Grand Strategy vs. Emergent Strategy in the conduct of foreign policy

ABSTRACT

Does a great power need to formulate a long-term Grand Strategy to guide its foreign policy actions? While some scholars continue to debate the competing merits of various grand strategies, a growing literature now emphasizes emergent learning and improvisation as the keys to success, as opposed to implementing a long-term design. In this article, I explore these scholarly arguments by framing the debate as one between two schools of thought, Grand Strategy and Emergent Strategy. After presenting the main arguments and the historical examples associated with each school, I evaluate the two approaches across four categories: the type of international security environment each of them is most suited for, the way each approach deals with short-term vs. long-term priorities, the domestic political conditions needed for each approach to be successful, and the type of presidential management qualities each school demands. Lastly, I discuss the implications of these arguments for the scholarship and the practice of foreign policy and national security strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Grand Strategy
• US Foreign Policy
• Strategic Planning
• Leadership
• National Security

Acknowledgments

I greatly benefitted from the excellent insights received from many friends and colleagues with expertise on this topic, including: Quay Barnett, Andrew Bell, Nora Bensahel, Hal Brands, Seth Cantey, Aaron Chatterji, Joe Collins, Colin Dueck, Peter Feaver, Matthew Fehrs, James Goldgeier, Richard Hooker, William Inboden, Bruce Jentleson, John Joseph, Charles Miller, Henry Nau, Alex Roland, Nina Silove, Kiron Skinner, Jeremi Suri, Jordan Tama, Barry Watts, Thomas Wright and Steve Yetiv. I would like to especially thank the following former US government officials for taking the time to be interviewed for this project: Elliott Abrams, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, Shawn Brimley, Richard Danzig, Amb. Eric Edelman, Andrew Erdmann, Douglas Feith, Stephen Hadley, Andrew Hoehn, Thomas Mahnken, Jeremy Rosner, James Steinberg, Jim Thomas, Col. Troy Thomas, and Paul Wolfowitz. Lastly, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Micah Zenko and Rebecca Friedman Lissner, ‘Trump Is Going to Regret Not Having a Grand Strategy’, ForeignPolicy.com, 13 Jan. 2017.

² David Remnick, ‘Going the Distance’, The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2014.

³ Niall Ferguson, ‘America’s Global Retreat’, The Wall Street Journal, (21 Feb. 2014); Frank Costigliola, ‘What Would Kennan Say to Obama’, The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2014.

⁴ Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, America Abroad: The United States‘ Global Role in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press 2016); Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Ithaca NY: Cornell Unversity Press 2016); Paul Miller, American Power and Liberal Order: A Conservative Internationalist Grand Strategy (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press 2016); Christopher Hammer, American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy (Cornell University Press 2015); Barry Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Cornell University Press 2014); William Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press 2015); Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 2014); James Goldgeier and Jeremi Suri, ‘Revitalizing the U.S. National Security Strategy’, The Washington Quarterly, 38/4 (Winter 2016); Paul Miller, ‘On Strategy, Grand and Mundane’, Orbis, 60/2 (Spring 2016); Jordan Tama, ‘Does Strategic Planning Matter? The Outcome of U.S. National Security Reviews’, Political Science Quarterly, 30/4 (2016); Stephen Sestanovich, Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama (New York: Knopf 2014); Bruce Jones, Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension Between Rivalry and Restraint (Brookings Institution Press 2014); Frank G. Hoffman, ‘Forward Partnership: A Sustainable American Strategy’, Orbis 57/1 (2014); Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, ‘Don’t Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment’, International Security, 37/3 (2013), 7–51; Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, ‘Lean Forward: In Defense of American Engagement’, Foreign Affairs 92/1 (2013), 130–142; Peter Feaver, ‘American Grand Strategy at the Crossroads: Leading From the Front, Leading From Behind, or Not Leading at All and Robert J. Art, Selective Engagement in the Era of Austerity’, in Richard Fontaine and Kristin M. Lord (eds.), America’s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration (Washington DC: Center for a New American Security 2012); Colin Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (New York: Oxford University Press 2010); Steve Weber and Bruce Jentleson, End of Arrogance (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2010); Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts, Regaining Strategic Competence: Strategy for the Long Haul (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments 2009)

