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STRATEGIC

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External Research Associates Program Monograph

THE PROMISE AND PITFALLS OF GRAND 

STRATEGY

Hal Brands

August 2012

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ISBN 1-58487-543-7
iii

FOREWORD

Present debates about national security issues often 

revolve around the question of what type of “grand 

strategy” the United States should have. Yet, “grand 

strategy” itself can be a rather nebulous concept, and 

discussions of the issue can thus confuse more than 

they clarify. In this monograph, Hal Brands offers a 

thorough analysis of what grand strategy actually is, 

why it is so important, and why we often find it so challenging to design and implement. To do so, he draws 

on some of the classic strategic texts, as well as the history of two key moments in modern American grand 

strategy: the “golden age” of grand strategy during 

the Truman years at the outset of the Cold War, and 

the era of détente and triangular diplomacy with the 

Soviet Union and China during the Nixon-Kissinger 

years. Dr. Brands closes by offering a series of useful 

ideas for how American officials might approach the 

challenges of grand strategy in the 21st-century political and security environment. 

The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer 

this monograph as a useful contribution to the continuing debate over America’s role in a changing 

world.

 

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute

v

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HAL BRANDS is an Assistant Professor of Public 

Policy and History at Duke University. He previously 

worked at the Institute for Defense Analyses outside 

of Washington, DC. In 2012, he was named a member 

of the RAND Corporation’s Grand Strategy Advisory 

Board. He is the author of Latin America’s Cold War 

(2010) and From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for 

Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (2008), as well as 

numerous articles on grand strategy, U.S. foreign policy, Latin American politics and diplomacy, and other 

international security issues. Dr. Brands holds a Ph.D. 

in history from Yale University.

vii

SUMMARY

This monograph offers a critical examination of 

the idea and utility of “grand strategy.” The concept is 

very much in vogue these days, with commentators of 

all stripes invoking it in one way or another. But what 

the term actually means often remains unclear, and 

discussions of the issue too often muddle or obscure 

more than they illuminate. The purpose of this monograph, therefore, is to provide a more precise understanding of the meaning, importance, and challenges 

of American grand strategy—not to recommend any 

single grand strategy that the U.S. Government should 

follow, but to illuminate the promise and limitations 

of grand strategy as a national endeavor. 

To this end, the monograph addresses three principal tasks. First, it offers a general discussion of what 

grand strategy actually is, and why it is simultaneously so essential and so difficult to do. Second, it further fleshes out these issues by revisiting the doing of 

grand strategy at key inflection points in the history of 

U.S. foreign policy—during the Harry Truman years 

of the early Cold War, and during the Richard Nixon/

Gerald Ford/Henry Kissinger years between 1969 and 

1977. Third, this monograph offers several basic suggestions for how U.S. policymakers might approach 

grand strategy as an intellectual and geopolitical 

pursuit.

1

THE PROMISE AND PITFALLS OF GRAND 

STRATEGY

INTRODUCTION

“Grand strategy” is very much in vogue these 

days. In the 2 decades since the end of the Cold War, 

politicians and pundits alike have consistently proclaimed the need for a new American grand strategy, 

and they have just as consistently flayed their opponents for failing to deliver one. Academics, journalists, 

and public figures have authored books and articles 

advocating particular grand strategies; major publications like Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, and The 

Washington Post carry pieces discussing the concept in 

one way or another. In 2008, the House Armed Services Committee even held hearings on the subject of 

“A New Grand Strategy for the United States.” “The 

United States,” one prominent author has proclaimed, 

“is a superpower in search of a strategy.”1

But what exactly is “grand strategy?” Why is it 

so important and, it would seem, so elusive? Grand 

strategy, it turns out, is one of the most slippery and 

widely abused terms in the foreign policy lexicon. The 

concept is often invoked but less often defined, and 

those who do define the phrase do so in a variety of 

different, and often contradictory, ways. The result is 

that discussions of grand strategy are often confused 

or superficial. Too frequently, they muddle or obscure 

more than they illuminate.

