Sweden's grand strategy: predicaments of a small liberal state in a hostile world

This chapter recapitulates the quest of small states to formulate and uphold grand strategies. Grand strategies can be observed through the role conceptions adopted by small states, expressed through autonomy-seeking and the willingness to integrate into alliances, as well as the priority given to certain roles, leading to the adoption of a master role. The chapter concludes that Sweden’s grand strategy has moved from roles based on a high degree of autonomy to roles emphasizing integration into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union. This significant change of grand strategy was possible because of growing consensus within the domestic elite, and between the elite and the public, in tandem with increasing international instability. These conclusions prompt the authors to advocate a revised research agenda on small state grand strategy, based on a wider empirical scope and considerably greater room for manoeuvre for small states.

Climate change presents a useful case in the study of small states because their interests can be differentiated from larger states. Small states are expected to respond to international politics, not to lead. The development of the climate regime has seen small states engage in a ‘grand strategy’ to achieve climate change mitigation. The apparent powerlessness of small states and the nature of the public good problem are central to understanding small states' negotiating power in the climate regime. They have capitalised on their victim status and the common interests of all states to act as regime leaders; but they have not achieved all of their objectives in terms of access to finance and technology. This suggests that while small states share the difficulties of other developing states in pursuing value-claiming goals, they may have a comparative advantage as norm-entrepreneurs.

This article discusses the nature, opportunities and limitations of small state grand strategy. It identifies the similarities and differences between the grand strategies of small states and great powers and unpacks the nature of traditional defensive small state grand strategies hiding and shelter-seeking as well as more recent offensive, influence-seeking small state grand strategies under the heading of smart state strategy. The article argues that while small state grand strategy remains tied to national security and is formulated in the shadow of great power interests, a changing security environment creates both the need and opportunity for small states to use their weakness instrumentally for maximizing interests. The likelihood of success depends on a pragmatic political culture and the willingness and ability to prioritize goals and means to utilize their nonthreatening small state status in “smart” or “entrepreneurial” policies.

Chapter 1 argues that it is not only great powers but also small states that have grand strategies. Even if small-state strategies are often based on external circumstances, small states still have a degree of actorness. This implies that small states choose among a variety of strategies, and that a specific small state may choose different strategies at various times. This point is illustrated with the help of examples from the Swedish case. The chapter introduces role theory and argues that small-state grand strategies are manifested in master roles. On this basis, the chapter outlines the aim of the book to describe and explain Swedish grand strategy over time with the help of role theory. The case of Sweden is motivated by an ability to enhance our understanding of small-state grand strategizing and the balance between autonomy and integration.

The conventional wisdom is that grand strategy has always been a great power phenomenon, and previous scholars have predominantly focused on countries with great military and economic capabilities. In this article, we propose that smaller states can have a grand strategy, considering how the country deploys national resources in response to external challenges and opportunities, and how this is largely impacted by the country’s historical memory. We explore how Rwanda defines grand strategy as a country, followed by an examination of the country’s major external challenges and possibilities, and then a discussion of the national pathologies that drive Rwanda’s grand strategy and decision-making process. Finally, we analyze the critical instruments Rwanda employs in its grand strategy and how the African nation dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The multipolar world of present day, with one dominant state and a couple of contender states, is comprised of small, mid-size and large states. Small states comprise between half and two-thirds of the world's states depending on the criteria used for classification. However, their influence is diametrically opposite to their number. The contemporary transnational developments have changed the role and position of small states, giving them new opportunities for international action, albeit concurrently making them more vulnerable to external economic and environmental influences, such as overexposure to one economic activity and the consequences of the climate change. Small states, despite their relatively small importance for the transnational developments, deserve the attention of scholars and the general public, as well as the civil society. Large states could learn from successful small states and be more concerned for the fate of small states. The difficulties of small vulnerable states are predictors of the world's vulnerability.

