What is Grand StrategyBuilding on our readings and class discussions, your memo: (1) define grand strategy in your own words
(2) identify the three key attributes of grand strategy that you think are most important to keep in mind when scholars and policymakers employ the concept of grand strategy
(3) justify your definition and the importance of your three key attributes using a range of scholarly arguments and historical examples from our class readings
(4) address and convincingly refute at least one counterargument along the way (a reason why smart people may disagree with your definition or one of your key attributes)
**Cite at least 5 of the readings below and ONLY the readings below (different chapters in the Rethinking American Grand Strategy edited volume count as distinct readings, but all of Brands’ book counts as one reading). When citing sources, use the Chicago Manual of Style’s Author-Date style**
Readings:
1. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (March 2021) [23 pp.]
2. 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). [206 pp.]
3. Elizabeth Borgwardt, Christopher McKnight Nichols, and Andrew Preston, eds., Rethinking American Grand Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 1-48, 83-217, 254-71 (Introduction, Chapters 1, 4-9, 12). [201 pp.]
4. Arnold Wolfers, “‘National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol,” Political Science Quarterly 67, no. 4 (December 1952): 481-502. [22 pp.]
5. Tami Davis Biddle, Strategy and Grand Strategy: What Students and Practitioners Need to Know (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2015): 1-19, 38-58. [40 pp.]
6. Stacie E. Goddard and Ronald R. Krebs, “Rhetoric, Legitimation, and Grand Strategy,” Security Studies 24, no. 1 (2015): 5-36. [32 pp.]
7. Richard K. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security 25 (Fall 2000): 5-50. [46 pp.]
8. Ionut Popescu, “Emergent Strategy vs. Grand Strategy in the Conduct of Foreign Policy,” Journal of Strategic Studies 41, no. 3 (March 2018): 438-60. [23 pp.]
9. David M. Edelstein and Ronald R. Krebs, “Delusions of Grand Strategy: The Problem with Washington’s Planning Obsession,” Foreign Affairs 94, no. 6 (November/December 2015): 109-16. [8 pp.]
10. Richard W. Maass, “The Benign Hegemon’s Dilemma: Racism, Liberalism, and the Roots of International Order,” Security Studies, under review. [26 pp.]
11. Elizabeth Borgwardt, Christopher McKnight Nichols, and Andrew Preston, eds., Rethinking American Grand Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 311-23 (Chapters 15-20). [113 pp.]
12. Randolph B. Persaud, “Killing the Third World: Civilisational Security as U.S. Grand Strategy,” Third World Quarterly 40, no. 2 (2019): 266-83.
