David M. McCourt is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California-Davis. He is the author of Britain and World Power Since 1945: Constructing and National Role in International Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), American Power and International Theory at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1953-54 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020), and The New Constructivism in International Relations Theory (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2022). He is currently writing a sociology of the China and Russia expert communities in the United States, tentatively titled The End of Engagement: America’s China and Russia Watchers and U.S. Strategy Since the Cold War.