⁵ Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press 2013); Ionut C. Popescu, Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy(Johns Hopkins University Press forthcoming 2017); David M. Edelstein and Ronald R. Krebs, ‘Delusions of Grand Strategy: The Problem With Washington’s Planning Obsession’, Foreign Affairs 94/6 (Nov–Dec 2015), Richard Danzig, Driving in the Dark: Ten Propositions about Prediction and National Security (Washington DC: Center for A New American Security 2011); Richard Fontaine and Brian Burton, Eye to the Future: Refocusing State Department Policy Planning (Washington DC: Center for a New American Security 2010); Andrew Erdmann, ‘Planning through a Private Sector Lens,’ in Daniel W., Drezner (ed.), Avoiding Trivia: The Role of Strategic Planning in American Foreign Policy (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 2009); For similar skepticism about strategy and grand strategy expressed more than a decade ago, see Richard Betts, ‘Is strategy an illusion?’ International Security 25/2 (2000), 5–50; For recent historical studies in this vein, see James Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 2014); Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2009); Richard Sinnreich, ‘“Patterns of Grand Strategy” and “Victory by trial and error: Britain’s struggle against Napoleon”’, in Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (eds.), Successful Strategies: Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press 2014); Williamson Murray, ‘Thoughts on Grand Strategy’, Richard Sinnreich, ‘Patterns of Grand Strategy’, and Marcus Jones, ‘Strategy as character: Bismarck and the Prusso-German question, 1862–1878’ in Williamson Murray, Richard Hart Sinnreich, and James Lacey (eds.), The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Policy, Diplomacy and War (New York: Cambridge University Press 2011).

⁶ See, among others, Niall Ferguson, ‘Wanted: A Grand Strategy for America’, Newsweek,14 Feb. 2011; Peggy Noonan, ‘America’s Strategy Deficit’, The Wall Street Journal (1 Feb. 2015); Anne Marie Slaughter, ‘Does Obama have a Grand Strategy for the Second Term?’ Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2013.

⁷ Josef Joffe, ‘The Unreality of Obama’s Realpolitik’, The Wall Street Journal (3 Feb. 2015).

⁸ Goldgeier and Suri, ‘Revitalizing the U.S. National Security Strategy’, 40.

⁹ Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton University Press 2007), 1.

¹⁰ Barry Posen, ‘A Grand Strategy of Restraint’, in Michele Flournoy, Shawn Brimley, and Vikram J. Singh (eds.), Finding Our Way (Washington DC: Center for a New American Security 2008), 84. See more definitions in Miller, ‘On Strategy’.

¹¹ Posen, Restraint, 3.

¹² Hammer, American Pendulum, 3.

¹³ Krepinevich and Watts, Regaining Strategic Competence, 4.

¹⁴ Michele Flournoy and Shawn Brimley, ‘Strategic Planning for National Security’, Joint Force Quarterly 41 (2006), 80–81.

¹⁵ Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice, 339, 353.

¹⁶ Brooks and Wohlforth, America Abroad; Posen, Restraint; Art, Grand Strategy for America; Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice.

¹⁷ In addition to Martel and Brands, see also Colin Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice.

¹⁸ Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy, 3

¹⁹ Terry Deibel, Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic for American Statecraft (New York: Cambridge University Press 2007), 24–32.

²⁰ Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice, 339.

²¹ Frank Hoffman, ‘Grand Strategy: The Fundamental Considerations’,Orbis, 58/4 (2014), 472–485.

²² Gaddis, ‘What is Grand Strategy?’ Lecture delievered at Duke University. 26 Feb. 2009.

²³ Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy, 199.

²⁴ Ibid., 197.

²⁵ Walter A. McDougall, ‘Can the United States do Grand Strategy?’ Orbis (Spring 2010). See also Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton 1995); Tami Davis Biddle, ‘Leveraging Strength: The Pillars of American Grand Strategy in World War II’, Orbis (Winter 2011); Krepinevich and Watts, Regaining Strategic Competence.

²⁶ Peter Mansoor, ‘US Grand Strategy in the Second World War’, in Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (eds.), Successful Strategies: Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press 2014), Kindle version, loc 9619.

²⁷ Murray, ‘Thoughts on Grand Strategy’, in The Shaping of Grand Strategy, 32.

²⁸ John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War(New York: Oxford University Press 2005), 23.

²⁹ John Lewis Gaddis, Kennan: An American Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Co 2011), dust jacket.

³⁰ Raymond Millen, ‘Eisenhower and US Grand Strategy’, Parameters 44/2 (Summer 2014), 35; Thomas Mahnken and Paul Lettow similarly conclude that ‘The Eisenhower Administration is now generally seen as the gold standard in national security strategic planning’; Paul Lettow and Tom Mahnken. ‘Toolbox: Getting serious about strategic planning’, The American Interest 5/1 (2009), 73. See also Paul Miller, ‘Organizing the National Security Council: I Like Ike’s’, Presidential Studies Quarterly 43/3 (Sep. 2013).

³¹ Flournoy and Brimley, ‘Strategic Planning for National Security’, 80–81.

³² Krepinvich and Watts, Regaining Strategic Competence, 7.

³³ Dwight D. Eisenhower, ‘Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference’, 14 Nov. 1957. Available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10951

³⁴ Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House 2006), 56.

³⁵ Ibid., 63.

³⁶ Thomas Mahnken, ‘The Reagan administration’s strategy toward the Soviet Union’, in Successful Strategies, 12, 186, Kindle Edition, loc. See also Francis Marlo, Planning Reagan’s War: Conservative Strategists and America’s Cold War Victory (Washington DC: Potomac Books 2012).

