Grand Strategy

[Ken White]

it raises questions.

How do you propose to get a coherent and lasting Grand Strategy in a nation that has changes in its political character every two, four, six and / or eight years?

Your point on there being no nation or group of nations on which to focus our near term strategy is of course correct. How do we strategically address that situation?

Having lived through the Cold War, I can tell you that containment wasn't quite as neat as a lot of folks today like to think it was...

[Steve Blair]

it raises questions.

How do you propose to get a coherent and lasting Grand Strategy in a nation that has changes in its political character every two, four, six and / or eight years?

Your point on there being no nation or group of nations on which to focus our near term strategy is of course correct. How do we strategically address that situation?

Having lived through the Cold War, I can tell you that containment wasn't quite as neat as a lot of folks today like to think it was...

You don't have to have lived through the Cold War to understand that...just be able to actually read and analyze a number of sources (to include documents from the actual period and not just retrospective studies).

That said, I think it's quite possible to argue successfully that the US has never really HAD a grand strategy of any sort (prior to containment...which was something of a patchwork strategy that ended up working) aside from the 19th century concept of Manifest Destiny...and even that seems more clear in retrospect than it did during the time in question and was driven more by economic considerations than an actual political agenda. Our two year cycle of "perpetual revolution" was alive and well even then, and that has always hindered our ability to form any sort of lasting strategic consensus. I don't honestly see that changing, and we don't have the sort of civil service structure that would allow for them to carry the strategic torch (as it were).

[Ken White]

LINK.

"I can do anything better than you..." as the old song says...

[Entropy]

It seems to me before we can figure out a grand strategy, we need a general set of national goals and/or aspirations. What do we see as our role in the world going forward?

It's also important to realize that what we may want as our role in the world and what we actually get are often two different things. I don't think we really wanted a Cold War after WWII, but events and our strong position following the war foisted it upon us.

[Steve Blair]

It seems to me before we can figure out a grand strategy, we need a general set of national goals and/or aspirations. What do we see as our role in the world going forward?

And even agreeing on this has historically been an issue based on the above-mentioned "perpetual revolution" of our election process and general lack of a British-style civil service system (which is not necessarily a good or bad thing...just an observation).

Historically the US has often 'discussed' such things, and it has often boiled down to "spreading democracy," although the general lines of that have never really been hammered out. Nor has the disconnect between our vision/version of democracy and the multitude of other iterations out there.

[Ken White]

We do need -- and we aren't likely to get...

I think that link I posted shows the discordance between our two main parties approach and that dichotomy, in this case 44 undoing what 43 had accomplished (or fixing what had been fouled up, viewpoint dependent), has been with us since the earliest days of the Republic. It was apparent during even a major war such as WW II and it has been even more apparent in all aspects of foreign policy to include during the Cold War. Unlikely to change.

That's why Churchill was probably correct: "You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing -- after they have tried every conceivable alternative."

[Ski]

Some Soviet theorists beleived Grand Strategy was a Western invention, and that it simply did not exist.

[Ken White]

Some Soviet theorists beleived Grand Strategy was a Western invention, and that it simply did not exist.

realistically, it makes a lot of sense...

[Ski]

Ken

I only read about recently in an essay by a young Condeleeza Rice of all people.

The exact quote is:

"Perhaps this legacy accounts, in part, for the absence of a Soviet Liddell Hart or Clausewitz and for their discomfort with the concept of grand strategy. The term itself is clearly alien from the Soviet point of view. Soviet strategic thinkers often disparage it and always refer to grand strategy as a Western concept. As Marshal of the Soviet Union and former Minister of Defense V.D. Sokolovskii noted "They have advanced the concept of "great" or "grand" strategy...Some even extend this to all sphere's of a state's foreign activity. In our country, there is military strategy and it has never exceeded the boundaries of that which is military in its broadest form...the theory of comprehensive preperation of the country for war."

Rice, Condeleeza "The Evolution of Soviet Grand Strategy" in Grand Strategies in War and Peace edited by Paul Kennedy

This of course was possible because there was no serious examination of Soviet economic policies in relation to military or defense activities, which is really what ended the USSR.

[Ken White]

your comment on the economic side is almost certainly correct. Possible they did consider it but the ideologues wouldn't let them change.

I don't think the US has ever had a Grand Strategy however there's no doubt we have had and have some enduring policies -- not least on the economic side.