The purpose of this monograph is to provide a 

more precise understanding of the meaning, importance, and challenges of American grand strategy. The 

aim is not to recommend any particular grand strategy 

that the U.S. Government should follow, but rather to 
2

illuminate the promise, perils, and limitations of grand 

strategy as an endeavor. To this end, the remainder 

of this monograph is divided into four sections. The 

first section offers a discussion of what grand strategy 

is, and why it is simultaneously so essential and so 

difficult to do. The second and third sections further 

flesh out these issues by revisiting the doing of grand 

strategy at key inflection points in the history of U.S. 

foreign policy: during the Harry Truman years in the 

late-1940s and early-1950s, and during the Richard 

Nixon/Gerald Ford/Henry Kissinger years between 

1969 and 1977. The fourth section offers several basic suggestions for thinking about present-day grand 

strategy as an intellectual and geopolitical pursuit. 

UNDERSTANDING GRAND STRATEGY

“The primary purpose of any theory,” wrote Carl 

von Clausewitz, “is to clarify concepts and ideas that 

have become, as it were, confused and entangled. Not 

until terms and concepts have been defined can one 

hope to make any progress in examining the question clearly and simply and expect the reader to share 

one’s views.”2

 This maxim offers an appropriate point 

of departure for an investigation of grand strategy. 

Grand strategy is a notoriously ambiguous concept. 

The term is often invoked but less often defined; those 

who do define the phrase do so in a variety of different ways. It is thus useful to begin by explaining how 

grand strategy is conceptualized in this monograph, 

so as to clarify the analysis that follows.3

There is no single, universally accepted definition 

of grand strategy. The British military historian Sir 

Basil Liddell Hart popularized the term during the 

mid-20th century, and most subsequent definitions of 
3

the concept have been based, in one way or another, 

on his insight that grand strategy involves synchronizing means and ends at the highest level of national 

policy.4 From here, however, concepts of grand strategy diverge considerably. Some analysts argue that 

the term applies mainly to wartime decisionmaking 

or military planning; others define it so broadly as to 

make it virtually identical to the concept of foreign 

policy as a whole. Some observers associate the idea 

of grand strategy with systematic planning and the 

promulgation of explicit “doctrines”; others contend 

that most grand strategies are more implicit and assumed than formally enunciated. Definitions of grand 

strategy are thus manifold, as are analyses that invoke 

the term without defining it.5

The fact that there are so many competing conceptions of grand strategy should probably tell us that the 

concept is subjective and ambiguous enough to defy 

any singular definition. The best an analyst can do is 

to strive for a definition that is, in the strategic theorist Colin Gray’s phrasing, “right enough.” That is, the 

definition “does not have to meet any and every objection, but it must highlight the core of its subject, and it 

must not mislead.”6

In this monograph, grand strategy is defined as 

the theory, or logic, that binds a country’s highest interests to its daily interactions with the world. Policymakers who are doing grand strategy are not simply 

reacting to events or handling them on a case-by-case 

basis; they are operating in accordance with a more 

structured and coherent idea of what their nation is 

out to accomplish in international affairs. Dedicated 

grand strategists should have a clear understanding 

of their country’s most essential interests, the primary 

threats to those interests, and the extent and limits of 
4

the resources available to ward off these threats and 

advance core interests. From this intellectual calculus 

flows policy, the various initiatives—diplomacy, the 

use of force, and others—through which states interact with foreign governments and peoples. At its best, 

then, grand strategy represents an integrated conception of interests, threats, resources, and policies. It is, 

in this sense, the intellectual architecture that gives 

structure to foreign policy and helps nations find their 

way in the world.7

For the sake of clarity, several aspects of this definition bear further elaboration. The first is that grand 

strategy is not any one aspect of foreign policy, nor is 

it foreign policy as a whole. Foreign policy is the sum 

total of a government’s interactions with the outside 

world. It is expressed through initiatives ranging from 

diplomacy to foreign aid to the use of military force. 

Grand strategy, in contrast, is the conceptual logic that 

ensures that such instruments are employed in ways 

that maximize the benefits for a nation’s core interests. 

Grand strategy inevitably shapes a nation’s foreign 

policy—and thus its military policy, its diplomacy, 

and other subsidiary components of foreign policy—

but the concepts are not one and the same.

Second, grand strategy provides the link between 

short-term actions and medium- and long-term goals. 

