Following three years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, Gilpin completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his doctorate in 1960.
Early in his career, Gilpin focused on conflict and national security, in particular nuclear weapons policy.
[12][13] He has described Morgenthau, Carr and Hedley Bull as influences on his thinking,[3] as well as Susan Strange, Raymond Vernon and Richard Cooper.
[7] An important figure in the field of International Political Economy, Gilpin's scholarship pushed back on claims made by liberal institutionalists such as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye on the declining importance of state power in international economic affairs amid complex interdependence.
[3] In the final years of his career, Gilpin focused his research interests in the application of realist thinking to contemporary American policies in the Middle East.
Gilpin was openly critical of the politics surrounding the 2003 invasion of Iraq in his essay "War is Too Important to Be Left to Ideological Amateurs.