An American Interest Book of the Year “Khan has unraveled the mystery of Chinese grand strategy, showing why insecurity lies at the root of Chinese power projection…Readers will not find a shrewder analysis as to why the Chinese act as they do.” —Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Revenge of Geography “The essential guidebook to the evolution of China’s strategy—crucial if we are to avoid conflict with this emerging superpower.” —Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO “An outstanding contribution to our understanding of that most urgent of contemporary geopolitical questions: what does China want?” —Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally Before the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China lay broken and fragmented. Today it dominates the global stage, and yet its leaders have continued to be haunted by the past. Analyzing the calculus behind decision making at the highest levels, Sulmaan Wasif Khan explores how China’s leaders have harnessed diplomatic, military, and economic power to keep a fragile country safe in a hostile world. At once shrewd and dangerous, Mao Zedong made China whole and succeeded in keeping it so while the caustic Deng Xiaoping dragged China into the modern world. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were cautious custodians of Deng’s legacy, but Xi Jinping has shown an assertiveness that has raised concern across the globe. China’s grand strategies, while costly, have been largely successful. But will this time-tested approach be enough to tackle the looming threats of the twenty-first century?

Consideration of the relationship between political theory and foreign policy must confront stark realities a quarter century after the 1991 liberal-democratic victory in the Cold War, which established the first global order in history. The foreign policies of the liberal democracies, and the liberal global order, now are beset by confusion, division, and retreat in the face of illiberal powers. A wave of nationalism and suspicion of globalized elites compounds the failure by America, the leading liberal democracy, to forge a consensus grand strategy to replace the Cold War strategy of American internationalism and containment of Communism. While important scholarship in comparative political theory addresses foreign policy, and while there are other important foci for the theory-policy nexus, such as China or the Islamic world, this failure to develop a new strategy to undergird global order and manage globalization is the most pressing issue for political theory in relation to foreign policy. Scholars should inquire whether the policy failures of the past quarter century stem not only from policymakers but also from the divisions among schools of international relations and foreign policy—and especially from the abstract, dogmatic quality of these theories. A more productive theory-policy nexus is evident in the rediscovery of the transdisciplinary tradition of grand strategy, which offers a more balanced approach to theory and its role in guiding policy. A new grand strategy for our globalized era would manage and sustain the powerful processes and forces set in motion by liberal states that now are eluding guidance from any widely recognized and effective rules. Four important critiques since 1991 discern a disservice to foreign policy by the high theory of the international relations schools. These schools—including realism, liberal internationalism, and constructivism—and their policy guidance are discussed elsewhere. The first two critiques arise from contemporary international relations and foreign policy approaches: scholars addressing the gap between high theory and practitioners, and Chris Brown and David A. Lake assessing the extremes of high theory that prove unhelpful for guiding sound foreign policies and practical judgement. The final two critiques transcend recent social science to rediscover fundamentals presupposed by the first two, by quarrying the philosophical tradition on international affairs from the ancient Greeks to modernity. This line of analysis points to recent work by the leading embodiment of the theory-policy nexus in the past half-century, Henry Kissinger—because his book World Order (2014) turns from realism to a more balanced view of interests and ideals in the policies of liberal democracies. Kissinger confronts the vexing reality of the need for reasonable states, across civilizational traditions, to forge a basic global order to replace the crumbling liberal order. His approach is grand strategy, now made comparative and global, as both more profound and effective for theorists and practitioners. Further, the tradition of American grand strategy is an important resource for all the liberal democracies now committed to this policy effort. Since the Washington administration, a balanced approach of discerning America’s enlightened self-interest has been the core of its successful grand strategies. This is not pragmatism, given the philosophical roots of this liberal disposition in the moderate Enlightenment jurists Grotius and Montesquieu. An era of confusion and failure should provoke reconsideration of fundamentals. Rediscovery of enlightened self-interest and its call for statesmanlike judgement offers a fruitful theory-policy nexus for the liberal democracies and for restoration of a basic global order.

