Grand Strategy vs. Emergent Strategy in the conduct of foreign policy

Popescu, Ionut

doi:10.1080/01402390.2017.1288109

Cited by 16 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Last, the “grand behavior” school privileges a state's behavior, particularly when a pattern emerges from its actions over the long term—even if the pattern has been unintended and the actions have been short‐sighted or ad hoc. A plan‐ or principles‐based operationalization is also known as a scripted grand strategy, while a behavior‐based operationalization is also known as an unscripted grand strategy or “emergent strategy” (Balzacq & Corcoral, 2022; Popescu, 2018).…”

Section: Grand Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To insist that plans be followed would discourage adaptation to changes in the international system and can create self‐fulfilling prophecies about target states (Edelstein, 2021). Instead, proponents of unscripted grand strategies believe that “successful strategies can form without being fully formulated in advance” (Popescu, 2018, p. 446). Thus, rather than impose a plan or set of principles from the top down to guide a state's actions in the international environment, grand strategy can emerge from the bottom up from patterns in how the state reacts to important external challenges (Balzacq & Corcoral, 2022).…”

Section: Grand Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet this increases the risk of false positives. Meanwhile, Popescu (2018) is more restrictive, requiring evidence of learning from past actions and adaption to an ever‐changing international environment. Yet this sets the bar too high for small states.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Articulating a Philippine grand strategy: Policy continuities on the South China Sea

Ibarra

2024

Asian Politics and Policy

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Does the Philippines have a grand strategy? The question is biased in favor of a negative answer. Odds are stacked against detecting a grand strategy in non‐great‐power states. Operationalizing grand strategy as a consistent pattern of behavior reduces bias, but odds are also stacked against observing policy continuities in the Philippines. Increasing the level of analysis, emphasizing outcomes over intentions, and enlarging the time scale can help. Applying these analytical techniques, I argue that a Philippine grand strategy is evident in continuities in the country's foreign and security policies on the South China Sea from 1995 to 2022 under the successive administrations of Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, Aquino III, and Duterte. The grand strategy has five component policies: (1) bilateral diplomacy with China, (2) multilateral diplomacy through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), (3) grounding in the law of the sea, (4) maintaining the alliance with the US, and (5) modernizing the military.

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Section: Grand Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Grand Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Articulating a Philippine grand strategy: Policy continuities on the South China Sea

Ibarra

2024

Asian Politics and Policy

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“…Second, the purpose of a grand strategy may not even be designed to control or shape at all. Rather, it may be to dynamically adapt to systemic changes, a concept (at least in principle) considered by Ionut Popescu (2018) with his conceptualisation of an 'emergent strategy' dynamically reacting to external changes.…”

Section: The Log Ic Of Geopolitics and Evolving Alliance Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The age of fuzzy bifurcation: Lessons from the pandemic and the Ukraine War

Higgott¹,

Reich

2022

Global Policy

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The logics of economics and politics aligned during the Cold War. Together they created two selfcontained spheres. The Western economic sphere consisted of North America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and a group of post-colonial states who nonetheless remained dependent on foreign direct investment, trade and the monopoly transportation links of the former colonial power. American dominance was predicated on three pillars: multinational corporations, nuclear capacity and the role of the dollar (Gilpin, 1987). America's imperialist designs found parallels in Russia's dominance of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw bloc (Anderson, 2015). Non-aligned states -notably the Group of 77 at the UN General Assembly -wistfully advocated the creation of a New International Economic Order (Cox, 1979).The logic of geopolitics followed the same parameters as the geoeconomic. European states sheltered under the American nuclear umbrella. Soviet dominance was evident in its invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Although China's fraying alliance with the Soviet Union fractured after Richard Nixon's

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“…2 Although we define the comprehensive approach as a strategy pursued by the Chinese leadership, such a strategy is not necessarily designed in detail or well-coordinated according to any grand plan. The comprehensive approach resembles what is known in the literature as "emergent strategy," in which, while a rough design and a vision of a preferred end-state ("China as a polar great power in 2035") are given, the various state-affiliated and private actors (state-owned companies, funds, scientific institutions, the military) play it out independently, albeit in often contradictory ways (on emergent strategy, see Popescu, 2018;Silove, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

China’s Arctic Strategy – a Comprehensive Approach in Times of Great Power Rivalry

Puranen,

Kopra

2023

Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies

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There are growing signs that great power rivalry is making a comeback in the Arctic region, and China, a self-proclaimed "near-Arctic state," has shown growing interest in expanding its activity in it. This article investigates China's Arctic intentions in the context of the recently emerging notion of "total national security" in the country, and suggests that individual aspects of China's Arctic strategy -including its Arctic military strategy -should not be analyzed on their own but should, rather, be seen as a manifestation of China's rather unique total security conception in a regional context. Drawing insights from original, official, Chinese-language sources, discussions on China's Arctic strategy among Chinese security experts and academic communities, and by observing recent Chinese economic, political, and scientific activities in the Arctic, the article demonstrates that China's Arctic strategy follows what we describe as a "comprehensive approach" consisting of four main arms: political, economic, scientific, and military. This strategy is designed to advance the party-state's influence in the Arctic through simultaneously moulding discourses and challenging legal concepts of the Arctic (political), boosting its economic interests in the Arctic (economic), fusing civil-military scientific and technological innovation (scientific), and preparing for a military presence in the Arctic (military). Finally, the article concludes that as the significance of the Arctic for China's long-term security strategy is guided by Xi Jinping's thought on total national security, future analyses of China's Arctic intentions should pay particular attention to this evolving concept.

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Grand Strategy vs. Emergent Strategy in the conduct of foreign policy

Cited by 16 publications

References 15 publications

Articulating a Philippine grand strategy: Policy continuities on the South China Sea

Articulating a Philippine grand strategy: Policy continuities on the South China Sea

The age of fuzzy bifurcation: Lessons from the pandemic and the Ukraine War

China’s Arctic Strategy – a Comprehensive Approach in Times of Great Power Rivalry

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