Kees van der Pijl (1947) taught at the University of Amsterdam and was professor at the University of Sussex, UK, from 2000. He made his name with The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984, reprint 2012) and was awarded the 2008 Deutscher Prize for Nomads, Empires, State, Vol. I of a trilogy on Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy (2007-2014). He also wrote novels and edited a number of works, most recently The Militarization of the European Union (2021). His previous monograph, Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War (2018) has been translated into four other languages.