Why America's Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment

Abstract

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.

Intergenerational Fairness and the Crowding Out Effects of Well‐Intended Environmental Policies

“…The ethical underpinnings of sustainability hinge on the concept of intergenerational fairness (Pezzey and Toman, ; Weiss, ; Woodward, ); meaning that each successive generation harvests renewable resources, depletes non‐renewable resources, and generates waste in a fashion that can continue indefinitely (Daly, ). Given the complexity of the sustainability challenge, arguments have been advanced that a meaningful approach must include aggressive activation of public policy (e.g., Porter, ) and resolute enforcement by institutions through international coordination (e.g., Pezzey and Toman, ). Scholars have also convincingly asserted that innovating entrepreneurs play a vital role through the agile pursuit of novel solution sets, facilitated through an open arena of competing technologies and business models (Anderson and Leal, ; Baumol and Oates, ).…”

Social scientists’ testimony before Congress in the United States between 1946-2016, trends from a new dataset

“…IR think tanks generally do not debate grand strategy, but rather provide arguments for American military primacy, which is useful for the politicians and agencies, such as the US Department of Defense, which fund and patronize these think tanks [40,41], meaning that "only the academy can sustain a critique of primacy" [42]. These think tanks also frame alternative grand strategies, as "retreat" or "isolationism," thus defining alternatives to military primacy as outside the boundaries of legitimate debate [43]. Thus, think tanks may be an effective avenue to get social scientists before Congress, but their testimony may be shaped by the interests of the source organization.…”

A Very British National Security State: Formal and informal institutions in the design of UK security policy

“…Britain also faces the complication that – via its bandwagoning relationship with the United States – it is not solely the fashioner of its own grand strategy but also a cog in someone else’s grand-strategic machine (Dunne, 2004; Porter, 2010). And like all strategy-making communities (Hopf, 2010; Porter, 2018), Whitehall security policymakers absorb and reflect various internalised ‘common-senses’, limiting capacity for reconsideration of certain embedded assumptions (McCourt, 2014).…”