What Good Is Grand Strategy?: Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush

288 Pages·2014·1.05 MB·English

by  Hal Brands

WHAT GOOD IS
GRAND STRATEGY?

WHAT GOOD IS
GRAND STRATEGY?
POWER AND PURPOSE IN AMERICAN
STATECRAFT FROM HARRY S. TRUMAN
TO GEORGE W. BUSH
Hal Brands
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London
For Emily, Henry, and Annabelle
Copyright © 2014 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission in writing from the publisher.
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House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2014 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brands, Hal, 1983– author.
What good is grand strategy? : power and purpose in
American statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W.
Bush / Hal Brands.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-5246-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. United States—Foreign relations—20th
century. 2. United States—Foreign relations—21st
century I. Title.
E744.B6975 2014
327.73009′04—dc23 2013027816
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Contents
Preface vii
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms xi
Introduction: The Meaning and
Challenge of Grand Strategy 1
1. The Golden Age Revisited: The Truman
Administration and the Evolution
of Containment 17
2. Travails of the Heroic Statesmen: Grand
Strategy in the Nixon-Kissinger Years 59
3. Was There a Reagan Grand Strategy?
American Statecraft in the Late
Cold War 102
4. The Dangers of Being Grand:
George W. Bush and the Post-9/11 Era 144
Conclusion: Grappling with
Grand Strategy 190
Notes 207
Index 261

Preface
“Grand strategy” is very much in vogue these
days. Since the end of the Cold War, politicians and pundits have consistently
proclaimed the need for a new American grand strategy, and they have just
as consistently flayed their opponents for failing to deliver one. Academics,
journalists, and public figures have authored books and articles advocating
particular grand strategies for the United States; publications like Newsweek,
the New York Times, and the Washington Post carry pieces debating this sub-
ject. In 2008, the House Armed Services Committee even held hearings on
the topic of “A New Grand Strategy for the United States.” Grand strat-
egy has become increasingly prominent on college campuses, too, with elite
schools like Yale, Columbia, and Duke all developing programs on the issue.
I myself have benefited from this interest: since 2010, I have co-taught Duke’s
course on American Grand Strategy.
But what exactly is “grand strategy”? Why is it so important and, it would
seem, so elusive? Grand strategy, it turns out, is one of the most slippery and
widely abused terms in the foreign policy lexicon. The concept is often
invoked but less often defined, and those who do define the phrase do so in
a variety of different, and often contradictory, ways. Expert observers also
disagree on the question of whether grand strategy is a useful concept or
simply a quixotic—even pernicious—pursuit. The result of all this is that dis-
cussions of grand strategy are often confused or superficial. Too frequently,
they muddle or obscure more than they illuminate.
The purpose of this book is to grapple with the meaning, importance,
and challenges of grand strategy—in other words, to provide a clearer under-
standing of what this much-discussed concept is all about. In the chap-
ters that follow, I examine why grand strategy is both an essential and an
extremely difficult undertaking, one that is central to effective foreign policy
but often eludes even the most talented statesmen. I do so primarily through
a historical lens, by analyzing the way in which the presidential administra-
tions of Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan,
and George W. Bush have approached grand strategy and the problems it
vii
viii PREFACE
entails. Drawing on the experiences of these administrations, I also offer
suggestions for how current-day American leaders might think about grand
strategy as an intellectual and geopolitical pursuit. In this sense, the book is a
work of applied history: it aims not simply to study the past for its own sake,
but to use history as a way of illuminating the promise and pitfalls of grand
strategy as an endeavor.
Accordingly, the remainder of the book proceeds as follows. The intro-
duction frames the inquiry by exploring what grand strategy is, and why it
is simultaneously so important and so difficult to do. It raises a fundamental
question at the heart of this project: Is grand strategy a worthy pursuit for
foreign-policy officials, or is it simply a pipe dream that can never actually
be realized? Chapters 1 through 4, which constitute the bulk of the book,
constitute a historian’s effort to answer this question. Each chapter analyzes
the experience of a presidential administration that sought to devise and
execute grand strategy at a key moment in modern U.S. foreign policy, and
reflects on what these episodes can tell us about the problems and pros-
pects of grand strategy writ large. The conclusion distills these insights and
offers a set of guidelines for thinking about grand strategy going forward.
For all its limitations, grand strategy is ultimately something that is worth
doing—and worth doing well. The guidelines proposed in the conclusion
represent a way of approaching that challenge in the crucial years ahead.
An unfortunate aspect of the academic enterprise is that a book’s acknow-
ledgments rarely do justice to the debts that authors accumulate along the
way. This project is no exception. In completing this book, I have benefited
from the assistance of individuals and institutions whose contributions can
only insufficiently be acknowledged here. I could not have managed the
research without the help of archivists from Washington, D.C., to Palo Alto,
California, nor without the financial and intellectual support of the Sanford
School of Public Policy at Duke University. Similarly, the Strategic Studies
Institute at the Army War College sponsored my initial research on Ameri-
can grand strategy and provided an outlet for an early monograph on the
subject; small portions of the introduction, chapters 1 and 2, and the con-
clusion were published in this monograph, The Promise and Pitfalls of Grand
Strategy (Strategic Strategy Institute, Army War College, August 2012). At
Cornell University Press, Michael McGandy shepherded the book through
the publication process and offered incisive comments along the way.
I owe particular gratitude to those scholars whose comments and ideas
have influenced—either intentionally or unintentionally—my thinking on
the issues at hand. This process started some years ago, when I was fortu-
nate enough to be a student in the Studies in Grand Strategy seminar at
PREFACE ix
Yale University, run by John Gaddis, Paul Kennedy, and Charles Hill. Sub-
sequent conversations with Barton Bernstein, Adam Grissom, Dick Kohn,
Josh Rovner, Jeremi Suri, Kevin Woods, and numerous others helped me
develop my views on this subject (though I should add that they will proba-
bly disagree with some of the conclusions I have drawn). Williamson Murray,
Frank Gavin, Jack Cann, Colin Dueck, and John Deni read all or parts of the
manuscript and offered constructive criticism, and John Maurer of the Naval
War College invited me to two conferences that helped shape my perspective
on teaching and writing about grand strategy.
At Duke, Bruce Kuniholm and Bruce Jentleson were very generous with
their time and insights, and my students in the American Grand Strategy
seminar each fall often made me look at key issues in different ways. And
since arriving at Duke, I have had the good fortune to teach that class in
cooperation with Peter Feaver—my frequent intellectual sparring partner,
and as good a mentor and friend as any young faculty member could hope
for. Last but not least, there are Emily, Henry, and Annabelle—my wonderful
family, to whom this book is dedicated.