As noted above, grand strategy should flow not from 

mere reactions to day-to-day events, but from a judgment of those enduring interests that transcend any 

single crisis. As Dean Acheson once put it, the task 

of the strategist is “to look ahead, not into the distant 

future, but beyond the vision of the operating officers 

caught in the smoke and crises of current battle; far 

enough ahead to see the emerging form of things to 

come and outline what should be done to meet or an-
5

ticipate them.”8 Yet Acheson’s comment also implies 

that grand strategy is not just about setting mediumand long-term goals, but also about determining how 

to achieve those goals via the day-to-day conduct 

of foreign policy. In other words, grand strategy involves figuring out how to get from here to there; how 

to make today’s policies bring about tomorrow’s desired end state.

Third, as Liddell Hart argued several decades 

ago, grand strategy is preoccupied with the relationship between means and ends. Power is inherently 

multidimensional. It stems not only from a nation’s 

military might, but also from its economic strength, 

internal cohesion, ideological appeal, and other factors. Accordingly, grand strategy involves combining 

all aspects of national power to accomplish important 

objectives. Yet, nations, even great powers, exist in a 

world of limited resources, where capabilities are never sufficient to exploit all opportunities and confront 

all threats. To avoid overreach, states must determine 

which interests are truly vital and which threats and 

opportunities most urgent, and deploy their resources 

accordingly. Grand strategy is therefore a discipline of 

trade-offs: it requires using the full extent of national 

power when essential matters are at stake, but it also 

involves conserving and protecting the sources of that 

power.9

Fourth, grand strategy is as much a process as it is 

any single principle. When Americans think of grand 

strategy, they often think of terms like “containment,” 

the organizing principle that guided American policy 

for decades. But, as John Lewis Gaddis has pointed 

out, containment was not a single grand strategy but 

rather a string of several distinct grand strategies that 

took varying approaches to taming Soviet power. As 
6

circumstances changed, American grand strategy also 

evolved.10 Such is the case with grand strategy in general. Grand strategy occurs in a world where almost 

nothing sits still, so while its overall goal may remain 

constant, its various subcomponents—decisions on 

how best to allocate resources, for instance—must inevitably shift as well.

These first four points lead to a fifth, which is that 

grand strategy operates no less in peacetime than in 

wartime. To be sure, the need for grand strategy is 

most painfully evident in war, when threats are most 

severe, interests most imperiled, and resources most 

obviously stretched. Yet, the key premises of grand 

strategy—that states must link long-term interests to 

short- and medium-term policies, that they must prioritize among competing threats and often-contradictory goals—apply no less to the realm of peace than 

the realm of war. 

A sixth point concerns the issue of whether grand 

strategy has to be formally enunciated and defined 

to qualify as such. The answer, in a word, is “no.” 

The term “grand strategy” is a relatively recent one, 

and the notion that states should explicitly articulate their grand strategies—whether in public or in 

private—arose more recently still.11 Moreover, while 

some statesmen do deliberately set out to construct, 

piece by piece, a logical chain running from interests 

to threats to policies, foreign policy is often made in a 

less systematic manner. 

Yet, regardless of whether or not a country’s leaders seek to lay out a formal grand strategy, they inevitably engage in grand strategy nonetheless. All 

countries must make trade-offs between competing 

interests and priorities. All leaders—consciously 

or unconsciously, on the basis of reasoned analysis, 
7

pure ideology, or something in between—make judgments about which goals are most important and 

which threats are most deserving of attention. “All 

states have a grand strategy,” notes Edward Luttwak, 

“whether they know it or not.”12

All states thus do grand strategy, but many of them 

do not do it particularly well. “Those who have developed successful grand strategies in the past have been 

much the exception,” writes noted historian Williamson Murray. “Wars begun with little or no thought of 

their consequences, assumptions unchallenged in the 

face of harsh reality, the possibility of second- or thirdorder effects casually dismissed with the shrug of a 

shoulder, and idle ignorance substituted for serious 

consideration have bedeviled the actions of statesmen 

and generals over the course of recorded history.”13

This brings us to two additional points about grand 

strategy: that it is essential to effective statecraft, but it 

is also immensely challenging to pull off.

Why Is Grand Strategy So Important?

