Grand Strategy: Latest Articles

Where Have All the Big Ideas Gone?

Articles — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Each era in American history is defined by a couple of big ideas: the Homestead Act, the GI Bill, Social Security, the Marshall Plan or the race to space. Such major social or economic innovations are usually advanced by our political leaders in response to national turning points. Few would disagree that the United States has reached another historical juncture. Where, then, have all the big -- and good -- ideas gone?

The paucity of innovative thinking is particularly evident in this presidential campaign. President Bush has a couple of big ideas -- … more

Revamping American Grand Strategy

Articles — Sat, 01 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Out of the national trauma of September 11 has emerged a new grand strategy for American foreign policy, comparable in scale and ambition to the strategy of containment that guided American foreign policy for much of the Cold War. Championed by neo-conservatives in and around the Bush administration, this grand strategy -- which I call muscular dominance -- has won the acceptance of neo-liberal hawks associated with the Democratic Party as well. The troubled occupation of Iraq, together with the unfolding drama over the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, may eventually force a rethinking of the emerging strategy,… more

Immigrant Intellectuals and American Grand Strategy

Articles — Fri, 04 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0500

After World War II, both native and emigre intellectuals had a profound impact on U.S. foreign policy. In our new Globalist Paper, Michael Lind explores the old guard of Central European Realists -- and the new crop of British Commonwealth Imperialists. He proposes that it is high time to rediscover the "American School" of foreign policy.

From the Napoleonic Era until World War I, the United States had its own distinctive mainstream foreign policy tradition. Call it the "American School" of foreign policy.

A world without empires

This American School reflected the values of the United States as the… more

Back to the Spanish-American War of 1898?

Articles — Thu, 27 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

A group of Americans dreamed of creating a U.S. empire. Their opening came with the mass death of Americans in a shocking event. Media sensationalism whipped public outrage into a war frenzy. The resulting war was a success, but the subsequent occupation was a failure. Michael Lind asks: Does this describe the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- or the Spanish-American War of 1898?

A century ago, under President McKinley, the camp of prominent American imperialists included Vice President Theodore Roosevelt and intellectual proponents of empire like Alfred Thayer Mahan, the Admiral and strategist.

Historic parallels

Today, under President George… more

The Arrogant Empire

Articles — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The United States will soon be at war with Iraq. It would seem, on the face of it, a justifiable use of military force. Saddam Hussein runs one of the most tyrannical regimes in modern history.

For more than 25 years he has sought to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and has, in several documented cases, succeeded. He gassed 60,000 of his own people in 1986 in Halabja. He has launched two catastrophic wars, sacrificing nearly a million Iraqis and killing or wounding more than a million Iranians. He has flouted 16 United Nations resolutions over 12 years that have… more

Bush Policy Lacks Reagan's Common Sense

Articles — Thu, 06 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Twenty years ago this Saturday, President Ronald Reagan used the "e" word, ushering in a new era of American foreign policy making.

Reagan's strong rhetoric worked well enough in his time, but today, as President George W. Bush tries the same 200-proof talk in totally different circumstances, it's boomeranging. And that's a lesson for all time: The strategy that succeeds in one era can fail in the next.

Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983, the 40th president denounced the Soviet Union as the "evil empire." The Christian audience loved it, of course, but critics loathed it.… more

This Superpower Can't Go It Alone

Articles — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Against his own instincts, against the wishes of his most fervent supporters, President George W. Bush took the case for a second anti-Iraq resolution to the United Nations Security Council yesterday.

Why? Because he had to.

America is the planet's lone superpower, but it still must exist within a web of political and economic relationships. In other words, for all its military might, the United States still can't afford to operate alone.

To be sure, Bush has long made his view clear. As he said last April 5, "I made up my mind that Hussein needs to go."

Yet even the Lone Star… more

War of Ideas May Be the Toughest U.S. Faces

Articles — Thu, 02 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The murder of three American medical missionaries in Yemen Monday is about the saddest thing one can imagine -- people martyred as they were helping others -- but it's not the hardest thing to imagine. After all, we are now in the era of asymmetrical warfare, where any American civilian anywhere is at risk.

