Venezuelan diplomat
Alfredo Toro Hardy (born in Caracas on May 22, 1950) is a Venezuelan retired career diplomat, scholar and public intellectual. During his diplomatic career, he occupied some of Venezuela's top ambassadorial posts, including Washington, London, Madrid, and Brasília. As an academic, he has taught at several universities both in Venezuela and abroad, directed institutions in the field of foreign policy, and written extensively on international affairs. According to international relations best-selling author Parag Khanna: "Alfredo Toro Hardy is the quintessential scholar-diplomat". Renowned author and scholar Kishore Mahbubani wrote: "About 12% of the world's population lives in the West and 88% live outside. Yet, the strong, diverse voices of the 88% are rarely heard. Alfredo Toro Hardy provides one such voice that needs to be heard". British historian and author Robert Harvey stated: "One does not have to coincide with all of Toro Hardy's views in order to recognize that he is one of the most articulated and experienced voices not only from Latin America but from the developing world". Cambridge University scholar Geoffrey Hawthorn wrote: "Alfredo Toro Hardy has a rare and distinctive voice. No-one can come away from his essays without seeing the world in new ways". In recognition for his achievements in this field of knowledge, the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations made him an Honorary Research Fellow in 2019.
Early life and education.
He was born and raised in Caracas into a family renowned for its tradition of public service and by its intellectual, scientific, and artistic endeavours. According to former president of Venezuela Ramón J. Velásquez in the foreword of one of his books: "Alfredo Toro Hardy belongs to those Toro that for generations have been cultivating humanism, sciences, arts, and civic values, while always engaged in the Venezuelan historical process". This includes statesman and author Fermin Toro and Maria Teresa Rodriguez del Toro y Alayza, wife of South America's founding father Simón Bolívar, while also including Venezuela's independence forefather or world famous pianist Teresa Carreño (a member of the Toro family on her mother's side). His brother is also a well-known Venezuelan author and public figure with several published books on economics. His maternal grandparents (Hardy) were from Nantes, France. Alfredo Toro Hardy graduated with a law degree from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas in 1973. Between 1973 and 1975 he made postgraduate studies in France under a scholarship of the French Government. He acquired a diploma in diplomatic studies from the Institut International d'Administration Publique (École nationale d'administration), and a certificate in comparative law from Panthéon-Assas University in Paris, 1975. He received his M.S. from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1977 and his Master of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1979. He took a course on international negotiations from Harvard University in 1984. In 2019, the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations conferred on Toro Hardy the title of Doctor on International Relations.
Academic career.
Alfredo Toro Hardy attained the rank of associate professor at the Simón Bolívar University from which he retired in 1992, while also teaching for many years at the Central University of Venezuela. He served as Director of the Centre for North American Studies and Coordinator of the Institute for Higher Latin American Studies at the Simón Bolívar University from 1989 to 1992. A visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University (1986–1987), he also taught at the School of International Affairs of the University of Brasília (1995–1996), and as on-line professor at the Centre for Social Economy of the University of Barcelona (2004–2005). He was a Fulbright Scholar (1986–1987) and a Director of the "Pedro Gual" Diplomatic Academy of the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1992 to 1994. Alfredo Toro Hardy was made a member of the Advising Committee on diplomatic studies of the University of Westminster (2004–2008). He was also elected by the Council of Faculties of the University of Cambridge as Simón Bolívar Chair Professor for Latin American Studies for the period 2006–2007, but had to decline due to his diplomatic career (holders of this prestigious chair have included leading Latin American figures such as Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Carlos Fuentes or Celso Furtado). All along September 2011 and again during October 2017, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Toro Hardy with a prestigious academic residency at its Bellagio Center in Italy, which for over six decades has included Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, leading academics, artists, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners recognized for their bold thinking. He has also been a member of the Nominations Committee of the Bellagio Center Policy Fellows Program for the period 2014–2016, and a member of its Experts Review Panel since 2023. In May 2019, the Rockefeller Foundation invited him to Bellagio to be one of the speakers of the 60th anniversary's homecoming celebration of the center.
He remains an active lecturer on international affairs, having been invited as speaker by top universities and think tanks, including Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, University College London, Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, British Columbia, Complutense University of Madrid, University of Copenhagen, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, National University of Malaysia, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of São Paulo, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House or Center for Strategic and International Studies, while participating in several international seminars. He is an honorary fellow of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, where he is also a member of its mentorship program; fellow of the Global Labor Organization (Germany); advisory member of the Iberian American Network of Sinologists; associated researcher of the Galician Institute of International Analysis and Research (Spain); and honorary member of the university the Andes’ Chinese Studies Association (Venezuela). He has been a member of Chatham House (UK), Canning House (UK), and the Windsor Energy Group (UK), among other similar institutions. He has integrated, as well, the academic councils of several electronic symposia on China organized by the Observatorio de la Política China (Spain).
Books.
