A Different Approach on Analyzing Countries’ Grand Strategies: China and the United States

Periphery: Israel's Search for Middle East Allies

Periphery: Israel's Search for Middle East Allies

Straipsnyje analizuojama Didžiosios strategijos raida istorijoje ir nacionalinių valstybių didžiųjų strategijų perspektyvos šiuolaikiniame pasaulyje. Nagrinėjama valstybių, turinčių Didžiąją strategiją, patirtis, tokios strategijos poreikio ir paskirties XXI a. problema. Teigiama, kad globaliame pasaulyje nesumenkėjo nacionalinės Didžiosios strategijos reikšmė ir poreikis – pakito tik jos įgyvendinimo aplinka ir sąlygos. XXI a. Didžiojoje strategijoje valstybės „įsitvirtinimo po saule“ sąvoką keičia „įsitinklinimo“koncepcija, kuri reiškia valstybės pastangą išnaudoti globalizacijos teikiamas galimybes nacionalinės plėtros tikslais. Vakarų pasaulio valstybės nėra natūraliai „pasmerktos“ didėjančios gerovės, kylančios kokybės ir sanglaudos vizijos išsipildymui. Vakarietiškosios Didžiosios strategijos, paremtos liberaliosios demokratijos koncepcija, modelio plėtros sėkmė priklausys ne tik nuo globalizacijos jėgų logikos, bet ir nuo sprendimų, kuriuos privalės priimti valstybių vyriausybės. Tai gali aktualinti nacionalinių didžiųjų strategijų poreikį.

Abstract: This essay examines the history of the Cold War to illuminate insights that can help assess debates about American grand strategy today. As will be shown, calls for dramatic retrenchment and offshore balancing rest on weak historical foundations. Yet Cold War history also reminds us that a dose of restraint-and occasional selective retrenchment-can be useful in ensuring the long-term sustainability of an ambitious grand strategy. ********** US grand strategy stands at a crossroads. (1) Since World War II, the United States has pursued an ambitious and highly engaged grand strategy meant to mold the global order. The precise contours of that grand strategy have changed from year to year, and from presidential administration to presidential administration; however its core, overarching principles have remained essentially consistent. America has sought to preserve and expand an open and prosperous world economy. It has sought to foster a peaceful international environment in which democracy can flourish. It has sought to prevent any hostile power from dominating any of the key overseas regions---Europe, East Asia, the Middle East--crucial to US security and economic wellbeing. And in support of these goals, the United States has undertaken an extraordinary degree of international activism, anchored by American alliance and security commitments to overseas partners, and the forward presence and troop deployments necessary to substantiate those commitments. (2) This grand strategy has, on the whole, been profoundly productive for both the United States and the wider world, for it has underpinned an international system that has been--by any meaningful historical comparison--remarkably peaceful, prosperous, and democratic. (3) Yet over the past several years, America's long-standing grand strategy has increasingly come under fire. Amid the long hangover from the Iraq War and a painful financial crisis whose effects are still being felt, leading academic observers have taken up the banner of retrenchment. Prominent voices in the strategic-studies community argue the United States can no longer afford such an ambitious grand strategy; that US alliances and security commitments bring far greater costs than benefits; and that American overseas presence and activism create more problems than they solve. The solution, they contend, is a sharp rollback of US military presence and alliance commitments, and a far more austere foreign policy writ large. Scholars such as Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, and Barry Posen have been at the forefront of such calls for restraint or offshore balancing within the academy; mainstream commentators like Peter Beinart and Ian Bremmer have offered similar assessments. (4) These calls for retrenchment have recently been amplified by fears of American decline vis-a-vis rising or resurgent rivals such as Russia and China, and by the emergence of a host of strategic challenges around the world. Basic questions of what America should seek to achieve in international affairs, and whether it should break fundamentally with the postwar pattern of US global presence and activism, are more now robustly debated than at any time since the end of the Cold War. (5) The debate between these two rival schools of thought centers on a series of key strategic questions. Can the US economy sustain the burdens of a global defense posture? Are US alliances net benefits or detriments to American security? Is the US overseas presence stabilizing or destabilizing in its effects? Is democracy-promotion a boon or a burden for US strategic interests? How would an American military retrenchment affect geopolitical outcomes and alignments in key regions? Is the United States in inexorable geopolitical decline? How one answers these questions frequently determines which path one believes America should take in the future. Yet grand strategy is not simply about the future; it is also about the past. …

