Stephen Loosley comments on John Lewis Gaddis’s book, On Grand Strategy at RealClearDefense:
Gaddis’s new book, On grand strategy, is sweeping in its dimensions and ambitions. He succeeds in forensically examining episodes in human history from the Hellespont to Hue, underlining where strategic imperatives are either achieved courtesy of the matching of ends and means, or destroyed by lack of judgement.
Amazon.com’s squib on the book quotes a review in the Wall Street Journal: “The best education in grand strategy available in a single volume . . . a book that should be read by every American leader or would-be leader.” I wish they had elected to tell us who the reviewer at the Wall Street Journal was because not only does that advice suggest that he or she does not understand American grand strategy, it advises a course of action sure to frustrate any “American leader”.
We are not the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, or China. We do not have a grand strategy or, more precisely, American grand strategy is an emergent phenomenon created every day by the actions and born of the beliefs of millions of Americans. It is one of the great sources of frustration and mistrust of us by allies and enemies alike. One day we proclaim our eternal defense of human rights everywhere; the next we act in pursuit of crass economic advantage. In reaction to one challenge we back down or, more likely, don’t respond at all. In reaction to attack we respond with incredible ferocity.
American grand strategy is a compromise, worked out day by day in the interactions of people with different beliefs, whom Walter Russell Mead has characterized as optimistic realists (Hamiltonians), pessimistic realists (Jacksonians), optimistic idealists (Wilsonians), and pessimistic idealists (Jeffersonians). Paradoxically, our emergent grand strategy has resulted in one harder to characterize but more durable than those of the many competitors and enemies we’ve faced over the years, many of whom we’ve outlived.
Our emergent grand strategy is the reason that, ultimately, I’m unconcerned about North Korea, Russia, or China, each of which has an actual grand strategy more along the lines in which such things are actually thought of. Like Hrunting, those strategies will fail at the moment of greatest need while ours will muddle on.
This is wrong in the extreme. American grand strategy is set by a few thousand Deep State denizens, when they agree. The general public has little or no influence on the Deep State’s chosen strategy. We are its victims.
But, as Lavrov pointed out, the Deep State has internal conflicts, and it cannot produce stable strategies nor can it negotiate stable treaties. Gaddafi is merely one example. The history of deconfliction is Syria is another. The Deep State appears to have Defense, State, CIA, NSC, Presidency and other tribes. No tribe can be bound by the decisions of any other or group of others. Please note that Trump’s promise to extract us from foreign wars was vetoed by the Deep State. The Deep State also vetoed Obama’s campaign promises to get out of Iraq. We still have 6,000 or so troops on the ground there, and another 8,000 in Kuwait, and another 2,000 plus in Syria–all actively fighting.
One goal that all the Deep State tribes share is World Empire. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Deep State denizens deluded themselves into thinking that World Empire was a possibility, and it launched the American people (against their will) into numerous small wars around the world.
The only question is whether the Deep State will try to overcome its internal divisions by establishing a Principate. Like Rome, the Principate would be disguised in the paraphernalia of a Constitutional Republic, but the reality would be dictatorship. We are pretty close now.