October 2024
In this column, Alfredo Toro Hardy explores the nature of Spanish and Portuguese colonization in America, and the reason why, while Hispanic Americans of today resent that past,…
03 September 2024
In this column, Alfredo Toro Hardy analyzes the nature of the USA’s hegemony and its current fading process. America’s hegemony was preceded by the British one. As generally…
07 August 2024
In his monthly column, Alfredo Toro Hardy explains how Republicans and Democrats underwent a dramatic inversion of their respective souls, becoming very much the opposite of what…
04 July 2024
In this column Alfredo Toro Hardy analyzes why the great majority of Latin American countries suddenly and dramatically deindustrialized in the 1990s. Latin America moved into the…
30 May 2024
Alfredo Toro Hardy explores Trump’s foreign policy record to discern what a second term may entail.   In 2001 George W. Bush’s and his neoconservatives arrived in…
02 May 2024
In the first two linked posts, Alfredo Toro Hardy analyses why Trump’s chaotic first term could look steady and composed compared to what comes in his second. In his next column,…
04 April 2024
Alfredo Toro Hardy analyses where Latin America belongs. In his seminal book The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington makes a distinction…
06 March 2024
Alfredo Toro Hardy analyses the risks of war between China and the U.S. over Taiwan. For several decades, America’s policy towards Taiwan was based on so called “strategic…
05 February 2024
Toro Hardy explores the plausible reasons behind North Korea’s recent aggressive deeds and words. Inter-Korean relations, which have been in a spiraling down trend since 2020,…
12 December 2023
In this article Alfredo Toro Hardy provides context to the recently agreed upon and soon to be enacted EU AI Act. A report by The New York Times depicted a conversation on the…
13 November 2023
Alfredo Toro Hardy explores why the region that holds the most important green lung on the planet needs support to play a leading role in climate change mitigation. In a 2023…
10 October 2023
Alfredo Toro Hardy examines the possible positions the Global South could take regarding China’s aspirations to assume its leadership. In the 2021, during the Centennial of…