The article explores the characteristic features and controversies of the grand strategy of the 45th president of the United States in the context of the evolution of the US isolationism as one of the main historical strands in the US foreign policy thought. In order to provide a more nuanced approach than the classical isolationism-internationalism dichotomy the author turns to the four schools theory of American historian W. R. Mead. Within the theory framework, the two isolationist schools, i.e., Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism, are studied in detail. As a special methodology, the author applies neoclassical realism, which allows to determine the impact of domestic factors on the controversial nature of Trumps’ grand strategy. Isolationist ideas are studied on the example of the interwar period when the public debate about the course of the US foreign policy reached its peak. The next section analyzes D. Trump's grand strategy using the theory of W. R. Mead and neoclassical realism methodology. Despite the fact that Trump’s ideology combined Jeffersonian and Jacksonian components, in practice the 45th President gravitated more towards Jacksonian hawks than to the minimalist realism of the Jeffersonian school. The differences from the Jeffersonian school were especially evident in the spheres of defense and security policy. Finally, the resistance of the foreign policy apparatus, opposition of the Congress and the subjective inconsistency of Trump explain the failures in the implementation of Trump’s grand strategy. The author draws the conclusion about the coexistence of the two parallel grand strategies during Trump’s presidency: isolationism and interventionism.

The other contributions in this volume take seriously the proposition that having a universal grand strategy is essential for a great power. This chapter considers three alternative propositions: (1) that in many cases grand strategy in a classic sense is not achievable given bureaucratic and political impediments, (2) that all great powers do not require a grand strategy, and, (3) that under some circumstances, the great power can thrive by pursuing calibrated grand strategies depending on both region and threats. The first proposition will build upon the work of scholars (Jervis 1998; Metz 1997) who have argued that the United States and other countries often “muddle through” both strategic formulation and implementation. The second considers arguments about the process of developing grand strategies, such as those advanced by Ionut Popescu (2017) who advocate focusing on “emergent strategies” as understood by scholars studying business corporations. The final proposal builds upon my own research (Reich and Dombrowski 2018) that argues that it is impossible to implement one coherent grand strategy: there are six variants and the United States has inevitably pursued many if not all of them simultaneously in the post–Cold War era. Inverting top-down formulations, the choice of any one strategy in a theater of (potential) conflict is contingent upon the nature of the threat, the actors, and the potential conflicts as interpreted by senior political and military leaders, and the bureaucratic environment in which they operate. In the end, this chapter offers both conceptual and substantive challenges to traditional understandings of grand strategy.

