What Good Is Grand Strategy?

Brands, Hal

doi:10.7591/9780801470288

Cited by 81 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…So too was a widely circulated comment by a Reagan administration official that all the United States had to do to win a nuclear war was build enough bomb shelters. 12 We know now that deterrence worked in similar ways on both sides. 13…”

Section: Our Differences Are Fundamental and 'Existential'; They Do Nmentioning

confidence: 93%

Misreading the Enemy

Fettweis¹

2015

Survival

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Our Differences Are Fundamental and 'Existential'; They Do Nmentioning

confidence: 93%

Misreading the Enemy

Fettweis¹

2015

Survival

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Conventionally understood, a grand strategy envisions how a state can best use its various resources of power, -military, economic, diplomatic -to achieve national security, thus establishing a guideline for the national interest. (Art 2003, Brands 2014, Martel 2015.…”

Section: Grand Strategy In International Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From the Obama Doctrine to America First: the erosion of the Washington consensus on grand strategy

Löfflmann

2019

Int Polit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the social construction of American grand strategy as nexus of identity and national security. The article first highlights how the identity construct of American exceptionalism has underwritten a grand strategy of global leadership and military interventionism since the end of the Cold War, constituting liberal hegemony as dominant position within the bipartisan US foreign policy establishment. The article then explores the political impact of counter-hegemonic discourses of restraint and offshore balancing under the Obama presidency. It argues that in 'leading from behind' the Obama Doctrine represented a moderate intra-elite challenge to the status quo. Obama's use of exceptionalist rhetoric to legitimate restraint simultaneously exposed the political limits of this strategic paradigm shift, which oscillated between continuity and change. Finally, the article examines Trump's 'America First' stance, concluding that its combination of nationalism, nativism and protectionism has resulted in the erosion of the Washington consensus on liberal hegemony.

show abstract

“…Change within continuity is always a hallmark of effective grand strategy, and post-war grand strategy has been no exception. 51 As scholars like William Wohlforth, Stephen Brooks, and John Ikenberry have noted, there has long been an ebb and flow to U.S. engagement overseas, as administrations have responded to their predecessors' successes and failures by Hal Brands changing U.S. posture at the margins, while still remaining within the overarching paradigm of proactive globalism.…”

Section: Balancing Offshore Optimismmentioning

confidence: 99%