This act was the essence of asymmetrical warfare. But wait a second, one might protest. Wasn't the man who killed those people, the man who disguised his rifle as a baby, a terrorist -- a mere criminal? How can one call him a warrior? Maybe it's because… more

Toward a Global Society of States

Articles — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 03:00:00 -0400

Here is an instructive and entertaining exercise for students of American foreign policy. Match the quotation to the appropriate American statesman: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, or Woodrow Wilson.

The first quotation is this: "Our aim should be from time to time to take such steps as may be possible toward creating something like an organization of the civilized nations, because as the world becomes more highly organized the need for navies and armies will diminish." Woodrow Wilson, you might think, the naïve idealist who dreamed that the League of Nations would put an end to war. But no.… more

Protect the Great Powers

Articles — Wed, 03 Jul 2002 00:00:00 -0400

In its approach to foreign policy, the Bush administration has been wrong about many things -- from its obsession with Iraq and its misguided support of Ariel Sharon's Israel to its unilateral trashing of treaties such as the Kyoto accord. But as folks in George W. Bush's Texas are known to say, even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then. Even critics of the Bush administration's overall strategy, if they are reasonable, must admit that the president is right to oppose the International Criminal Court in its present form.

The US threatens to use its vote as a… more

We'll Just Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

Articles — Thu, 20 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Did you hear about the government's new plan to launch anticipatory strikes against evildoers?

No, not President George W. Bush's policy, announced on June 1, of "preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." That's old news. Now it's time to look ahead, to "Minority Report," the new Steven Spielberg movie, which offers a window into the dystopic future when government power is taken to extremes. If the film scares you, remember, it isn't "only a movie" -- it's real life, too.

"Minority Report," set in 2054, imagines that the government has set up… more

Is America the New Roman Empire?

Articles — Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

In recent months, leading analysts in the United States have begun making comparisons between the United States and the Roman empire. On the right, conservatives like Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal editorial page have openly called for "benign" American imperialism.

Pax Americana?

Meanwhile, on the center-left, some "humanitarian hawks" are as eager as many conservatives to use U.S. military force in wars to pre-empt threats and topple hostile regimes.

In the past, parallels between Imperial Rome and Imperial America were primarily drawn by leftists or right-wing isolationists.

They thought that U.S. power politics corrupted the world,… more

Terrorism Is Closing Open-Border Thinking

Articles — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Every politician in Washington has a recipe for "improving" President George W. Bush's proposal for a Department of Homeland Security.

Yet it's unlikely that all these cooks will spoil the broth, because the idea is so popular and the need is so obvious. And thus the American political system works, in its own muddling- through manner. Less than a year after Sept. 11, the nation is rallying to its own defense. Indeed, the whole of the West is taking similar defensive measures.

Already, the Justice Department is beginning to set up a fingerprinting program of visitors from terror-friendly countries. Is that… more

World History and the Texan Mind of George W. Bush

Articles — Sat, 06 Apr 2002 00:00:00 -0500

In retrospect, George W. Bush's Middle East policy appears to have been based on two goals supported by the President -- if not by every member of his administration. The first goal was informal U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil supplies. This goal was to be realized by means of alliance with friendly Arab tyrannies (Saudi Arabia and a post-Saddam dictatorship in Iraq).

Giving the Israelis free reign

The second goal was to give Israel's right wing a free hand in carrying out their long-cherished dream of crushing the PLO, reoccupying the territories and -- … more

The Pure Heart

Articles — Wed, 27 Feb 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Earlier this month, a group of sixty American public figures issued a statement on the attacks of September eleventh and the conflicts that have followed it. Titled What We're Fighting For, the document was a measured defense of the American war against Al Qaeda and, by implication, its Taliban allies. What we are fighting for, the authors declared, are American beliefs that are also the universal principles of modern societies: all individuals possess equal intrinsic dignity; there are true and enduring differences between right and wrong; because truth is obscure, tolerance and civility are necessary political virtues; and… more