Maritime Strategy Is Grand James R. Holmes (bio) Michael Green's book By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 is sure to gladden the heart of any American maritime strategist. He opens and closes with references to Alfred Thayer Mahan, the most influential saltwater strategist of the fin de siècle era and the second president of the U.S. Naval War College. What's not to like? Mahan is best known as the prophet of sea battles, whereby the victor wrests "command of the sea" from the defeated, driving the enemy's flag from important expanses or at most allowing it to appear there "as a fugitive."1 But battle was a means to an end for Mahan, not an end in itself. The goal of amassing "overbearing power" at sea was to pry and hold open commercial, diplomatic, and military access—in that order of importance—to lucrative trading regions such as East Asia.2 For him commerce, not naval strife, was king. The navy was the servant of diplomacy, and diplomacy was the servant of commerce—commerce that yielded tax revenue to fund the navy and the diplomatic apparatus. That made for a virtuous cycle well suited to an insular industrial power such as the United States. But while Mahanian strategy provides a scaffolding for Green's study, By More Than Providence is about far more than sea power. It is dedicated to the proposition that the United States can make and execute grand strategy, harnessing the full panoply of statecraft instruments to achieve a "better state of peace," as English strategist B.H. Liddell Hart put it.3 Green's verdict (pp. 4–5, 541) is that U.S. grand strategy in the Asia-Pacific has proved effective on the whole, even though it has been "episodic and inefficient" at times (p. 541). To oversimplify, U.S. strategy [End Page 132] aims at keeping access to the region open while preventing another hegemon or alliance from dominating the East Asian rimland—and thereby constituting a trans-Pacific threat to North America. A foe commanding all those resources could reach out and do the United States harm. Hence the imperative to meet gathering dangers from forward positions along the rimland. That Washington is capable of grand strategy is a statement some eminent commentators would dispute. In his book American Diplomacy, for instance, the father of containment George Kennan, who makes numerous appearances in Green's book, likens democracy to "one of those prehistoric monsters" that slumbers "in his comfortable primeval mud" until someone whacks off his tail "to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed," whereupon the beast "lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat."4 Inattention to the strategic surroundings, a dearth of forethought, and clumsy use of power are U.S. hallmarks of grand strategy in Kennan's telling. Green demurs. Indeed, the central claim he puts forth in By More Than Providence is that the United States formulated and carried out grand strategy in a deliberate, if sometimes haphazard way, long before the phrase came to be. He maintains it did so starting in 1783—in other words, from the time the country won independence from the British Empire. Kennan was wrong to denigrate U.S. strategy-making. Washington does more than lie inert or flail around. It seems that Green has plunged into a larger theoretical controversy. The phrase "grand strategy" is of relatively recent provenance, coming into vogue in the middle of the twentieth century.5 It did not exist for much of U.S. history, and therefore U.S. leaders cannot have practiced it. Right? Well, not so much. As Beatrice Heuser counsels in her treatise Strategy before Clausewitz, practitioners undertook strategic thought and action long before the 1830s, when Prussian sage Carl von Clausewitz composed his masterwork On War.6 Or as Michael Handel points out, "One does not [End Page 133] necessarily have to read On War to be a Clausewitzian, since most of his ideas can be arrived at independently through the application of logic...

This paper proposes a model for explaining shifts and variations in U.S. grand strategy. The model is based on a distinction between four ideal-type grand strategies or ideational approaches to security according to the objectives and means of security policy: defensive and offensive realism, and defensive and offensive liberalism. While the four approaches are continually present in the U.S. policy community, it is the combination of two systemic conditions—namely the distribution of capabilities and the balance of threat—that selects among the competing approaches and determines which grand strategy is likely to emerge as dominant in a given period. Great power parity is conducive to realist approaches. In contrast, a situation of hegemony encourages the emergence of ideological grand strategies, which focus on ideology promotion, according to the ideology of the hegemon. In the case of a liberal hegemon, such as the United States, liberal approaches are likely to emerge as dominant. In addition, a relative absence of external threat encourages defensive approaches, while a situation of high external threat gives rise to offensive strategies. Thus, various combinations of these systemic factors give rise to the emergence of various grand strategies. This model is tested in two cases of the two most recent shifts in U.S. grand strategy following 1991. In accordance with the expectations of the model, a change in the distribution of capabilities with the end of the Cold War made possible a change from realist to liberal strategies. In the benign environment of the 1990s the dominant strategy was defensive liberalism, while the change in the balance of threat after 9/11 gave rise to the grand strategy of offensive liberalism.

