Paul Michael Kennedy CBE FBA (born 17 June 1945) is a British historian specialising in the history of international relations, economic power and grand strategy.

He is on the editorial board of numerous scholarly journals and writes for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and many foreign-language newspapers and magazines.

Subsequently, he graduated with first-class honours in history from Newcastle University and obtained his doctorate from St Antony's College, Oxford,[2] under the supervision of A. J. P. Taylor and John Andrew Gallagher.

He shows that expanding strategic commitments lead to increases in military expenditures that eventually overburden a country's economic base, and cause its long-term decline.

[10] However, the Cold War ended two years after Kennedy's book appeared, validating his thesis regarding the Soviet Union, but leaving the United States as the sole superpower and, apparently, at the peak of its economy.

[11] Nau (2001) contends that Kennedy's realist model of international politics underestimates the power of national, domestic identities or the possibility of the ending of the Cold War and the growing convergence of democracy and markets resulting from the democratic peace that followed.