Source:
https://warontherocks.com/2020/05/grand-strategy-is-no-silver-bullet-but-it-is-indispensable/
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubadm/memo/grandstrat/gs12.htm
COMMENTARY
To reconnect policymakers and the policy-minded with this vision of grand strategy, we offer a number of historical antecedents in 19th and 20th century British statecraft, arguing that certain aspects of this tradition of grand strategic thinking, while undervalued in the present day, should be revitalized going forward. This is no silver bullet, of course. It takes time to look beyond the recent past, and time to process its significance. But thinking carefully about history is not an esoteric indulgence. It is a humble recognition that the past offers something to the present, and is a smart investment of time for a policymaker seeking to build a robust and innovative toolkit to tackle the daunting challenges of the coming decade.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/05/grand-strategy-is-no-silver-bullet-but-it-is-indispensable/
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubadm/memo/grandstrat/gs12.htm
COMMENTARY
GRAND STRATEGY IS NO SILVER BULLET,
BUT IT IS INDISPENSABLE
MAY 19, 2020
Is grand strategy too “grand” to be good? Criticisms of the concept are not new, but in recent months, several articles have sounded the death knell. Particularly concerning is that the diagnosis comes from the United States and the United Kingdom — countries with overlapping strategic cultures and where grand strategy has, to varying degrees, succeeded in the past. Far from a wasteful or futile undertaking, however, the practice of grand strategy is a worthwhile endeavor. But crucially, for it to be effective, there needs to be a fundamental change in the way in which it is understood and what is expected of it.
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Daniel Drezner, Ronald Krebs, and Randall Schweller come to “bury” grand strategy. For these self-proclaimed undertakers, it is not simply that the concept is “dead,” but rather that the domestic and international environment is no longer conducive to any attempt at its use. Grand strategy, they claim, “works best on predictable terrain — in a world where policymakers enjoy a clear understanding of the distribution of power, a solid domestic consensus about national goals and identity, and stable political and national security institutions.” In place of grand strategy, a more ad hoc and “case-by-case” approach to policy is now needed, they argue — ideally one based on the way in which “smart corporations” decentralize and incrementalize their innovation and decision-making processes.
Though the article is only the latest in a line of critiques, its arguments are somewhat striking, both for their idealized version of the past and their narrow conception of the purpose and essence of grand strategy. The idea that grand strategy requires entirely “predictable terrain” is a limitation built on illusion. Rarely, if ever, do the international system, domestic political debates and a complex network of bureaucratic institutions align to give policymakers an ideal canvas on which to craft a grand strategy. Indeed, the concept itself is most useful — and often most necessary — in moments when national populations, feeling the international order to be shifting in new and unpredictable directions, begin to question their own first-order assumptions about the nature of the international system and their country’s place within it.
Now is not the time to “bury” grand strategy altogether, but to understand that its practical application rests in a humbler and less rigid understanding of the concept: one which sees it more as a habit of mind and a way of thinking, rather than the deliverable product of an all-encompassing blueprint or road map for policymaking. Vital to this conception is an understanding that the term itself represents a practice with a long intellectual and historical lineage, aspects of which must be grasped in order for policymakers and the public to find value in the concept going forward.
To reconnect policymakers and the policy-minded with this vision of grand strategy, we offer a number of historical antecedents in 19th and 20th century British statecraft, arguing that certain aspects of this tradition of grand strategic thinking, while undervalued in the present day, should be revitalized going forward. This is no silver bullet, of course. It takes time to look beyond the recent past, and time to process its significance. But thinking carefully about history is not an esoteric indulgence. It is a humble recognition that the past offers something to the present, and is a smart investment of time for a policymaker seeking to build a robust and innovative toolkit to tackle the daunting challenges of the coming decade.
Too Grand to be Good?