Transition in the Middle East, the ongoing effects of the global financial crisis and the United States' rebalance to Asia are key trends that will have an impact on transatlantic relations and European defence. As US priorities shift, a common European 'grand strategy' could encourage the development of a shared vision to help Europe order its priorities and begin to respond to the new, post-austerity context of world politics and shrinking defence budgets. Will these changes be enough to quicken Europe's currently shrivelled strategic thinking? In any scenario, given its relative weight and role as an interlocutor with the US, the United Kingdom will remain vital to any developing European security and strategy agenda, although its broader relations with the European Union will complicate this relationship. How it proceeds will also help to define the boundaries of this nascent European security order. This article charts these key global trends, relates them to current debates in European security and strategy and maps opportunities and constraints faced by Europe and the UK in developing a grand strategy in an increasingly 'American-lite' European neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has U.S. grand strategy persisted since the end of the Cold War? Despite shocks such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the costs of the war in Iraq—circumstances that ought to have stimulated at least a revision—the United States remains committed to a grand strategy of “primacy.” It strives for military preponderance, dominance in key regions, the containment and reassurance of allies, nuclear counterproliferation, and the economic “Open Door.” The habitual ideas of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, or the “Blob,” make U.S. grand strategy hard to change. The United States' military and economic capabilities enable the U.S. government to pursue primacy, but the embedded assumptions of the Blob make primacy the seemingly natural choice. Thanks to the Blob's constraining power, alternative grand strategies based on restraint and retrenchment are hardly entertained, and debate is narrowed mostly into questions of execution and implementation. Two cases—the presidency of Bill Clinton and the first year of the presidency of Donald Trump—demonstrate this argument. In each case, candidates promising change were elected in fluid conditions that we would expect to stimulate a reevaluation of the United States' commitments. In each case, the Blob asserted itself successfully, at least on the grand strategic fundamentals. Change in grand strategy is possible, but it would require shocks large enough to shake the assumptions of the status quo and a president willing to be an agent of change and prepared to absorb the political costs of overhauling Washington's traditional design.

Strategic Providence and the American Journey in Asia Kurt M. Campbell (bio) and Rush Doshi (bio) Michael Green's By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 is a magisterial work, well-argued and exhaustively researched, that provides an invaluable service for those who care about U.S. Asia policy. Indeed, no other book in nearly a century has sought to study so intently the broad sweep of U.S. grand strategy in Asia since the founding of the republic. As U.S. foreign policy experts currently grapple with the implications of a risen China and debate the way forward in Asia, Green's historical treatment generates unique and original insights rooted in the past but relevant for the present. His survey of the United States' Asia strategy in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries should form part of the foundation for considering Asia strategy in this century. In scope and ambition, By More Than Providence helps anyone seeking to understand how the United States has grappled with Asia from the revolutionary period through the Cold War and the war on terrorism. The book is divided into four parts, each covering the rise of a different power. The first part focuses on the rise of the United States and the second, third, and fourth on the rise of Japan, the Soviet Union, and China, respectively. The structure, which is both thematic and chronological, works well. Within each of these four parts, Green explores U.S. grand strategy, its adjustment to a shifting balance of power, and its ultimate effectiveness. Some of the book's most fascinating insights are in its history up through the end of the Cold War. For most states, and especially for democracies, grand strategy is a challenging endeavor. Green's central argument, however, is that despite occasional inconsistencies and inevitable missteps, the United States has over the last two centuries developed a "distinctive strategic approach" toward the Asia-Pacific. In his view, "the United States has emerged as the preeminent power in the Pacific not by providence alone but through the effective (if not always efficient) application of military, diplomatic, economic, and ideational tools of national power to the problems of Asia" (p. 4). [End Page 128] The book's chapters chronicle the ways that faith, commerce, geography, and self-defense have repeatedly drawn the United States toward involvement in Asian affairs, but Green sees national strategy as rooted in something even more fundamental. "If there is one central theme," he argues, it is U.S. opposition to any other power exercising "exclusive hegemonic control over Asia or the Pacific" (p. 5). Green argues that the success of these strategies was a product of "more than providence," though he would likely agree that providence too played a defining role. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which together insulate the United States from destructive great-power struggles abroad, constitute a "strategic providence" inherited by successive American generations. This geographic blessing provides Americans with the foundation for pursuing counter-hegemonic strategies in Asia and other regions. Some might quibble with whether the United States' Asia strategy has been as coherent up close as it appears from a distance, and whether the counter-hegemonic imperative was as evident to American Asia strategists and policymakers in the trenches at any given moment as it was to scholars decades or even a century later. Green's thorough research—nearly a quarter of the book's seven hundred pages are endnotes—effectively answers elements of this charge, demonstrating that many policymakers and presidents thought in these grand strategic terms, though some (like Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon) are said to have done better than others (like Calvin Coolidge and Jimmy Carter). Rather than weaken his argument, Green's honest acknowledgement that not all policymakers had a consistent or effective Asia strategy is precisely what generates many of the book's most illuminating and original insights. It allows Green to highlight the deep structural reasons that the United States sometimes vacillated in the pursuit of its interests in Asia and explain the variations in its strategic effectiveness. Green identifies five recurring historical tensions in U.S. grand...

