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Analyses democracy promotion as part of America's ‘liberal grand strategy’, i.e. the notion that the US is better able to pursue its interests, reduce security threats, and foster a stable political order when other states are democracies. It provides answers to the following questions: What are the elements of the liberal grand strategy? Why has it been so persistent? Which groups support it within the foreign policy community? How significant is the liberal democratic orientation in current American foreign policy?

A theory of war, perhaps the theory, cannot suffice as a theory of strategy. Strategy is a function that needs to be conducted in peacetime as well as in wartime. Because Clausewitz adheres closely to his mission, narrowly defined as On War, he tells us nothing of much note about how and why peace becomes war, or how war becomes a peace worthy of the name. The strategist today, to a greater or lesser degree, must be a grand strategist. He has to approach strategy as a permanent mission, and to see war situated politically in a continuous stream of political, and strategic, history. Clausewitz theorizes as it were above the fray of the great political narrative that from time to time conducts its transactions violently. Memorably indeed, he stresses the political instrumentality of war and its warfare, but beyond that fairly obvious claim he does not provide much guidance for statecraft. One must hasten to add that he did not seek to do so; On War is narrowly about exactly what its title claims. Unfortunately, today there is extant no general theory of war in history, or, less inclusively, of war in statecraft. Strategy, especially grand strategy—the strategy that directs and employs potentially all of the resources of a security community—as contrasted with military strategy, is the dynamic and adapting product of what is known as policy, but more truly is rendered as politics. The relations of politics, war, and strategy are complex and have yet to be treated wholly convincingly by theorists. Practitioners of statecraft and strategy, if we allow a notable distinction between the two, generally are obliged to bow to the maxim that ‘contingency rules!’

The introduction focuses on the definition of ‘grand strategy’ and ‘military strategy’, the phenomena and logic of strategy, considerations and factors that shaped imperial and nation‐state politics, and the relationship between the military and political levels of war. It provides a working definition of strategy as ‘the art of winning by purposely matching ends, ways and means’, and briefly summarizes the twelve case studies, from the campaigns of Alexander the Great to the contemporary conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also posits the working hypothesis of the book: that nothing essential changes in the intrinsic nature and function (or purpose) of strategy and war, in sharp contrast to the character of individual strategies that reflect the unique circumstances of each conflict.

Chapter 9 focuses on the relationship between the evolving grand strategy and military strategy in the American Civil War (1861–5). Williamson Murray emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between Abraham Lincoln's grand strategy—aimed at the preservation of the Union with its form of government—and Ulysses S. Grant's ability to execute the military expression of that strategy through effective generalship, selection of capable subordinates, and decisive combat. Murray argues that two main factors explain why it took the North four years to defeat the Southern states. First, the vast size of the theatre of operations posed great logistical challenges. Second, enormous popular enthusiasm for their respective causes led both sides to insist on holding out to the bitter end, despite huge casualties and suffering. Ultimately, Lincoln's grand strategy succeeded because the verdict that ‘the United States is a country’, singular rather than plural, was never seriously challenged again.

In examining the Soviet‐American Cold War of 1945–91, Colin Gray posits seven categories of context: political, sociocultural, economic, technological, geographical‐geopolitical, historical, and military‐strategic. He also divides the Cold War into separate periods, defined by what he considers its three strategically ‘decisive moments’: the outbreak of, and the American‐led reaction to, the war in Korea (June 1950); the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962); and the fall of the Soviet Union (December 1989). His analysis leads to the inescapable conclusion that the Cold War was a struggle that the Soviet Union was never likely to win, at least not by any reasonable definition of victory. Gray deliberately weights political over military considerations, and grand strategy over military strategy. The strategic experience of the Cold War supports his main hypothesis: namely, that strategy has eternal and universal characteristics.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of grand strategy. Grand strategy is best understood as a holistic and interconnected system of power, encompassing all aspects of society in pursuit of international goals “based on the calculated relationship of means to ends.” It is not simply about winning wars or attaining specific foreign-policy objectives, important as these priorities are; it is not only an answer to the question of what power is meant to achieve. Grand strategy is also about creating a durable peace that follows a war and then maintaining the stability of that peace long after the war has faded into a distant memory. It is—for the United States especially, with its global ambitions, widespread commitments, and enormous capabilities in all forms of power—about trying to shape world conditions so as to ensure the protection of national security and the flourishing of national values. The chapter then studies the grand strategies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Ultimately, this book argues for the relevance and usefulness of grand strategy, and builds on the concept of strategic culture.

This chapter examines the role of economics in China's grand strategy as it rises to great power status in the international system. A good deal of China's post-1978 foreign policy has been focused on facilitating the country's economic development. Increasingly, China finds itself in a position in which it may be able to leverage its growing economic power to advance its foreign policy goals. This chapter begins with an overview of grand strategy as an analytical concept in international relations. It then considers China as a strategic actor and the evolving role of economics in China's contemporary grand strategy, along with Deng Xiaoping's reassessment and strategic reorientation of China toward economic development. It also explains how much of China's modern foreign policy has been designed to serve the requirements of economic development and the international integration of a rising China. Finally, it discusses the utility of economic statecraft in pursuing China's grand strategy.

In Chapter 10, Martin van Creveld focuses on grand strategy and military strategy in the First and Second World Wars. He first examines the similarities between the two wars at the highest level: ‘to wit, the one where national policy and politics, strategy, diplomacy, economics and mobilization meet and interact’. The second part of the chapter discusses the military strategy of the principal belligerents. The author highlights the differences between the two wars, the role of armoured formations on the ground, naval warfare, and the extensive use of air power. He maintains that, in reality, these two total wars should be seen as parts of a single protracted struggle of attrition, with victory ultimately gained by the side with greater resources in terms of bigger military forces (army, navy, and air force), backed by larger populations, a stronger military‐industrial base for scientific research and production, and greater economic leverage.