I think our policy, unwritten in a sense, of not tolerating threats and using disruption instead of co-option is a long standing thing as well but do not believe it rises to the level of a strategy because the application from Administration to Administration has been very different and occasionally not practiced. Containment was a policy for a long time but it was not, strictly speaking a strategy. Things to ponder.

Thanks again.

[Ski]

Ken

From what I have read, Soviet economics changed very little from the 1930's to the end of the state. The centralization of the economy occured under Stalin - with forced industrialization and collectivization of the farms.

There's also a very interesting article by Richard Betts called "Is Strategy an Illusion?" He uses ten critiques of strategy to develop his point, and it's a strong argument. If you are interested I can e-mail a copy of the article.

[Ken White]

PM on the way.

[Hacksaw]

Given its broad interpretation and the span of time in which it guided US policy... might we consider the Monroe Doctrine as the earliest US Grand Strategy???

Just a thought

[Ken White]

Is it a Grand Strategy -- or a subset and one of the earlier implementations of the policy of not tolerating threats?

[Steve Blair]

I would say that it was a subset more than anything else. Our early period was focused mostly on border defense and/or expansion (depending on the time period); something of a preview of our internal focus on most things with the outside world coming into consideration only when it threatened that focus.

[ipopescu]

Given its broad interpretation and the span of time in which it guided US policy... might we consider the Monroe Doctrine as the earliest US Grand Strategy???

Just a thought

There is a nice small book on grand strategy in early American history that I would recommend, John Lewis Gaddis- "Surprise, Security and the American Experience."

Robert Kagan's "Dangerous Nation" is also a good read on the topic.

[Ken White]

The first one; I don't have and have not read the second.

Gaddis uses the word strategy and policy almost interchangably. I believe that the book essentially agrees with what I was saying about 40 years before he wrote the book -- the US has never tolerated threats. The US likes disruption as a technique, he and I also agree on that (I've even been able to have fun in some of those disruptions. ).

So. Are those two things strategy or policy?

[ipopescu]

Ken,
One of the things I find most frustrating when reading scholarship and commentary on US grand strategy is this frequent lack of distinction between the concepts of "policy" and "strategy". As a side note, this is Colin Gray's pet peeve as well, almost every paper he writes attempts to highlight the distinction between the two. I agree with Gray that the two are different things, but there is also a common argument that at the highest levels "grand strategy" is policy. I believe Paul Kennedy, Gaddis, and many of the current "establishment" national security experts subscribe to this notion.
As it happens, Duke's American Grand Strategy Program is having a big conference on the topic next week and Gaddis is opening it with a speech on"What is Grand Strategy?". So I'll report back next weekend on what the best and brightest of American academia agreed upon
Ionut

The first one; I don't have and have not read the second.

Gaddis uses the word strategy and policy almost interchangably. I believe that the book essentially agrees with what I was saying about 40 years before he wrote the book -- the US has never tolerated threats. The US likes disruption as a technique, he and I also agree on that (I've even been able to have fun in some of those disruptions. ).

So. Are those two things strategy or policy?

[William F. Owen]

Ken,
One of the things I find most frustrating when reading scholarship and commentary on US grand strategy is this frequent lack of distinction between the concepts of "policy" and "strategy". As a side note, this is Colin Gray's pet peeve as well, almost every paper he writes attempts to highlight the distinction between the two.

...and in turn this highlights the near futility of attempting this discussion without clear and agreed definitions. Semantics is important, and critical when trying to provide useful, rather than theoretical guidance.

[Ken White]

more than any other thing...

Thanks, Ionut.

One can go to the Webster's definition and see that a 'strategy' is a defined plan to execute a policy or achieve a goal. The DoD Dictionary defines it thus: "A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives."

Based on that, seems to me a strategy is the method elected to achieve a result. A policy would seem to be a statement of a desired result. Elimination of threatS (plural) would thus seem to be a policy and the particular methods used to achieve that result in each particular case to eliminate a threat (singular) would be a strategy. Obviously, one could extend that to a series of subsequent or related threats but I question if that should be applied as the proper appellation over 200 years...

An interesting aside is whether disruption is a policy or strategy, it is notable that it is the preferred or most common US technique. That implies a question about the national psyche (which I know the psychologists and others rather foolishly contend does nor exist... ).

However, I look forward to hearing what comes out of the conference (my policy); I await your report with bated breath (my strategery)

I do agree with Wilf that it is an important definition for those concerned with execution; believe that is less true so for the masses and even those fields of academe not directly concerned -- and that would include Historians IMO. Still, strategy is, I think, a frequently misused word...