IN SEPTEMBER 2002, THE ADMINISTRATION of George W. Bush released its National Security Strategy for the United States. Academics, policy-makers, and members of the media around the world immediately seized upon the document's notable move away from the cold war strategies of deterrence and containment and towards the option of conducting pre-emptive military operations against emerging threats.While this is indeed a momentous change, it has overshadowed an even more significant development. With its new strategy document the United States indicated its decision to go beyond its traditional grand strategy of primacy, which it had been pursuing consistently since the end of World War II, to create a 'balance of power in favor of freedom.' This new strategy captures a potentially seismic shift in emphasis that holds the possibility of transforming the nature of great power relations and, with it, the global security landscape.CHOOSE YOUR GRAND STRATEGYA grand strategy is a state's theory about how, in an anarchic international security environment, it can most assuredly 'cause' security for itself.(1) In choosing a grand strategy, a state will define its interests and objectives, identify threats to its interests and objectives, and decide in response on the most appropriate political, military, and economic strategies to protect those interests.(2) These activities collectively make up the state's grand strategy.The choices of policy-makers will depend in part on their view of how the world works. In the United States, there are essentially two perspectives. First, a balance-of-power system according to which America, although by far the most powerful state in the world, is still considered one nation among many and must therefore adhere to the historical ground rules of equilibrium. Second, a unipoiar world in which one state enjoys hegemony. This is the world of empire.Within these worlds there are a number of possible grand strategy choices:(3)Isolationism is grounded in the balance of power perspective. It holds that in most cases power will balance naturally and a state should become involved only insofar as events directly threaten its territory. Security is achieved by avoiding 'entangling alliances.'Offshore balancing is grounded in a balance-of-power perspective. The primary objective is to preserve peace among the great powers. Security is achieved through action to redress the balance once a threat is apparent.Selective Engagement is also grounded in the balance-of-power perspective. Again, the primary objective is to ensure peace among the great powers. But here security is achieved through proactive engagement in some areas of the world to guard against or prevent threats to the balance arising.Preserving primacy is grounded in the unipolar perspective. The primary objective for the hegemonic state is to preserve pre-eminent power. Security is achieved by maintaining a preponderance of power, principally through multilateral measures.Imperialism is also grounded in the unipolar perspective and its primary objective is also to preserve pre-eminent power on the part of the hegemonic state. Security is achieved by maintaining a preponderance of power, principally through unilateral measures.US GRAND STRATEGY IN THE COLD WAR AND POST-COLD WAR DECADEThroughout the cold war the United States pursued a grand strategy of guaranteeing its security by maintaining primacy in its sphere of influence. It sought to create and maintain a US-led world order based on preeminent US political, military, and economic power and on American values; and to maximize US control over the international system by preventing the emergence of rival great powers.(4) It strove not only to contain the Soviet Union, but also to consolidate its pre-eminent position in Western Europe and northeast Asia. This helps explain, for example, why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the US-Japan alliance did not end with the Soviet Union - both alliances were established as much 'for' something as 'against' something. …