³⁷ David and Krebs, ‘Delusions of Grand Strategy’. Unlike Betts, who identified why strategy is very difficult to execute but nevertheless found the concept useful and necessary when done well, Edelstein and Krebs doubt that American policymakers have the ability to successfully design and implement a strategy. See Richard Betts, ‘Is strategy an illusion?’ International Security 25/2 (2000), 5–50.

³⁸ Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel, Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management (New York: The Free Press 1998), 189.

³⁹ Grand Strategy advocates such as Martel and Brands do acknowledge the need for tactical flexibility to implementing one’s designed goals, but they nevertheless emphasize that such adjustments are at the level of tactics or policies, in contrast to the grand strategic level of overarching goals and principles. Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice, 340; Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy, 199.

⁴⁰ Henry Mintzberg, Tracking Strategies: Towards A General Theory of Strategy Formation (New York: Oxford University Press 2008), 376.

⁴¹ Walter Kiechel, The Lords of Strategy: The Intellectual History of the New Corporate World. (Boston MA: Harvard Business School Press 2010), 321.

⁴² Boston Consulting Group, Perspectives: Adaptive Advantage (2010), 2.

⁴³ Boston Consulting Group, Adaptive Strategy in Government (2012), 8.

⁴⁴ Erdmann, ‘Lessons from the Private Sector’, 151.

⁴⁵ Fontaine and Burton, Eye to the Future, 7.

⁴⁶ Freedman, Strategy, xi.

⁴⁷ Steve Weber and Bruce Jentleson, The End of Arrogance (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2010), 155–56.

⁴⁸ Murray, ‘Thoughts on Grand Strategy’, 8.

⁴⁹ Jones, ‘Bismarckian Strategic Policy’, in Succesful Strategies, loc 1685. Similarly, the case studies of the grand strategies of Abraham Lincoln and of the British Empire’s fight against Napoleon in that volume similarly emphasized the roles of learning, adaptation and contingency in their ultimate successes. Wayne Hsieh, ‘The Strategy of Lincoln and Grant’, and Richard Hart Sinnreich, ‘Victory by Trial and Error: Britain’s Struggle against Napoleon,’ in Murray and Sinnreich, Successful Strategies: Triumphing in War and Peace.

⁵⁰ Jones, ‘Strategy as character: Bismarck and the Prusso-German question, 1862–1878’, 80.

⁵¹ Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 1979); James Lacey, ‘Grand Strategy of Roman Empire,’ in Murray and Sinnreich, Successful Strategies.

⁵² Paul Kennedy (ed.), Grand Strategies In War and Peace (New Haven CT: Yale University Press 1991), 7.

⁵³ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, 408.

⁵⁴ Luttwak, Byzantine Empire, 418.

⁵⁵ Wilson Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 348.

⁵⁶ Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation, 3, 198.

⁵⁷ Jeremi Suri, ‘Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?’ Journal of Cold War Studies 4/4 (2002), 71.

⁵⁸ For such an analysis, see Popescu, Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy.

⁵⁹ Danzig, Driving in the Dark, 15.

⁶⁰ As business theorist Richard Rumelt put it, ‘The proximate objective is guided by forecasts of the future, but the more uncertain the future, the more its essential logic is that of ’taking a strong position and creating options‘, not looking far ahead’. Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (New York: Crown Business 2013), 111.

⁶¹ John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press 2007).

⁶² Hal Brands, From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (Lexington KY: University of Kentucky Press 2008).

⁶³ For more such examples of emergent strategy successes, see Popescu, Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy.

⁶⁴ Hammer, American Pendulum, 16, 182–184.

⁶⁵ Helen Milner and Dustin Tingley, Sailing the Water’s Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy (Princeton University Press, 2015), 18–19.

⁶⁶ Peter Trubowitz, Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft (Princeton University Press 2011), 8.

⁶⁷ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment.

⁶⁸ Quoted in Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy?, 66.

⁶⁹ Peter Rodman, Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, And The Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush (New York: Random House 2009), 45–46.

⁷⁰ For example, Goldgeier and Suri express a common view among Grand Strategy experts when they recently wrote that ‘Nixon and Kissinger’s strategy was a model in its coherence, consistency, and clarity.’ Goldgeier and Suri, ‘Revitalizing the U.S. National Security Strategy,’ 43.

⁷¹ Derek Chollet and James M Goldgeier, America between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11: The Misunderstood Years between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror (New York: PublicAffairs 2008), 219.

⁷² Thomas Friedman, ‘Clinton’s Foreign Policy: Top Adviser Speaks Up’, The New York Times 31 Oct. 1993.

⁷³ James Goldgeier, Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 1999); Richard Holbrooke, To End A War (New York: Random House 2011).

⁷⁴ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 308. See a similar argument in Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy?

⁷⁵ William Inboden, ‘Statecraft, Decision-Making, and the Varieties of Historical Experience: A Taxonomy’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/2 (2014).

⁷⁶ This conclusion resembles a judgement reached as well in Eliot Cohen, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation under: [Grant Number 2015-0952], Shape or Adapt: The Planning of American Grand Strategy.

Notes on contributors

Ionut C. Popescu

Ionut C. Popescu Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.