Alfredo Toro Hardy

Alfredo Toro Hardy (born 1950) is a Venezuelan scholar, author and retired career diplomat. He served as ambassador to several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Brazil, between the early 1990s and 2017. He has authored or co-authored 36 books on international relations.

Education

Toro Hardy graduated with a law degree from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). He has a doctorate in International Relations from the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations. and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Scholar in September 2011 and October 2017. He was an on-line professor at the University of Barcelona in 2004–2005.

Toro Hardy is the author or co-author of thirty six books and numerous academic articles on international affairs. The English version of his book The Age of Villages won the International Latino Book Award (best book by an author whose original language is Spanish or Portuguese) in the category of contemporary history/political sciences, at the BookExpo America in Chicago in 2003, while his book Hegemony and Empire won the same prize at the same category at the BookExpo America in Los Angeles in 2008. His books The World Turned Upside Down: The Complex Partnership Between China and Latin America (2013) and The Crossroads of Globalization: A Latin American View (2019) were reviewed in Foreign Affairs, while his book China versus the US: Who Will Prevail? (2020) was reviewed in International Affairs (journal). In an extensive review of South American books, the online cataloguer Library Thing choose the first of the above mentioned publications as one of the nine basic background readings to understand that region. He has been a weekly columnist at the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal and a regular contributor to newspapers, magazines and analytical websites in Latin America, the United States and Europe.

His past ambassadorial posts are the following:

Ambassador to Brazil (1994–1997) Ambassador to Chile –2001) Ambassador to the United Kingdom (2001 –2007) Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland –2009) Ambassador to Singapore (2009–2017) His Global Policy contributor biography says that he resigned from the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2017 "in protest for the authoritarian outreach of the government".