It is hard not to question the merits of grand strategy. The very adjective “grand” does it no favors, as many conjure up images of beard-stroking elites hovering over quills and maps. The academic attention on grand strategy in recent decades has been expansive but at the same time, has produced a cacophony of conceptual frameworks. Talk to policymakers today and many look at those who advocate grand strategy as out-of-touch academics, ignorant of the bureaucratic processes of government and the reality that much of what constitutes a day atop the policymaking establishment is filled with “fire-fighting” and leaping from one crisis to the next. In a world of rapid communication, 24-hour news cycles, lone-actor terrorist attacks, volatile financial markets, and now a global pandemic with profound social, economic and demographic consequences, events demanding government response are more plentiful and challenging than they ever have been. Diplomacy operates at a level of complexity scarcely imaginable a hundred years ago. Sitting back and thinking about — much less planning for — all-encompassing strategies of how countries can achieve a range of medium- and long-term domestic and international objectives might seem unnecessary if not impossible under modern circumstances.
It is their perception of the daunting complexity of this environment which leads Drezner, Krebs, and Schweller to question the contemporary relevance of grand strategy — or more specifically, to question the capacity of the United States to engage in effective grand strategy and maintain its global preeminence under conditions so different to the world in which that preeminence was first achieved. Interestingly, the past decade has also seen a similar process of questioning on the other side of the Atlantic. A British parliamentary inquiry in 2010 — originally titled ( https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubadm/memo/grandstrat/gs12.htm ) — concluded that the term “grand strategy,” though seen by some as “hubristic,” remained “a concept intrinsic to good governance” and synonymous with national strategy. However, the “profoundly disturbing conclusion” of the committee was that such “strategic thinking has atrophied.” Ten years later, the National Security Advisor at the time of that report, Lord Peter Ricketts, wrote that the British foreign policymaking establishment had “lost the art of grand strategy:”
I am sceptical about the capacity of modern governments to produce grand strategy… amid the maelstrom of contemporary politics and the new media. …Today’s pressures push ministers to short-term crisis management. Policies are sound-bite simple, while deferring awkward choices has become a more tempting option. The distinction between campaigning and governing has all but disappeared, reducing the space for longer-term thinking.
Underlying both the 2010 parliamentary report and Lord Rickett’s recent article is a nostalgia for a past excellence in grand strategy — something lost along the way. But what exactly was this art, and crucially, is it recoverable?
Towards a Humbler Conception
Much of the problem with grand strategy is that, as a concept, it suffers from people over-claiming what it can achieve — it is often thought of as a “silver bullet,” “master plan,” or a “road map to match means with ends.” Seeing it as such a panacea for policymaking only sets it up for failure, since no fixed, tidy, and decided plan on the scale required could ever withstand the unpredictable onslaught of international politics.
Instead, grand strategy is best understood not as a process (leading to the production of plans) but as a habit of mind: a conscious attempt to look beyond the confines of short-term requirements of national defense or day-to-day, immediate foreign policy, and to the pursuit of national interests in a more systematic and synchronized way. It remains conscious of first-order assumptions and first-order principles within a nation’s policy making culture, and importantly, the ways in which these should be altered in the context of a changing international order. As David Morgen Owen writes in the Strategy Bridge, “grand strategy is a concept rooted in the demands of making strategy in the real world.” Indeed, an appreciation for the nature and pace of change in the international environment, and a country’s place within that system, is central to grand strategic thinking. In formulating such a position, it creates what Hal Brands refers to as “the intellectual architecture” from which more detailed policies flow.
At no other time is grand strategic thinking more useful than in moments when the international order seems to be shifting in unpredictable directions. To suggest that grand strategy is only possible in predictable and harmonious environments is short-sighted. It is difficult to think of many periods in the past two hundred years when statesmen and women anywhere in the world have enjoyed such conditions. Their worlds, like ours, were of ever-increasing interaction and complexity. The planet today is not the first “disordered, cluttered, and fluid realm” that has challenged policymakers, and it would come as quite a surprise to certain statesmen and civil servants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for example, to be told otherwise.
Understanding Rooted in History
Much of the problem with grand strategy is that, as a concept, it suffers from people over-claiming what it can achieve — it is often thought of as a “silver bullet,” “master plan,” or a “road map to match means with ends.” Seeing it as such a panacea for policymaking only sets it up for failure, since no fixed, tidy, and decided plan on the scale required could ever withstand the unpredictable onslaught of international politics.