He has authored twenty one books and co-authored sixteen more, most of which on international affairs. His book "El Desafío Venezolano: ¿Cómo Influir las Decisiones Políticas Estadounidenses?" pioneered within Latin America the study of the United States’ institutional permeability, as a means by the countries of that region to influence Washington's decision-making process in their own benefit. . This work was originally published in 1988 by the Institute for Higher Latin American Studies of the Simon Bolivar University with a foreword by Miguel Angel Burelli Rivas, Director of the aforementioned institution. The book had subsequent updated editions in 1991 and 2005. His book "The Age of Villages" with a foreword by Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Director of Chatham House, won the Latino Book Award in the category of contemporary history/political sciences at the BookExpo America celebrated in Chicago in 2003. His book "Hegemonía e Imperio" with a foreword by British historian Robert Harvey, won the same prize at the same category at the BookExpo America celebrated in Los Angeles in 2008. In between the latter two books, he published in 2004 "¿Tiene Futuro América Latina?" with a foreword by Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the UNCTAD. In 2013, World Scientific published Toro Hardy's book "The World Turned Upside Down: The Complex Partnership Between China and Latin America" under its prestigious Series on Contemporary China. The forewords of this work were written by Geoffrey Hawthorn, former Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies of the University of Cambridge, and L. Enrique García, President and CEO of CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean. In an extensive bibliographical selection on South America, LibraryThing choose "The World Turned Upside Down" as one of the nine basic background readings to understand that region . In 2017, World Scientific published his book "Understanding Latin America: A Decoding Guide". The forewords of the latter were written by Francisco Rojas Aravena, Rector of the United Nations University for Peace and Tommy Koh, former president of both the UN Security Council and UNCLOS. World Scientific published in 2018 another book of his entitled "The Crossroads of Globalization: A Latin American View", with a foreword by Klaus Zimmermann, President of Global Labor Organization, Editor-in-Chief of Population Economics and Past President of the German Institute for Economic Research. In 2020, World Scientific published yet another book of his authorship entitled "China versus the U.S.: Who Will Prevail?", with a foreword by Roxane Farmanfarmaian, Director of Global Politics and International Studies at the Institute of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge and former Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. In 2022 a new book by him, "America's Two Cold Wars: From Hegemony to Decline?" was published by Palgrave Macmillan. The latter has a foreword by National University of Singapore's Senior Fellow and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist . Toro Hardy's books have been endorsed by Kishore Mahbubani, Bernardo Kliksberg, T.V. Paul, Zheng Yongnian, Moises Naim, James Dunkerley, Parag Khanna, Arturo Valenzuela, Richard Gott, Mark Leonard (director), Néstor Osorio Londoño, Michel Saloff Coste, or Jorge Alberto Lozoya, among other important figures. On the same token they have been reviewed or commented by international media, academic journals, think tanks or social networks such as "Foreign Affairs", "International Affairs (journal)", "Financial Times", CNBC, "Americas Quarterly", BBC, RT, "Le Monde Diplomatique", "Global-is-Asian", New Books Network, "The Economic Times", "Global Policy Journal," "Asia Sentinel", "The Kootneeti", "The Diplomat", "Penn Law Journal", "The China Quarterly", StratNewsGlobal, The Eurasia Center, "Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review", "The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies", Consortium of Indo-Pacific Researchers, Russian International Affairs Council, "World Geostrategic Insights", "Indian Journal of Asian Affairs", "Global Dialogue Review", "Pulsul Geostrategic", London Politica, Risk Group, Fair Observer, The Peninsula Foundation, Usanas Foundation, or the Association for Indian Research Scholars. On the other hand, his co-authored books have been written jointly with distinguished personalites, including Rafael Caldera, Ramón J. Velásquez, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Heraldo Muñoz, Juan Somavía, Arturo Sosa or Sir Timothy Garden.
Journals and media.
He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of the peer-reviewed journals "Alexis Journal of International Affairs" (Alexis Foundation, India), "Cuadernos de China" (University of the Andes, Venezuela), "Política Internacional" (Fundación Política Internacional, Venezuela). He was also a member of the editorial board of the economic analytical newspaper "Economía Hoy" (Venezuela). He has published numerous papers in academic journals from the Americas, Europe, and Asia, while being a senior weekly columnist at Venezuela's oldest newspaper "El Universal", between 1992 and 2024. Previously, he was a weekly columnist at "El Diario de Caracas" for over a decade. He is a regular columnist at the following analytical blogs and magazines: "Global Policy" (U.K.), "World Geostrategic Insights" (Italy), "" (U.S.), "Observatorio de Politica China" (Spain), IGADI (Spain), The Peninsula Foundation (India), also contributing on occasional basis with the blogs of Global Labor Organization (Germany), USANAS Foundation (India), "The Kootneeti" (India), and "Asia Power Watch" (France). His articles have also been published by some of the major newspapers and magazines from Latin America and Spain. All along 1993, he presented a TV Series on international relations history at Radio Caracas Television (Venezuela). Entitled "Factor Mundial", the series traced major world events between World War I and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Diplomatic career.
Jointly with his international relations academic background, Alfredo Toro Hardy is also a seasoned practitioner of international affairs who was appointed to senior diplomatic positions. He held the rank of Ambassador under five successive Venezuelan presidential administrations. As such, he is part of the small cohort of Latin Americans that have excelled in both aspects of this discipline. He began his career in 1976 as Joint Legal Counsel of the Foreign Trade Institute of the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ending it in mid-2017 when he resigned to the foreign service ahead of retirement age, due to events in his country. In 2004 he published an open letter in the Venezuelan press, expressing that he was a career civil servant and not a member or a follower of the ruling party. As a result of that open letter his appointment as Venezuelan Permanent Representative to the Organization of the United Nations (New York), already approved by his country's Congress and made public by the press, was revoked. It