History is written by the losers: Strategy and grand strategy in the aftermath of war

ABSTRACT

Strategy is a theory of victory; grand strategy is a theory of security. In the ideal, a state’s strategy and grand strategy are mutually reinforcing. Wartime decisions should leave the state more secure in the aftermath, and peacetime decisions should put the state in a good position in the event of future conflict. Yet for various reasons, strategy and grand strategy often drift apart. This article focuses on one type of decoupling. Victorious states tend to expand their grand strategic ambitions, yet nostalgia encourages them to retain increasingly outmoded strategic concepts. Losers, by contrast, are more likely to have frank conversations about the real opportunities and limits of state power, and the ways in which military action can provide meaningful support. I illustrate the argument with case studies from the British experience in the American War of Independence, and the American experience in the first Persian Gulf War.

KEYWORDS:

• American Revolution
• grand strategy
• strategy
• Iraq War

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Michael Wines, ‘Parade Unfurls Symbols of Patriotism in the Capital’, New York Times, 9 Jun. 1991.

² I thank Bradford Lee for this phrase.

³ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Peter Paret and Michael Howard (eds.), (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1984), book 1, chapters 1–2.

⁴ Scholars on opposite sides of the grand strategy debate agree on this basic definition. Compare Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2014); and Hal Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2014). Nina Silove notes that some observers believe that grand strategy should encompass more goals than security. But because none of those additional goals are possible without it, security remains the one objective everyone can agree on. Nina Silove, ‘Beyond the Buzzword: The Three Meanings of “Grand Strategy”’, Security Studies 27/1 (2018), 27–57.

⁵ For recent entries in the grand strategy debate, see William C. Wohlforth and Stephen G. Brooks, America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP 2016); Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper, An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for World Order (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2020); Jennifer Lind and William C. Wohlforth, ‘The Future of the Liberal World Order is Conservative’, Foreign Affairs 98/2 (2019), 70–80; and A. Threvor Thrall and Benjamin H. Friedman (eds.), U.S. Grand Strategy in the 21^st Century: The Case for Restraint (New York, NY: Routledge 2018). For a useful summary that unpacks the logic of different approaches, see Paul C. Avey, Jonathan N. Markowitz, and Robert J. Reardon, ‘Disentangling Grand Strategy: International Relations Theory and U.S. Grand Strategy’, Texas National Security Review 2/1 (2018), 28–51.

⁶ On domestic politics and war termination, see Elizabeth A. Stanley, Paths to Peace: Domestic Coalition Shifts, War Termination, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP 2009); Hein Goemans, War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 2000); and Sarah E. Croco, Peace at What Price? Leader Culpability and the Domestic Politics of War Termination (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP 2015).

⁷ For an overview of wartime and postwar alliance politics, see Patricia A. Weitsman, Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP 2014). For an excellent recent set of essays on wartime coalitions, see Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Ryan Grauer, eds., ‘Battlefield Coalitions’, Journal of Strategic Studies special issue, 45/2 (2022).

⁸ For a summary of these critiques, see Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy?, 12–15. See also David M. Edelstein and Ronald R. Krebs, ‘The Delusions of Grand Strategy’, Foreign Affairs 94/6 (2015), 109–16; Richard K. Betts, ‘The Grandiosity of Grand Strategy’, The Washington Quarterly 42/4 (2019), 7–22; and Peter Dombrowski and Simon Reich, The End of Grand Strategy: US Maritime Operations in the 21^st Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2018). Ionut Popescu stakes out a middle ground, arguing that ‘emergent’ grand strategies are implemented without being fully formed. Ionut Popescu, Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 2017).

⁹ On continuity before Trump see Posen, Restraint, 5–15; and Patrick Porter, ‘Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment’, International Security 42/4 (2018), 9–46. For views of grand strategy during the Trump years, see Stacie Goddard, Robert Jervis, Diane Labrosse, and Joshua Rovner (eds.), Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics (New York, NY: Columbia UP 2023.)

¹⁰ Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Boston, MA: McGraw Hill 1979); and John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York, NY: W.W. Norton 2001).

¹¹ For a recent review see A. Trevor Thrall and Jane Kellett Cramer (eds.), American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear (New York, NY: Routledge 2009).

