John Bew

About

John Bew has served in senior positions at the highest levels of the UK government. In 2019, he became foreign policy advisor to the prime minister, holding that position for more than half a decade and through four successive administrations. He is professor of history and foreign policy in the War Studies Department at King’s College London and senior advisor at the Australian National Security College.

Widely regarded as a bipartisan figure, Bew has worked across the political divide and transitioned from a Conservative to a Labour administration, ending his time in government as defense and security advisor to Keir Starmer. He has been intimately involved in the key decisions on UK national security policy, on issues from the war in Ukraine to the creation of AUKUS. He has extensive experience in international negotiations and supporting the prime minister at summits such as the G7, G20, UN General Assembly, and NATO. He held the pen on the last two UK national security strategies and served on the NATO secretary general’s Reflection Group, which provided recommendations for the organization’s 2022 Strategic Concept. After the 2024 general election, he led UK negotiations on a “one-hundred-year partnership” with Ukraine and sat on the coordinating committee for the new government’s Strategic Defence Review.

Bew is an internationally recognized scholar and has a distinguished academic record. He was the youngest holder of the Kissinger Chair at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and received the Philip Leverhulme Prize for International Studies in 2015. He is an award-winning author of five books. His biography of Clement Attlee won three national awards, including the Orwell Prize.

Bew began his career at Cambridge University, where he took first-class honors in history and was the highest-ranked MPhil before completing his doctorate and becoming a college fellow.