Can the United States Do Grand Strategy?

doi:10.1016/j.orbis.2017.08.013

Orbis

Volume 61, Issue 4, 2017, Pages 474-493

Can the United States Do Grand Strategy?☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2017.08.013 Get rights and content

Abstract

Two big issues that scholars and strategists need to address are simply: does grand strategy have to be articulated for it to be said to exist at all; and if not, can grand strategy be said to move a nation even when that nation's fluctuating roster of mostly incompetent leaders are unsure as to why they do anything? My task here is that of a rapporteur and provocateur raising issues on which we may need to reach some consensus.

Walter A. McDougall is Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Senior Fellow at FPRI. This paper was delivered in October 2009 at the Hertog Program on Grand Strategy, jointly sponsored by Temple University's Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy and FPRI.

^☆: Editor's Note: Walter A. McDougall's provocative article on grand strategy, first published in Spring 2010, is well worth rereading. He is Chair of the Board of Advisors at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former editor of Orbis.