Criteria of a Sensible Grand Strategy

Chuck Spinney | http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/criteria-of-sensible-grand-strategy.html

Criteria of a Sensible Grand Strategy

America's contemporary theory and practice of grand strategy can be summarized in the sound byte uttered in 2001 by President George W. Bush shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists."  With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that Bush’s primitive conception blew back on itself to create all sorts of problems at home and abroad.  It is also clear that, notwithstanding the blowback, this grand strategic outlook became even more entrenched and even intensified during the Presidential tenure of Barack Obama, as is evident in his unilateral escalation of drone attacks, the fatally-flawed Afghan Surge decision ([1] & [2]),  and the foreign and domestic spying by the NSA scandal, which included tapping the cell phones of close allies like German Prime Minister Angela Merkle.

Surely, the art of grand strategy is more subtle than a primitive self-referencing assertion of a unilateral military prerogative.  So, what makes up a sensible grand strategy? http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/criteria-of-sensible-grand-strategy.html