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
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