Revisiting Grand Strategy at the Inflection Point

I wish to provide some excerpts of my recent article that appeared in Orbis 68:4 (2024)

For the last thirty years, US grand strategy has been predicated on an expansive definition of US interests and optimistic assessments of US capabilities. In the changed global conditions of the 2020s, a fresh look at American global engagement needs to determine where, when, and under what conditions the United States ought to intervene. Thinking in terms of a national security “butterfly effect” and balancing that risk assessment against the realities of the “Lippmann Gap” (where strategic aspirations cannot exceed actual capabilities) produces a series of grand strategic options for policymakers.

...

At its core, grand strategy revolves around the two fundamental tasks of national security: deterrence and compellence. The United States—and every other country—seeks to maximize its ability to deter others from taking actions that it feels are inimical to its interests (while, in turn, minimizing the ability of others to do the same to us). The United States would also seek to induce other states to take steps that would bring them into closer alignment with US preferences while limiting their ability to do the same. Grand strategy, therefore, should describe “the art of manipulating costs and benefits to affect the behavior of an actor.”[1]

But at what level of granularity should the actions of other states and players in the international arena be deterred or compelled? And at what cost? Grand strategy must grapple with the national security version of mathematician Edward Norton Lorenz’s famous “butterfly effect.” (Lorenz’s thought experiment was to consider whether the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might set in motion an atmospheric perturbation that, over time and distance, would grow in strength and intensity until it would manifest itself in a destructive tornado several weeks and thousands of miles away.) At what point do the actions or inactions of other states, non-state actors or transnational phenomenon metastasize into problems for the United States? At what point must the United States intervene?

Grand strategy must also deal with what Samuel Huntington termed the “Lippmann Gap,” based on newspaper commentator Walter Lippmann’s 1943 observation that “foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.” The Lippmann Gap emerges when strategic aspirations exceed capacity, leading to insolvency. It is a potent reminder that a grand strategy must be rooted in realistic assessments of resources and capabilities.[2]

The relationships of the butterfly effect with the Lippman Gap defines the broad parameters of the “major ideal-type grand-strategy positions.”[3] One axis ... runs from non-involvement/non-interference to complete intervention. This spectrum also encompasses whether intervention is designed to shape outcomes or to mitigate consequences, with a more expansive view of involvement usually coinciding with an expectation that action is designed to change conditions. A second axis defines the geographic scope, from “close to home” to the “uttermost ends of the earth.” The third axis involves the relationship of burden-sharing to freedom of action. ... It deals with the willingness to unilaterally assume a greater share of costs in relationship to achievement of maximalist preferences without having to accommodate the desires of partners. Finally, there is the cost assessment axis (the die-kill-pay-ignore paradigm (per Derek Reveron ). This axis determines the level of intervention and commitment, as well as which statecraft tools are to be employed. Decisions involve whether all options are indeed on the table, and whether cost is no object in the course of achieving said objectives. ...

Primacy

Primacy takes an expansive view of the point in the butterfly effect when intervention is required. It is inclined to see remote events with no seemingly direct connection to US interests still posing a risk by initiating a chain of events that ultimately could negatively impact the United States. It also is inclined to take an expansive view of policy in terms of actively shaping the environment rather than mitigating particular consequences. ...

Liberal Internationalism

Prolonging a unipolar moment might be beyond the wherewithal of the United States, transforming it into a multilateral era might be more sustainable. Thus, liberal internationalism or the cooperative security approach calls for the United States to actively recruit a set of international partners who will willingly shoulder some of the burden of maintaining a global system that still generally favors American preferences and interests. ...

Looking Ahead

Moving forward and considering the conditions of the mid-twenty-first century, the question is whether, even with allies and partners, the United States will still be able to shape the global system. If the Lippmann Gap becomes more pronounced, will we see the emergence of US strategies that the late Devin Stewart described as “better suited to a moment in which American power is much less dominant,” with more defined limits to US involvement, whether on geographic or ideological terms. ...

Selective Engagement

The first of the grand strategies of restraint is usually termed “selective engagement.” As the name implies, it does not see the entire world as equally relevant or important to the United States. It accepts that much of what happens in the world has little or no direct bearing on American security. It calls for prioritizing American engagement and resources on those regions and issues that have an immediate impact on US national interests, with a secondary focus on containing problems in strategically less critical areas of the world from impacting the most crucial regions for US security. It explicitly rejects a global-wide venue for US foreign policy in favor of a “more limited and managed globalization.” ...

Strategic Restraint

Strategic restraint has an even less expansive assessment of the butterfly effect. It places significant trust that the United States retains sufficient deterrent power (especially in the nuclear realm) to disincentivize any challenger from seeking to interfere in its own domestic affairs. Whereas “selective engagers” have tended to accept a prevailing US strategic interest in maintaining ties with Western Europe, East Asia and the relevant Middle Eastern corridor that connects the two, strategic restrainers place a principal focus on America’s immediate neighborhood as the priority zone for US strategic interests. While the United States should maintain primacy in its immediate geographic neighborhood, its guidance for international affairs more broadly is the extent that the US power ?can be leveraged to help generate and sustain coalitions of states that can ensure problems in their regions do not become threats to America without requiring direct US involvement. ...

The answers that emerge from that dialogue–among political leaders, military and civilian experts, and the general public–and where all of them draw their lines on the axes of the butterfly effect and the Lippmann Gap–will lay the basis for an American grand strategy for the mid-twenty-first century.

[1] Tami Biddle Davis, “Coercion Theory: A Basic Introduction for Practitioners,” Texas National Security Review, vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 98-99; and Alexander Downes, “Step Aside or Face the Consequences: Explaining the Success and Failure of Compellent Threats to Remove Foreign Leaders,” in Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause, eds., Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 96.

[2] Samuel P. Huntington, “Coping with the Lippmann Gap,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 66, no. 3 (1987/1988), p. 453.

[3] Paul C. Avey, Jonathan N. Markowitz, and Robert J. Reardon, “Disentangling Grand Strategy: International Relations Theory and U.S. Grand Strategy,” Texas National Security Review, vol. 2, no 1 (Nov. 2018), p. 31.