The tensions resulting from the territorial and maritime jurisdictional disputes between China and five Southeast Asian countries--Brunei, Indonesia, (1) Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam--have for years dominated the headlines on the South China Sea and defined the lens through which the issue is seen. While the United States has at times expressed its concerns over incidents in which destabilizing actions occurred, these developments had minimal impact on the US grand strategy of preventing the rise of a potential hegemon in the Western Pacific. Prior to China's push to enlarge the features it occupies in the Spratly Islands, US officials largely viewed the sovereignty dispute as a matter to be resolved between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and were careful in framing the issue as a diplomatic rather than a military challenge. While Washington had always emphasized its commitment to, and the need for all sides to respect, freedom of navigation and overflight and the unimpeded flow of global commerce, it has never enunciated in unequivocal terms what the United States would do to uphold these principles. This position would change as a result of US assessments of the implications of China's artificial island building beginning in late 2013. The United States is not a party to the South China Sea dispute. Yet it is a party to a disagreement and contest with a rising China on the meaning of freedom of the seas--a principle that is central to US core interests--and what the regional security landscape of the Asia-Pacific ought to look like in future years. Understanding the crux of this contest is important for grasping the role that the South China Sea plays in US grand strategy, and factors that can lead to substantive changes in US policy on the issue, or lack thereof. This article begins by deciphering what the United States views as its core interests in the South China Sea that have the potential to either support or upend US grand strategy. It posits that the United States has two fundamental and enduring core interests in the South China Sea: defending its view on freedom of the seas, and maintaining the naval and air superiority of the United States in the Western Pacific. The article moves on to offer an overview of America's South China Sea policy in the context of the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, and is based on the premise that US officials began to devote significantly more attention and resources to the issue as a result of greater US focus on regional issues, especially with regard to Southeast Asia. This section also sheds light on the evolving nature of the disagreement between Beijing and Washington in light of the US rebalance. It presents a context for understanding how China's artificial island building, if strategically deployed, can be a nexus between these two sets of disputes, with the of causing the fundamental disagreement between the United States and China to spill over into the South China Sea. The following section elaborates official US views on China's reclamation activities and its implications for US core interests and grand strategy in the Asia Pacific. It seeks to capture the shift in US strategy on the South China Sea. This article concludes that the United States has responded with a new, active strategy that aims to: first, deter China from taking further actions at its reclaimed features that would alter the existing military balance of power in the region; and second, make it pay a net effect for its behaviour--should it continue to pursue an aggressive course of action--by engaging more forcibly with Southeast Asian partners. The final section outlines how the new shift in US policy has manifested itself to date, and analyzes the extent of its effectiveness as of this writing towards China's actions and for US core interests. This article seeks to capture a US-centric view of the evolving nature of the South China Sea dispute in relation to its grand strategy. …

The end of the cold war left the United States without a plan for navigating the international security challenges of a new world order. Though many policy-makers believe that the United States is in a unique position to influence global politics, few can agree on what, if any, grand strategy should replace containment. In The Obligation of Empire, some of the nation's most respected scholars of international affairs examine the debates over U.S. grand strategy in light of U.S. security policies and interests in tactical regions around the world. The contributors begin by describing the four grand strategies currently competing for dominance of U.S. foreign policy: neo-isolationism argues that the United States should not become involved in conflicts outside specifically defined national interests; selective engagement proposes that the United States, despite its position as the world's only remaining superpower, should limit its involvement in foreign affairs; cooperative security advocates that the United States is not and should not act as an imperial country; and finally, primacy asserts that the United States is an empire and therefore it should conduct an expansive foreign policy. Focusing on regions that present new challenges to U.S. grand strategy, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, the contributors offer the most current examinations of U.S. policies and assess the effectiveness of competing strategies in each region. The Obligation of Empire offers an innovative set of foreign policy initiatives that explore the tensions between global agendas and regionalist approaches.

Is the United States in the midst of a massive grand-strategic reorientation? IR scholarship cannot provide a definitive answer because the sources of grand-strategic change remain poorly understood. This chapter highlights the deficiencies of the existing literature and proposes a new framework for conceiving of and operationalizing grand strategy. This framework distinguishes between two levels of grand strategy. The first level is a state’s orientation toward the international system, while the second level examines subordinate levels of foreign policy behavior: assumptions about current and prospective threats and opportunities, and the availability and relative utility of the tools of national power. The chapter then illustrates how this framework advances the debate about grand-strategic change by setting up a distinction between grand-strategic overhauls (changes to grand strategy’s first level—or changes between grand strategies) and grand-strategic adjustments (changes to grand strategy’s second level—or changes within grand strategies). Theoretically, this distinction illuminates systemic shifts as a necessary but insufficient cause of overhaul, whereas adjustment results from more diverse causes. Empirically, this distinction permits a more nuanced treatment of the co-occurrence of continuity and change, as demonstrated in the chapter’s case study of US grand strategy in the early 1990s. Finally, the chapter concludes by discussing the implications for the future course of US grand strategy.