Rethinking American Grand Strategy

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Strategic Thought ◽  
American Grand Strategy

What is grand strategy? What does it aim to achieve? And what differentiates it from normal strategic thought—what, in other words, makes it “grand”? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, so much so that “grand strategy” has become almost an equivalent of “military history.” The traditional attention paid to military affairs is understandable, but in today's world it leaves out much else that could be considered political, and therefore strategic. It is in fact possible to consider, and even reach, a more capacious understanding of grand strategy, one that still includes the battlefield and the negotiating table but can also expand beyond them. Just as contemporary world politics is driven by a wide range of non-military issues, the most thorough considerations of grand strategy must consider the bases of peace and security as broadly as possible. A theory that bears little resemblance to the reality around us every day—in which gender, race, the environment, and a wide range of cultural, social, political, and economic issues are salient—can be only so useful. This book examines America's place in the world. The chapters reexamine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies.

American Grand Strategies

2021 ◽  
pp. 440-456
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Domestic Values ◽  
American Grand Strategy

How do we explain the vigorous debate about what American grand strategy should be? Most of the proponents are Realists, and this is particularly true for the alternatives of Restraint and Deep Engagement discussed here. These camps disagree not about whether the US is in decline, but in how secure it is, how tightly the world is interconnected, how much commitments can be kept within bounds, whether alliances and military ties are necessary to underpin a productive international economic system, and the links between foreign policy and domestic values. Few analysts in either camp are willing to acknowledge tradeoffs among the significant values they hold, which indicates that psychological processes as well as analytical differences are at work.

Culture, Identity, and Grand Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 302-321
Author(s):  
David M. McCourt
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Grand Strategies

What do culture and identity have to do with grand strategy—the task of matching broad national security aims to capabilities? Is grand strategy not the preserve of politics and power, and the timeless wisdom of realpolitik? This chapter argues that culture and identity are essential components of any realistic account of grand strategy, since grand strategies tell a story of who or what a country is, and should be, in world politics. Grand strategies are performative, making the world at the same time as speaking of it, and fashioning an identity for an international actor. The centrality of culture and identity in international politics are key insights from the constructivist approach to IR theory. The chapter outlines the constructivist challenge to mainstream approaches that emphasize material conceptions of power and interests. It then illustrates the ubiquity of culture and identity in the formulation of UK and US grand strategy. It explores recent developments in culturalist theorizing that caution against taking culture and identity as stable entities rather than often contradictory processes. This serves to connect the insights from this chapter to others in the volume on practice, discourse, legitimation, power, and expertise.

The Blob and the Mob

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Beverly Gage
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Stability And Instability ◽  
Significant Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Strategic Thought ◽  
Potential Use

This chapter explores social movements as a new lens through which to approach grand strategy. Although grand strategists and social movement strategists often view each other as opposites, they have more to learn from each other—and more in common—than either group might think. Within the realm of strategic thought, there has long been significant intellectual overlap between military, political, and social-movement approaches. Far from standing apart from questions of war and peace, stability and instability, conflict and diplomacy, nearly every significant movement for social change has actively engaged these questions, including the real or potential use of violence. Around the world, still more radical movements, many of them at least nominally Marxist in orientation, produced vast literatures on the virtues and vices of revolutionary strategy, as well as the complex task of transforming members and leaders, after victory, from revolutionaries into statesmen. In modern Western democratic societies, social-change strategists tend to favor non-violent methods, but debates rage nonetheless.

scholarly journals Peculiarities of competitive behaviour of successful businesses in digital economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-192
Author(s):  
T. G. Filosofova ◽  
Yu. A. Surkova
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Specific Activity ◽  
World Market ◽  
Behaviour Pattern ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Major Market ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Competitive Behaviour ◽  
Major Factors

The contemporary world market abounds in companies varying in their competitive behaviour which represents their objectives and specific activity. The article shows that among various types of economic activity connected with digitalization as the most important trend of economic development a special place belongs to high technology, and market conditions are determined by businesses which make use of such technologies. As a rule, these businesses have the best performance and take top positions of the ratings based on a wide range of parameters. The authors assume that use of artificial intelligence gradually becomes a significant factor determining a company’s success at the world market. They have also found out that market entities show the tendency to use different platforms in their business activities more frequently. Major market players take interest in external innovation purchasing it at the market or interacting with other companies and even competitors. They also are interested in processing and analyzing big data and internet of things (IoT). The authors point out that demand for business incubators tends to grow as well. They have analyzed the inner changes at different stages of development of Google and the corresponding changes of competitive behaviour pattern at the corresponding markets and defined major factors which influence stable position of the company at the market. Intellectualization of economic activity of business can be considered as ambivalent: on the one hand, companies’ more frequent exploration of digital economics becomes an essential part of their successful competitive behaviour at the market, and on the other hand it appears to be the factor which effects the development of exterritorial buseness environment connected with the world processes and formation of geoeconomic space.

