Bart M.J. Szewczyk (SHEF-chick) is a visiting senior fellow with GMF in Brussels focusing on international order, transatlantic relations, NATO, the European Union, Ukraine, Russia, and the United Nations. He also advises on European and global public policy at Covington & Burling LLP and teaches grand strategy at Sciences Po in Paris. 

Dr. Szewczyk recently worked as advisor on global affairs at the European Commission's think tank, where he covered a wide range of foreign policy issues, including international order, defense, trade, transatlantic relations, Russia and Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and China and Asia. Previously, between 2014 and 2017, he served as member of Secretary John Kerry’s policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he covered Europe, Eurasia, and global economic affairs. From 2016 to 2017, he also concurrently served as senior policy advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, where he worked on refugee policy. He joined the U.S. government from teaching at Columbia Law School, as one of two academics selected nationwide for the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship. He has also consulted for the World Bank and Rasmussen Global.

Prior to government, Dr. Szewczyk was an associate research scholar and lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, where he worked on international law and U.S. foreign relations law. Before academia, he taught international law and international organizations at George Washington University Law School, and served as a visiting fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies. He also clerked at the International Court of Justice for Judges Peter Tomka and Christopher Greenwood and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit for the late Judge Leonard Garth.

Szewczyk holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, where he studied as a Gates Scholar. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and a B.S. in economics (summa cum laude) from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Survival, Harvard International Law Journal, Columbia Journal of European Law, American Journal of International Law, George Washington Law Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of three recent books: Europe’s Grand Strategy: Navigating a New World Order; with David McKean, Partners of First Resort: America, Europe, and the Future of the West; and European Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Power. His recent piece on supporting Ukrainian refugees was published in Foreign Policy in March 2022.

Media Mentions

France missed an opportunity to show what strategic autonomy is or could be. Under the surface of the slogan, there was not much there in terms of resources or deployment or even in intellectual leadership.
NATO allies have provided a tremendous amount of support which is partly why Ukrainian forces have been able to resist and heroically perform on the battlefield. This aid is not going to stop until Ukraine will prevail.
'Partners of First Resort' comes across, then, as a bold attempt to set out a grand strategy for the West, perhaps timed to catch the attention of President Biden and his team of advisers.