Instead, grand strategy is best understood not as a process (leading to the production of plans) but as a habit of mind: a conscious attempt to look beyond the confines of short-term requirements of national defense or day-to-day, immediate foreign policy, and to the pursuit of national interests in a more systematic and synchronized way. It remains conscious of first-order assumptions and first-order principles within a nation’s policymaking culture, and importantly, the ways in which these should be altered in the context of a changing international order. As David Morgen Owen writes in the Strategy Bridge, “grand strategy is a concept rooted in the demands of making strategy in the real world.” Indeed, an appreciation for the nature and pace of change in the international environment, and a country’s place within that system, is central to grand strategic thinking. In formulating such a position, it creates what Hal Brands refers to as “the intellectual architecture” from which more detailed policies flow.
At no other time is grand strategic thinking more useful than in moments when the international order seems to be shifting in unpredictable directions. To suggest that grand strategy is only possible in predictable and harmonious environments is short-sighted. It is difficult to think of many periods in the past two hundred years when statesmen and women anywhere in the world have enjoyed such conditions. Their worlds, like ours, were of ever-increasing interaction and complexity. The planet today is not the first “disordered, cluttered, and fluid realm” that has challenged policymakers, and it would come as quite a surprise to certain statesmen and civil servants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for example, to be told otherwise.
Understanding Rooted in History
The concept of grand strategy has come a long way since it was first used to describe events during the Napoleonic Wars. Originally understood as a way to think about military strategy on a large scale, it came to be seen as a way of thinking about the nature of the international system, a nation’s place within that order, and the way in which national resources might be aligned and utilized to achieve desired ends.
But in recent decades, scholars and practitioners have, at times, over-stated its capabilities while driving at ever-more complex theories about its definition and application. As a result, policymakers have come to think of it as too grandiose and too ambitious for practical purposes. Indeed, if we are to think, as Drezner, Krebs, and Schweller have argued, that grand strategy requires a “common national narrative” uncomplicated by the politics of multicultural states or postcolonial legacies, and if it can only succeed on “predictable terrain” then, by this characterization, the concept should be buried.
Grand strategy, however, is recoverable as an essential practice of statecraft provided that two fundamental changes occur. First, the term should not be thought of as a noun, or a product. It is a way of thinking about the world that amounts to much more than the writing of elaborate strategic blueprints or the search for neat “containment”-esque slogans easily packaged for public approval. Instead, grand strategic thinking should be the very essence of foreign policymaking, an approach that emphasises the need to first reflect on the nature and pace of change within the international environment and a country’s place within that system, and second, to act in a way which values initiative and innovation, as opposed to reaction and listlessness. Its crucial ingredient is a “historical sensibility” — that is, an informed understanding of the nature and pace of change in the international environment — because only with this deep foundation is it possible to craft a set of durable policies that are suitably responsive to the changeability of any present set of conditions, but without being thrown off long-term goals by the gusts and eddies of short-term crises.
Second, and crucially, senior policymakers, especially those who are elected, must see value in the process of grand strategic thinking. The realities of modern policymaking which Lord Ricketts has highlighted — crisis management, the focus on campaigning rather than governing, and the rapid and devolved state of political communication — must not negate the benefits which come from longer-term thinking. Importantly, to forego such focus and replace it with “incremental” or “decentralised” approaches is to sacrifice a degree of agency which, for leading countries such as the United States, will subject its foreign policy to the will of other powers. It was a logic which British statesmen and diplomats of the past — from Castlereagh to Lansdowne to Jebb — understood at their core. Perhaps more consequential, however, was an innate understanding that at no time is an abdication of influence more dangerous for a leading power than in moments of perceived upheaval, when the sands of international order begin to shift in uncertain directions. Thus, for commentators and policymakers alike: bury grand strategy if you choose, but understand that, in doing so, you bury with it the very essence of statecraft.
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Maeve Ryan is Lecturer in History and Grand Strategy and Co-Director of the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s College London.
Andrew Ehrhardt is a postdoctoral fellow with the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s College London.
Portions of this article have been adapted from a forthcoming chapter by John Bew, Maeve Ryan and Andrew Ehrhardt titled “Tracing the Origins of British Grand Strategy” in the Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy, edited by Thierry Balzacq and Ronald R. Krebs.
Image: Public Domain
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