Can the United States do grand strategy?

• Author: Kiehl, William P.

Can the United States Do Grand Strategy?

By Walter A. McDougall, Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania

http://www.fpri.org/telegram/201004.mcdougall.usgrandstrategy.html

Review by William P. Kiehl, Editor of American Diplomacy

Professor McDougall delivered this paper at the Consortium on Grand Strategy, cosponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Temple University's Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy.

McDougall opens on a rather pessimistic note, wondering whether the United States is as exceptional as we like to believe and recalling Toynbee's law that "empires die by suicide, not murder." The historian sees his task as that of a "rapporteur and provocateur" raising issues on which to "reach consensus before we can agree on whether the United States can do grand strategy and if so what that strategy ought to be at the present time."

In a wonderful selection of quotes from the great and wise on American diplomatic history, McDougall provides a tour d' horizon of the American experience and the lessons we may draw from it.

For those doubting the very capacity of the U. S. government to do grand strategy, McDougall quotes STRATFOR's five "geographic imperatives" that so far have "determined the behavior" of the USA: (1) secure strategic depth (Treaty of 1783 with Britain); (2) expand strategic depth (Louisiana Purchase, War of 1812, Mexican...