This chapter discusses grand strategy as a concept, originating from a definition of grand strategy as the overarching logic for how a political elite achieves the state’s objectives through combining all necessary means and informing military, economic and diplomatic strategies in a consistent way. Based on role theory, it is argued that grand strategies can be measured through the level of agreement among the national foreign policy elite, expressed in national role conceptions (NRC)—in the event that a particular role conception dominates, it is considered a master role. Given the assumption that small states have independent agency, it is worthwhile to study the domestic processes leading up to the formulation of a role. In addition, the chapter introduces key concepts within role theory, along with autonomy and integration as dimensions denoting basic parameters of small state foreign policy roles.

One of the primary responsibilities of any state is the development of a political-military strategy which meets the circumstances in which that state finds itself, the manner in which the state perceives its own position in its international relations, and the level of its ambitions in this. In the context of this volume the term 'small states' denotes those states that viewed themselves as such and that did not play an active role in the powerpolitical controversies of the European great powers. Th e present volume shows that a comparative approach can considerably increase our understanding of the neutrality policy of the small European states and the importance of the armed forces in this in the early decades of the previous century. At the end of the nineteenth century it was a useful, respected and not too problematical instrument for ensuring national security. Keywords: European; military strategy; political strategy; powerpolitical controversies; small states

Abstract: Research on the economic performance of small states has concentrated on the implications of small size and thin local markets. An interesting feature of many of the world's smallest states, of which the Pacific region has many, is that they face additional challenges than just small size. Many are remote from global markets for their products. In addition, a large number are also islands, many of which are also mountainous. Many of the smaller states are not just islands, but are also archipelagos. Hence in addition to small size, many of the world's small states also exhibit four other characteristics that may affect their economic performance: insularity, remoteness, being archipelagos and being highly mountainous entities. This paper examines the nature of the challenges posed by these four characteristics and seeks to produce empirical evidence of how difficult it has been to overcome these challenges. The paper draws on empirical evidence for 126 very small global states, dependent territories and highly autonomous regions. The paper then turns to the position of the Pacific small states and dependent territories.

<i>Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World</i> by Benjamin R. Young

The globalisation of China’s development strategy, from its origins as infrastructure diplomacy connecting its domestic west with its Central Asian periphery, into the transnational Belt and Road Initiative encompassing the periphery of the world system, epitomises the rapid evolution of a Chinese grand strategy of great economic and political ambition. The small state of Panama is a key node in the global trading system that can make an unexpectedly large contribution to China’s national security and international influence. Accordingly, China’s economic statecraft in Panama is not only opening up the Latin America and Caribbean markets to further Chinese commercial penetration, but is simultaneously expanding its political influence in this remotest part of the global South. China’s is a two-track grand strategy positing to other nations a choice between a liberal internationalist co-prosperity and a zero-sum realist contest. This audacious approach relies on relational power amongst small states, especially semi-peripheral ones like Panama, to put China at the forefront of what is shaping up as a grand coalition of the global South collectively challenging American hegemony.

The security of small ethnic states - a counter neo-realist argument, Gabriel Sheffer small states - persisting despite doubts, Raimo Vayrynen Cold War, post-Cold war - does it make a difference for the Middle East? Efraim Karsh nuclear policies of small states and weaker powers, Ashok Kapur small states, non-offensive defence and collective security, Bjorn Moller Israel's predicament in a new strategic environment, Efraim Inbar to be or not to be neutral - Swedish security in the post-Cold War era, Ann-Sofie Dahl minor power/major power relations and the contemporary nation-state, David Vital.

Katzenstein's contribution to European political theory continues to resonate – even though the shift in scholarly work has moved in new directions, and the capacity for ‘flexible adaptation’ is under duress. When questions of power in the global system arise, the approach can account for issue-areas unanticipated by the author when the theoretical framework was introduced. Small States in World Markets still maintains a position on our reading lists, as a baseline for theory integrating comparative and international politics.