¹² Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2005). Not all scholars agree about the importance of personal reputation. For a different view, see Danielle L. Lupton, Reputation for Resolve: How Leaders Signal Determination in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2020).

¹³ Rose McDermott, Risk Taking in International Politics: Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan UP 2001).

¹⁴ How do we know a frank discussion when we see it? Signs of candor include evidence that states are willing to revisit their grand strategic assumptions; to review their performance; and to confront discomfiting truths without shooting the messenger. States must then be able to implement changes in accordance with new grand strategic ideals, and this might require civilian intervention in military matters. Finally, states are more likely to welcome new voices into the decision-making process without letting veto players kill important changes. On civilian intervention see Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1984); and Colin F. Jackson, ‘Defeat in Victory: Organizational Learning Dysfunction in Counterinsurgency’, doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. On the optimal number of decision-making officials see David Blagden, ‘Do Leaders Possess the Wisdom of Crowds? Decision Group Size, Regime Type, and Strategic Effectiveness’, International Studies Quarterly 63/4 (December 2019), 1192–5.

¹⁵ Nick Bunker, An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America (New York, NY: Vintage 2015), 15. For discussions of 18^th century British grand strategy see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Mastery (London, UK: Scribner 1976); and N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (New York, NY: W.W. Norton 2005).

¹⁶ J. A. Houlding, Fit for Service: The Training of the British Army, 1715–1795 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1981), 19 and 395.

¹⁷ Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 368.

¹⁸ Ibid., 370.

¹⁹ Ibid., 370–1.

²⁰ Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 369. See also Clive Wilkinson, The British Navy and the State in the 18th Century (Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press 2004), 147–9, and appendix 4.

²¹ Roger Knight, ‘From Impressment to Task Work: Strikes and Disruption in the Royal Dockyards, 1688–1788’, in Kenneth Lunn and Ann Day (eds.), History of Work and Labor Relations in the Royal Dockyards (London, UK: Mansell 1999), 9.

²² Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 374–5.

²³ Bunker, Empire on the Edge, provides an excellent discussion of the crash. For details on the rise of the relationship between war, taxes, and the rise of the British administrative state during this time, see John Brewer, The Sinews of Power : War, Money, and the English State, 1688– 1783 (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman 1989).

²⁴ Robert Allison, The American Revolution: A Concise History (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP 2011), 5; Samuel Eliot Morrison, Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, 2^nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP 1961), xvii–xxviii; and Houlding, Fit for Service, 395.

²⁵ Allison, American Revolution, 1.

²⁶ Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2013), 17–46. See David Kaiser, Politics and War: European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1990), 203–12, on the contemporaneous challenge to hereditary monarchs elsewhere in Europe.

²⁷ Edmund Burke, ‘Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies’, 22 Mar. 1775, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch1s2.html.

²⁸ Burke, ‘Speech on Conciliation’; and Charles James Fox, ‘Address on the King’s Speech: Wars with America and France’, 26 November 1778, in F. Warre Cornish (ed.), The Public School Speaker (London: John Murray, 1900), 415–6, http://bit.ly/2ylFvHz.

²⁹ O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America, 97–100; and Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP 1982), 413–4, 438.

³⁰ O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America, 47.

³¹ O’Shaghnessy, Men Who Lost America, 24–25, 67. See also Piers Makesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1964)

³² Sandwich had been an advocate of strong measures towards the Americans before the war. Like other British hawks, he overestimated the ease of coercing them. O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America, 326.

³³ Stephen Conway, The War of American Independence, 1775–1783 (London, UK: Hodder 1995); Mackesy, War for America, 524–525; and Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1972), 359–76.

³⁴ Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP 1970), 89–90. It also helped the Army, which despite efforts to increase its size in the mid-18^th century, was overstretched and incapable of sustaining an effective training regime. Committing to a large and distant garrison in North America would have inevitably strained its resources, which were badly needed elsewhere. A more focused army was in a better position to deal with France during the Napoleonic Wars. Houlding, Fit for Service, passim.

