‘Grand Strategy’ Misses the Point

As the United States prepares for the November presidential election, political commentators and security analysts are no doubt also preparing for what now seems like the obligatory ritual of providing grandiose plans, roadmaps, blueprints, navigational guides, frameworks, strategy outlines, policy wishlists, and designs for the future of American foreign policy. Of course, this almost ritualized behavior is part of the process by which every new U.S. administration begins its four years in office: by facing numerous calls for the U.S. to adopt a new “grand strategy.” Having a grand strategy is seen as the key to defining the future of American ambitions and the means to securing its national interests. Even before the actual presidential election, there have been several calls for such grand strategies. 

Yet the proposed grand strategy revisions are also “wishful” strategies that overplay the unitary nature of the state and largely fail to account for the conflicting interests within U.S. politics. The making of American foreign policy is not led by a clear-sighted president and his strategizing national security advisor, but by a competitive policy marketplace. This ever-expanding marketplace includes the bureaucracy of planning staffs, research institutions, and lobbyists who seek not to secure the national interest, but the prestige and funding to expand organizational growth.

The grand strategy commentariat as part of the policy marketplace focuses solely on the idea of selling a bold blueprint for a new direction in U.S. foreign policy. A grand strategy aims to provide a “grand vision” or “design” that can “lay down a sequence of consecutive steps” by selecting the resources and means to achieve the best objectives for the state; it is a rational approach to guiding the ship of state in the name of the “national interest.” Grand strategy postulates “decision-makers” responding rationally to external stimuli with a “clear understanding” of the world. 

While a well-thought-out approach to American foreign policy would be desirable, it is at best just an ideal. Debates over U.S. grand strategy see “decision-makers” as having unrealistic control over the apparatus of government and have idealistic notions of the state acting with unitary agency in support of the “national interest.” The grand strategy debate abstracts the state from society and simplifies the “national interest”; in reality, there are multiple competing interests each shaped by different coalitions and advocacy networks.

Calls to implement a new grand strategy typically take two forms. The first is a progressive or liberal hegemony approach which valorizes the country’s leadership role in the world and calls for the U.S. to live up to its supposed exemplary ideals of liberal democracy, freedom, and human rights. The second is a more hard-nosed realist approach that calls for prudence, restraint, and an acceptance of the tragic nature of power politics. In recent years, realists have been particularly tied to the idea of advocating a grand strategy of offshore balancing in which the U.S. backs away from the failed interventionist foreign policies of the era of the Global War on Terror. Advocates of offshore balancing argue that the U.S. can eschew entangling commitments in favor of retreating over the horizon to act as a power balancer in Eurasia. While such arguments may at times be logical and persuasive, they have consistently failed to influence American policy in practice. Realists then explain this failure to influence government by pointing to the supremacy of liberal ideology and the dominance of a liberal elite bureaucracy known as the “blob.”

The failure of realist voices to influence U.S. policy making is a familiar story within the realist cannon and was a common theme of the career of the classical realist Hans Morgenthau. Towards the end of his career, Morgenthau was increasingly concerned with dangers to the U.S. body politic. He looked to The Federalist Papers and the model of Athenian democracy as guides for his theorizing. Unable to influence the American strategy in Vietnam, he became concerned with trying to understand why the U.S. foreign policy establishment would not listen to his realist theories. His response was to see the corrupting influence of bureaucracies and what he termed “government by committee,” whereby a “dual state” was ultimately in control of US foreign policy. 

Warnings of a “dual state” or “blob” are not “deep state” conspiracy theories but a recognition of the reality of a state apparatus which is guided by elites from exclusive backgrounds and career pathways, whereby coalitional networks and advocacy groups can influence and shape U.S. foreign policy. The mistake of critics who rail against the blob is to believe that it speaks and acts with one voice. Certainly, U.S. foreign policy has been largely dominated since the end of the Cold War by advocates of primacy who see American hegemony as the cornerstone of international security. But the possibility of a second Trump term is likely to challenge the foreign-policy dominance of the primacists. Regardless of whether Trump actually wins the election, his America First rhetoric has strong support, and future Republicans may also advocate such policies. The America First approach has raised alarm bells both domestically and abroad among those who see American leadership as crucial. 

Realists have argued that U.S. grand strategy is resistant to change, but a second Trump term may finally end the dominance of primacists. Trump has vowed to reshape the federal bureaucracy and “dismantle” the deep state. In some ways this may be a welcome change; American primacy has certainly not distinguished itself. U.S. policies of primacy have led to the failed wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and the rise of potential peer challengers in Russia and China. But a foreign-policy realignment is unlikely to be a smooth transition, or to result in the rational adoption of realist policy prescriptions. The U.S. will face a familiar democratic challenge with a return to factional competition between different strands of the foreign policy establishment. The recent reemergence of neoconservative voices from the George W. Bush era certainly shows that some ideas die hard and factionalism within the foreign policy establishment persists. Whatever comes next is unlikely to be a carefully coordinated plan following an all-encompassing strategy. The problem of grand strategy literature is that it depoliticizes the state. It views foreign policy as a seamless, top-down process led by a rational leader who views problems coherently and clearly and can implement a solution unconstrained by the messiness of politics. Instead, the grand strategy of the U.S. should be viewed as the product of inter-elite competition and a marketplace of ideas that is distorted by interest groups and advocacy networks. American grand strategy in recent years has been shaped by a dominance of liberal progressive elites in support of U.S. primacy. But this dominance by liberal primacists is now open to debate. Realists would do well to revisit The Federalist Papers, as Morgenthau did, to understand their concern with corruption, the usurpation of powers and, crucially, the dangers of factional strife.