This chapter lays out the objectives of the volume, provides a new conceptual and methodological framework, and justifies case selection. It comprises three sections. The first section argues that a comparative approach to the study of grand strategy both highlights the constraints of contemporary single-country research and the opportunities presented by a systematic research design. The chapter’s second section evaluates the alternative definitions and competing theoretical traditions developed to study grand strategy. The authors argue in favor of an integration of these traditions within a single framework, coupled with an expanded universe of countries as viable cases. In the third section, the authors examine which systemic and domestic factors organically influence the ways in which states formulate and implement grand strategies. The chapter identifies criteria for better explanations about why individual states make specific choices, and provides threads that ensure the internal consistency of the book.

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.

Changing intellectual and geopolitical conditions by the early 1970s led to the re-emergence of grand strategy, among others, as a popular concept. John Collins authored the first entire book on grand strategy to be published in the United States, although today it is largely unremembered. A number of prominent authors began or made their careers writing about and developing their own idiosyncratic ideas of grand strategy, including Edward Luttwak (who defined grand strategy as military statecraft), Barry Posen (grand strategy as a cause-and-effect chain to produce security), and to some extent Paul Kennedy (defining grand strategy as very-long-term strategy). Each of these newly evolved concepts differed from its contemporaries, and each remains popular in its own way to the present day.

This chapter discusses the Habsburg grand strategy. The Habsburg Empire had an especially pressing need to engage in the pursuit of grand strategy because of its vulnerable location and the unavailability of effective offensive military instruments with which to subdue the threats around its frontiers. Weakness is provocative, and apathy is rarely rewarded in even the most forgiving of strategic environments. For an impecunious power in the vortex of east-central European geopolitics, these traits, if permitted to coexist for long, would lead to the extinction of the state. This was the signal lesson from the wars of the eighteenth century, which had culminated in a succession struggle that saw a militarily weak Austria dangerously bereft of allies invaded from three directions and almost destroyed. These experiences spurred Habsburg leaders to conceptualize and formalize the matching of means to large ends in anticipation of future threats. The result was a conservative grand strategy that used alliances, buffer states, and a defensive army to manage multifront dynamics, avoid strains beyond Austria’s ability to bear, and preserve an independent European center under Habsburg leadership.

This chapter highlights the conflict of competing grand strategy discourses under the Obama presidency, which are identified as hegemony, engagement and restraint. It provides an overview of the political significance of grand strategy and its treatment in the academic literature. The chapter describes the political and expert debate of American grand strategy under the Obama presidency and briefly introduces the theoretical-methodological framework that has guided the research into competing discourses of American grand strategy under Obama. The chapter offers an alternative definition of grand strategy from the conventional literature, identifying it as discursive link between geopolitical identity and national security.

With the end of the Cold War, grand strategic thought again entered a new era—one not comfortably defined by a single enemy. In response much of the grand strategic literature turned away from its military roots, which had still been respected during the last years of the Cold War. The new grand strategic literature expanded into multiple different academic fields largely to generate prescriptions of new foreign policies for interacting with an apparently new world. New but generic definitions of grand strategy continued to emerge, such as that by John Lewis Gaddis (the relationship of means to large ends). Since 2014, yet another new type of interpretation of grand strategy has emerged in the writings of Hal Brands and some others, which treated grand strategy as a particular type of decision-making process.

Drawing on distinguished relational traditions in both China and the West, this chapter develops a relational theory to explain a distinct set of grand strategies that imperial China and its neighbors may adopt in their interactions. The theory provides a new framework for understanding the strategic dynamics of regional politics under the condition of Chinese hegemony. It also affords a new perspective on the role of Confucianism in Chinese foreign policy: constraining in the grand strategy of instrumental hierarchy but causal and constitutive in the grand strategy of expressive hierarchy. Equally important, it uncovers an expressive dimension of regional politics that is almost universally ignored in the existing literature. The theory also posits a major facilitating condition of rationality and strategy: They are both relational outcomes conditioned by the degree of the conflict of interest in particular relationships.

This chapter looks at strategies for governing. Leaders develop an overall view about how state authority ought to be exercised, which can be called their strategy for governing. This strategy includes an understanding about national priorities—that is, the ordering of goals—and also about methods of pursuing those priorities. The institutional apparatus that constitutes a state is the means by which strategy is put into place. It is the expression of strategy. Experts in public administration provide advice on how to build or renovate institutions so that they align with overall strategy. They also warn leaders against strategies that rely on untenable assumptions about building, running, and renovating institutions. Moreover, these experts make judgments about the morality of strategies that they help to design and execute. However, leaders within a state often have differing views about the best strategy for governing. Frequently, though, there is agreement on fundamentals. The chapter then considers the concept of “grand strategy,” which was introduced in the nineteenth century to describe an overall policy regarding the use of armed forces in war.

This chapter is divided into three components: 1. A review of the (lack of) utility of the concept of grand strategy in view of the prior chapters 2. A discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of our alternative formulation which we characterize as “calibrated strategies” in an evolving strategic environment (see chapter 2) where there are proliferating demands made on the military. 3. The implications of our findings for the future of the military, particularly the Navy (as the central branch of the military services in most grand strategic theorizing). Our overall assessment is that academics have to reappraise and focus on explanation, not prescription, and that an adaptive approach is required by policymakers in recognizing contingencies rather than strategizing in terms of generalities. Naval officials, however, will seek to avoid certain kinds of MOOTW whenever possible, preferring to pursue traditional naval functions, playing “away games” in the places like the South China Sea rather than “home games” guarding America’s shores from illicit flows.