³⁵ Patrick Karl O’Brien, ‘The Formation of a Mercantilist State and the Economic Growth of the United Kingdom, 1453–1815’, United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, Research Paper No. 2006/75 (July 2006). https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/rp2006–75.pdf.

³⁶ Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 580.

³⁷ Joshua Rovner and Caitlin Talmadge, ‘Hegemony, Force Posture, and the Provision of Public Goods: The Once and Future Role of Outside Powers in Securing Persian Gulf Oil’, Security Studies 23/(2014), 548–81.

³⁸ Jimmy Carter”, State of the Union Address”, 23 Jan. 1980, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33079

³⁹ Jeffrey Engel, When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War

(New York, NY: Houghton-Mifflin 2017), 376–90.

⁴⁰ Caitlin Talmadge, The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2015), 150–65.

⁴¹ NSD-54, ‘Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf’, 15 Jan. 1991, http://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB39/document4.pdf.

⁴² Stephen Biddle, ‘Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us About the Future of Conflict’, International Security, 21/2 (1996), 139–79.

⁴³ Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP 2005), 35–38; and Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin 1993).

⁴⁴ Bill Owens, with Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 2000). Owens was enthusiastic about the technologies revealed in the war, but worried that military and political leaders weren’t making the organizational reforms he thought necessary to fully exploit them.

⁴⁵ Joshua Rovner, ‘Delusion of Defeat: The United States and Iraq, 1990–1998’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 37/4 (2014), 482–507.

⁴⁶ Anthony H. Cordesman, ‘The Revolution in Military Affairs and Developments in the Persian Gulf’, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1 Sept. 1999, 65, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/rmaandgulf.pdf.

⁴⁷ George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York, NY: Vintage 1998), 486–7.

⁴⁸ Rovner, ‘Delusion of Defeat’.

⁴⁹ Richard Butler, The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security (New York, NY: Public Affairs 2000).

⁵⁰ Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, ‘Casualty Aversion: How Many Deaths are Acceptable?’ The Washington Post, 7 Nov. 7 1999.

⁵¹ Part of this shift included abandoning UN Charter rules that restricted the criteria for legitimate military intervention in foreign conflicts. Michael J. Glennon, ‘The New Interventionism: The Search for a Just International Law’, Foreign Affairs 78/3 (May/June 1999), 2–7. For a description of the constellation of U.S. groups who coalesced around a more expansive grand strategy, see Posen, Restraint, 5–11.

⁵² During the 1990s analysts debated the sources of the U.S. victory in Operation Desert Storm, arguing over the relative importance of superior training, technology, doctrine, and leadership. Few observers questioned the large U.S. military lead that the war revealed. And while some skeptics argued that Iraq was not a good test of U.S. power, given Saddam Hussein’s strategic blunders, it was not easy to find any other potential challengers. At least in terms of conventional warfighting capabilities, the United States stood alone. For a flavor of the post-Cold War debate see Biddle, ‘Victory Misunderstood’; Daryl G. Press, ‘Lessons from Ground Combat in the Gulf: The Impact of Training and Technology’, International Security 22/2 (Fall 1997), 137–46; and John Mueller, ‘The Perfect Enemy: Assessing the Gulf War’, Security Studies 5/1 (Autumn 1995), 77–117.

⁵³ Peter J. Katzenstein, Culture, Norms, and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1997), 15.

⁵⁴ Benjamin H. Friedman and Justin Logan, ‘Why the U.S. Military Budget is “Foolish and Sustainable”’, Orbis 56/2 (2012), 177–91.

⁵⁵ Chaim Kaufmann, ‘Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War’, International Security 29/1 (Summer 2004), 5–48.

⁵⁶ Brendan Rittenhouse Green, The Revolution that Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP 2020). See also Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, ‘Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies 38/1–2 (2015), 38–73; and Francis J. Gavin, ‘Rethinking the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy’, Texas National Security Review, 2/1 (2019), 74–100.

⁵⁷ The classic statement is Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1986).

⁵⁸ Quoted in Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1999), 145.

⁵⁹ Joshua Rovner, ‘The War on Terrorism as Imperial Policing’, War on the Rocks, 2 Nov. 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/the-war-on-terrorism-as-imperial-policing/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joshua Rovner

Joshua Rovner is Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University.