Getting Grand Strategy Right

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Hal Brands
Keyword(s):  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Conceptual Confusion ◽  
American Grand Strategy

This chapter highlights ten common fallacies in the study of grand strategy and clarifies the misconceptions underlying them. Clearing away this conceptual confusion can lead to more productive debates about grand strategy writ large; it can also better inform discussions about the prospects for American grand strategy today. One of the fallacies is thinking of grand strategy as a principle or a doctrine rather than a process. Another is the idea that only certain types of grand strategies are worthy of the label. An additional one is the idea that democracies in particular just cannot get grand strategy right. The chapter then looks at the importance of politics and policy debates to grand strategy.

Grand strategy in a post-bipolar world: interpreting the final Soviet response

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-375
Author(s):  
Raymond Taras ◽  
Marshal Zeringue
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Do So

All great powers have a grand strategy—including great powers on the verge of collapse. Each power develops its code of national security ends and means differently. Among the myriad factors which explain particular grand strategies, the most important consideration is the distribution of power capabilities in the international system. Regardless of each state's desire to operate independently—to be master of its own grand strategy—the structure of world politics offers little latitude to do so. As in the case of decision-making processes in organizations and bureaucracies, the international system imposes its own constraints and incentives on the security goals of individual states. Primarily addressing the international environment, however, systems theory ‘provides criteria for differentiating between stable and unstable political configurations.’ The first objective of this essay is to explore the role of structure as an indirect influence on the behaviour of its constituent actors, in this case, states. ‘The effects [of structure] are produced in two ways: through socialization of the actors and through competition among them.’

The fragmentation and consolidation of international systems

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart J. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Integration ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Stability Theory ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
International Systems ◽  
Hegemonic Stability

The world today, Benjamin Barber points out, is “falling precipitantly apart and coming reluctantly together at the very same moment.” While states from Canada to India are threatened with breakup due to fractious nationalist impulses of their peoples, the power of technology and markets is forcing ever-tighter economic integration worldwide. From a common-sense perspective, these two impulses are among the most important processes in contemporary world politics. Yet, there has been remarkably little attention paid to developing a theory of the international system that examines the effects of both. Hegemonic stability theory considers economic integration but not nationalism; the few studies of nationalism as a systemic force play down the effects of economic integration; and neorealism, the most widely accepted theory of the international system, has no room to address either trend. The field is, partly as a result, a cacaphony of voices largely talking past one another.

American Grand Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 447-458
Author(s):  
Fredrik Logevall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Containment Policy ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
American Grand Strategy

This chapter assesses how grand American grand strategy has been. If the containment followed by the United States in the Cold War is the most successful, or at least most celebrated, grand strategy the United States has ever pursued, it is worthy of a closer look. This chapter considers two foundational writings from the early Cold War: George Kennan's “X” Article, published in Foreign Affairs in 1947 (under the pseudonym “X”), which laid out the containment policy—that is to say, the containment of Soviet power—and National Security Council Memorandum 68 (NSC-68) of April 1950. Both of these documents are held to have played major roles in shaping the grand strategy that helped the United States deal successfully with the Soviet threat and ultimately win the Cold War. Each has indeed been referred to as the “blueprint” for US policy in the struggle. The chapter then addresses a second question: How much does grand strategy matter in the context of American history? History suggests that grand strategies do not alter the trajectory of great-power politics all that much. In the case of the United States, even radically imperfect strategies have not fundamentally affected its rise and fall.

scholarly journals Environment NGO Activity in the World Political Arena

2013 ◽  
pp. 70-74
Author(s):  
O. Y. Semenov
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Environmental Ngos ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
The World

The globalization of ecological and environmental problems in contemporary world politics defines a significant role of such issues in the agenda of both state and non-state international actors. Traditional diplomacy needs the assistance of NGOs related to environment and creating new mechanisms which could be able to respond to rapid ecological changes. The new role of environmental NGOs in world politics is clearly evident in rule- and standard-making as well as global governance issues.

The United States of America

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dombrowski ◽  
Simon Reich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
American Grand Strategy

The study of American grand strategy is dominated by historians who describe former grand strategies, and international relations scholars who prescribe what it should be. In contrast to either approach, this chapter has three components: First, it identifies the national cultural influences, the key elements of the mythic “American Creed,” that provide the emblematic foundations of contemporary American grand strategy. Second, it describes the historical evolution of the institutional mechanisms that both formulate and implement American grand strategy, and how those institutions actually operate in the modern era. And third, relating these elements, it explains the parameters of American grand strategic planning—how it operates in practice. This includes an overt reliance on military instruments and a conscious sensitivity to field conditions in implementation that may undermine the most grand strategic designs. The chapter concludes by contemplating the prospects for continuity and change in American grand strategy.

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