Primacy Without a Plan?
Abstract
Textbook models for policy and strategy formulation argue that grand strategic success relies on the effective development of a rational, consistent, meaningful, and -- to some extent -- consensus grand strategic design that enforces discipline and unity over the discrete policy choices of American government. One can, for example, make a cogent argument that foundational Cold War efforts established just such a grand strategic foundation, and that this foundation informed and guided strategic decision makers for half a century. These foundational Cold War initiatives chartered grand strategic choices for the nation that were ends-focused, progressively ways- and means-rationalized and thus more readily risk-informed. They enabled senior decision makers to see discrete policy choices within a strategic context that was broader and often more consequential than that which defined and bounded the most immediate challenges and crises of the day. In the end, it is safe to say that they enabled successive executives to make effective and rational cost-benefit calculations that enforced some consistency on policy decisions over time. By doing so, they also underwrote an ordered defense of the nation's long-term strategic interests. The post-Cold War reality is unfortunately quite different. Since the end of the Cold War the nation has had no grand strategy. Nor, for that matter, does it have the capacity for meaningful net assessment and planning. Today, the greatest risk to American position is not defeat at the hands of a peer competitor, but slow voluntary retreat from international activism hastened by a cultural aversion to grand strategic calculation and risk assessment. Absent a real ends-focused, ways- and means-rationalized, and risk-informed grand design, the United States is vulnerable to slow surrender to strategic exhaustion and voluntary retreat from that essential activism necessary to the security of its position in perpetuity.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA486413
Entities
People
- Nathan Freier
Organizations
- United States Army War College