Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The challenges faced by the United States in today's international system has led to a resurgence in the debate on grand strategy among scholars and practitioners alike. This analytical essay intends to examine the historical record in search of traditions in US grand strategy, what theoretical forces influence grand strategy, and how US grand strategy has changed over time. The first section of this work conducts a literature review of grand strategy in search of defining what grand strategy is conceptually. Next, the work explores theoretical underpinnings of international politics, bureaucratic politics, and domestic politics that provide some insight into the behavior of nation-states and their foreign policymaking apparatus. Since grand strategy is an inherent part of the policy process and a key component to a nation's engagement with the rest of the world, there are forces that exert significant pressure on it. Any analysis of US grand strategy throughout history requires an understanding of these forces and the profound effects they have on policy. In section three, this work presents a series of case studies examining US grand strategy over time. Each case study examines the interests, means, assumptions and principles, policy outputs, as well as desired ends and actual ends that make up grand strategy. These case studies then use process tracing qualitative analysis to assess the presence of a causal mechanism between the independent variables (international, bureaucratic, and domestic constraints) and the prevalence of US grand strategy. This work examines the early republic, the emergence of the US as a great power in 1895, the world wars, the Cold War, and the post Cold War era. An analysis and implications section follows.