The End of Grand Strategy: US Maritime Operations in the Twenty-First Century
Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski
Abstract
Policy makers and pundits debate the utility and desirability of various forms of grand strategy. They advocate one specific approach, chosen from a spectrum that stretches from global primacy to restraint and isolationism. These strategies generally share three features: first, a nostalgia for the Cold War, when America’s grand strategy was clear and consistent. Second, a common belief that the United States can shape the global system according to its values and need if only the country has the right leadership and strategy. Third, a propensity to prescribe instead of explaining American str ... More
Policy makers and pundits debate the utility and desirability of various forms of grand strategy. They advocate one specific approach, chosen from a spectrum that stretches from global primacy to restraint and isolationism. These strategies generally share three features: first, a nostalgia for the Cold War, when America’s grand strategy was clear and consistent. Second, a common belief that the United States can shape the global system according to its values and need if only the country has the right leadership and strategy. Third, a propensity to prescribe instead of explaining American strategy. In The End of Grand Strategy: Maritime Operations in the 21st Century, Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski challenge this common view. They eschew prescription in favor of describing and explaining what America’s military actually does. They argue that each presidental administration inevitably resorts to each of the six variant of grand strategy that they implement simultaneously as a result of a series of fundamental recent changes – what they term ‘calibrated strategies.’ Reich and Dombrowski support their controversial argument by examining six major maritime operations, stretching from America’s shores to every region of the globe. Each of these operations reflects one major variant of strategy. They conclude that grand strategy, as we know it, is dead.
Keywords:
Grand Strategy (or just strategy if it needs to be a single word?),
Navy,
Maritime Operations,
Sea Services,
Threats,
Piracy,
WMD or better yet “NBC weapons” (nuclear biological chemical weapons),
MOOTW (military operations other than war)
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781501714627 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: September 2018 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9781501714627.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Simon Reich, author
Rutgers University, Newark
Peter Dombrowski, author
Naval War College
More
Less
