Simon Miles is Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He is a Diplomatic Historian whose research agenda explores the causes and mechanics of cooperation between states, allies and adversaries alike. He is the author of Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War, published by Cornell University Press in October 2020. Between 1980 and 1985, US-Soviet relations improved so rapidly and so profoundly that scholars regularly use the case as an example of longstanding rivals setting aside prior disagreements and beginning to cooperate; Engaging the Evil Empire uses recently declassified archival materials from both sides of the Iron Curtain to show how shifts in the perceived distribution of power catalyzed changes in the strategies which US leaders used to engage the Soviet Union and vice versa. He has also published his research in Diplomacy and Statecraft, Diplomatic History, International Security, the Journal of Cold War Studies, and Slavic Review, as well as commentary in Foreign Policy, the Globe and Mail, War on the Rocks, and the Washington Post. Simon’s current project, On Guard for Peace and Socialism, is an international history of the Warsaw Pact, forthcoming from Princeton University Press.