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





Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
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?