Embedded in his most recent Washington Post column on the future of the Air Force, George Will passes along a quote from an admiral and an academic that bears consideration:
Only the United States has the capacity to be, as retired Adm. Gary Roughead and Kori Schake say in a Brookings Institution study, “guarantors of the global commons — the seaways and airways, and now the cyber conduits.â€
Succinct, that is America’s grand strategy although it ignores the global financial system, a vital component of the “global commons”. Unlike Germany, Russia, or China the American grand strategy is an emergent phenomenon, derived from the actions and preferences of thousands or even millions of Americans. Our grand strategy isn’t something arrived at and imposed from above. You implement our grand strategy every time you take an overseas vacation, buy an imported car, or host a foreign exchange student.
The entire “national greatness” ideology and our wars in the Middle East have next to nothing to do with that strategy. They neither protect us nor further our grand strategy. I wish more Americans, particularly Americans who are elected to Congress or otherwise are in government service, understood that.
My first thought in reading your post title was “What ‘Grand Strategy'”? Going back to just the end of the Cold War it doesn’t seem as though we’ve had any real strategy at all other than reacting to events as they occur.
My second thought is that if the strategy is indeed as Will presents it then our leaders have done a horrible job at communicating that to the American public.
You cannot communicate something you do not understand. But go back to my point: our grand strategy is an emergent phenomenon. It’s not the job of our leaders to communicate it to us. We’re communicating it to them. Their job is to recognize it and promote it.
The preferred course of most of our leaders is American hegemony, something that runs counter to our actual grand strategy.
I’m not sure where you are going with the thought, Dave. Could you elaborate?
Foreign vacations, car purchases and student hosting are entertainment, product and cultural preference decisions, respectively, within discretionary spending options. And they are not unique to Americans.
I can’t imagine that the term “guarantors of the global commons” as they are using it is just the acknowledgement that the world is full of bad guys and it falls, at least historically, on us to preserve trade and military options. Further, the business about the Middle East and democracy building or hegemony just seems like garden variety boneheadedness, and a separate issue from grand strategies or strategic interests.
It’s an idea elaborated on by Walter Russell Mead in his book, Power, Terror, Peace and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk. Contrary to what many believe the U. S. historically has had a grand strategy and it’s one that has been created not just by aristocrats and government ministers but by business and individuals as well. The idea is related to Joseph Nye’s notion of “soft power”.
Lately, i.e. the last 25 years in particular, our government has been trying to increase American hegemony largely by force of arms. That isn’t working out too well.
Thanks.