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.

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.

International Theory Book Symposium on Peter J. Katzenstein and Lucia A. Seybert, eds, Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-409
Author(s):  
Jacques E. C. Hymans
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Control Power ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Book Symposium

AbstractKatzenstein and Seybert's Protean Power offers a fresh perspective on the concept of power in international relations (IR) theory. Standard IR theory defines power as control power, which exists in the world of calculable risk. But IR must also grapple with protean power, which exists in the world of incalculable uncertainty. In this symposium, scholars representing a variety of theoretical perspectives evaluate the concept of protean power as it stands now and as it should develop in the future.

Intelligence and Grand Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 405-421
Author(s):  
Joshua Rovner
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
Logical Basis ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between intelligence and grand strategy. The first section discusses how intelligence informs grand strategy, and describes several factors that limit its influence. The second section introduces the concept of an intelligence posture, which describes how states build and operate their intelligence services. A state’s intelligence posture reflects its choices about how to collect information, how to prioritize what it collects, and whether to employ covert action abroad. These choices depend on the state’s broader approach to national security. Grand strategy guides key decisions about spying and sabotage, just as it provides the logical basis for the use of force. The chapter illustrates this idea by sketching intelligence postures for three grand strategies: restraint, liberal internationalism, and primacy.

Social Choice and System Structure in World Politics

1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Morrow
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Current System ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
World System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
System Structure ◽  
The World

This paper analyzes the implications of social choice theory for the study of world politics. A view of the world system as a social choice mechanism leads to the observation that the outcomes of world politics are determined neither by structure nor by preferences alone, but rather by their interaction. Structural change occurs only when the actors cannot achieve their preferences through the current system. Three particular social choice mechanisms are analyzed to determine which conditions of Arrow's theorem they violate. The argument is illustrated by examining two salient theoretical works, Waltz's Theory of International Politics and Gilpin's War and Change in World Politics. The critique of Waltz illustrates that structure alone cannot determine outcome; the critique of Gilpin examines how structural change occurs in world politics and underlines the importance of preferences in such changes.

scholarly journals Governmentality at the limits of the international: African politics and Foucauldian theory

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 763-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARL DEATH
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
African Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The World ◽  
Analytics Of Government ◽  
Foucauldian Theory

AbstractThe ability of International Relations theory to ‘travel well’ to other parts of the world has become one of the central questions within the discipline. This article argues that a Foucauldian-derived ‘analytics of government’ framework has particular advantages in overcoming some of the difficulties IR theory has faced abroad. These advantages include a methodological focus on specific practices of power at their point of application; attention to similarities between practices of power that cut across perceived binaries such as the domestic and international, and public and private; and an illumination of the ways in which practices of freedom are combined and interrelate with forms of coercion and violence. This argument is illustrated in the context of debates about the applicability of Foucauldian theory to African politics, through examples drawn from Bayart's work on globalisation, the power of development partnerships, and violence and civil war. It argues that deploying governmentality as an analytical framework, rather than seeing it as a specifically neoliberal form of power relation, can not only facilitate the application of IR theory outside Europe and North America but can also help develop a broader perspective on genuinely world politics.

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.’

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.

The Grand Strategies of Small States

2021 ◽  
pp. 489-505
Author(s):  
Anders Wivel
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
National Security ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Small States ◽  
Small State ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Grand Strategies

This article discusses the nature, opportunities and limitations of small state grand strategy. It identifies the similarities and differences between the grand strategies of small states and great powers and unpacks the nature of traditional defensive small state grand strategies hiding and shelter-seeking as well as more recent offensive, influence-seeking small state grand strategies under the heading of smart state strategy. The article argues that while small state grand strategy remains tied to national security and is formulated in the shadow of great power interests, a changing security environment creates both the need and opportunity for small states to use their weakness instrumentally for maximizing interests. The likelihood of success depends on a pragmatic political culture and the willingness and ability to prioritize goals and means to utilize their nonthreatening small state status in “smart” or “entrepreneurial” policies.

Mr. Toynbee and World Politics: War and National Security

1956 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Society ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern War

IHE problem of war and national security, at one time conceived of as the province of almost anyone but the peace-minded international relationist, has come increasingly to occupy scholars and researchers. Arnold J. Toynbee, whose major concern is the philosophy of history, preserves a lively interest in international politics and particularly in the problem of war, the principles of foreign policy, and the quest for an applicable body of theory concerning international society. With the publication of the last four volumes of his famed A Study of History, it may be appropriate to call attention to the other side of his work, especially as he brings to the discussion a clarity, simplicity, and concreteness refreshing by contrast with the pompous tautologies of much of modern scholarship. This article reviews Mr. Toynbee's contribution to knowledge on the first of the problems mentioned, namely, war and national security. It seeks to present his conception of the crisis in modern war, social factors underlying the transformation of warfare, and prevailing theories on the nature and inevitability of war.

Role-playing and identity affirmation in international politics: Britain's reinvasion of the Falklands, 1982

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1599-1621 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID M. McCOURT
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Complete Interpretation

AbstractDid Britain reinvade the Falklands because of its ‘identity’? Or was reinvasion instead required by its ‘role’ in international politics? In this article I show that a complete constructivist explanation of Britain's response must consider both its identity affirmation, which constructivist International Relations (IR) theory would certainly draw attention to, but also the role it played on the world stage at the beginning of the 1980s, which would very likely be overlooked. I show that a solely identity-based explanation is incomplete and ultimately unpersuasive since identities are affirmed by playing social roles, which give identity meaning. In 1982, a number of roles could have fulfilled this function for Britain; it is important then that Britain chose and was able to play the role of astatus quooriented power rather than that of a colonial power. Beyond offering a more complete interpretation of the events, the article clarifies the links between roles, identity, and action in international politics, and the type of theory appropriate to such analysis.

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