A coherent grand strategy is fundamental to successful statecraft for several reasons. The first of these 

has to do with the inevitable gap between resources 

and interests. When it comes to foreign policy, there are 

simply never enough resources to go around. Money, 

troops, intelligence assets, time, and other resources 

are always insufficient to neutralize every threat and 

exploit every opportunity. Nor are great powers exempt from this dilemma. Expanding interests come 

with new opportunities and new threats, and even 

the most powerful countries the modern world has 

ever seen—the British Empire at its peak; the United 

States in the wake of World War II and after the Cold 
8

War—frequently struggled to meet the multitude of 

demands imposed upon them. The prioritizing function of grand strategy is thus essential. If statesmen 

are to avoid overreach and eventual national decline, 

they must maintain a clear conception of their core interests and deploy their resources accordingly.14

Second, even if great powers can avoid this resource 

dilemma, the diversity of their interests risks exposing 

them to distraction and confusion. Great powers—superpowers especially—often have interests in nearly 

every region of the world, and find themselves dealing with dozens of foreign policy issues from day to 

day. Even if it were possible to address all of these 

issues on a case-by-case basis, the various solutions 

would inevitably come into conflict with one another. 

For governments lacking a firm grasp of core interests and priorities, there is thus a danger that policy 

will wander according to the crisis or fashion of the 

moment. Statecraft will go in multiple, contradictory 

directions; leaders will succumb to “theateritis”—the 

tendency to neglect the broader geopolitical significance of a given problem.15 A coherent grand strategy, 

by contrast, offers what one scholar calls a “conceptual center of gravity,” an ability to keep fundamental 

interests squarely in view in dealing with a range of 

complex and often contradictory demands.16

These first two points are closely related to a third, 

which is, that grand strategy provides statesmen with 

the “heuristic power” needed to address the insistent 

demands of global diplomacy.17 The nature of foreign 

policy is that it confronts statesmen with challenges for 

which they have not adequately prepared, or which 

they have not even considered. In many cases, these 

challenges must be addressed in days or hours rather 

than weeks or months—in other words, there is no op-
9

portunity for prolonged reflection on all aspects of the 

matter. No grand strategy can offer ready-made solutions to these crises, but performing the intellectual 

tasks involved in doing grand strategy—defining and 

prioritizing interests and threats, understanding the 

extent and limits of a state’s capabilities—can provide 

statesmen with the basic conceptual backdrop against 

which to formulate a response. 

Fourth, and perhaps most important, grand strategy is crucial because it is so difficult to compensate 

for flaws and shortcomings therein. Effective statecraft is not just a product of competent grand strategy: it requires efficient execution by the soldiers and 

diplomats who occupy the lower levels of foreign 

policy as well. That said, states with a well-crafted 

grand strategy may be able to overcome or correct 

mistakes in the daily conduct of military or diplomatic policy, while those with a fundamentally deficient grand strategy will be hard pressed to preserve 

their core interests over the medium and long term. 

If statecraft flows from an incoherent grand strategy 

based on misperceptions of fundamental interests or 

flawed calculations of what a state’s resources will allow, or if diplomacy and military force are allowed 

to proceed without guidance from these higher-level 

assessments, even brilliant tactical performance may 

ultimately be for naught.18

The most notorious example of this phenomenon 

is Wilhelmine Germany. Before and during World 

War I, Germany pursued a number of policies that 

made sense in narrow tactical or operational terms, 

but neglected larger grand strategic considerations 

that eventually proved ruinous to the higher interests 

of the state. The construction of a fleet of blue-water 

battleships made Germany a leading sea power, but 
10

also ensured the enmity of the one nation—Great 

Britain—whose naval expenditures Berlin could not 

hope to match. The Schlieffen Plan was designed to 

meet the challenge of a two-front conflict with France 

and Russia, but by requiring German troops to violate 

Belgian neutrality, it ensured that a wavering Great 

Britain would enter the struggle as well. The decision 

to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in early1917 was meant to resolve this dilemma by starving 

Britain into submission, but it was also virtually certain to bring the United States into the conflict. In each 

case, the imperatives of prudent grand strategy—the 

need to minimize the number of one’s enemies, the 

need to ensure that military strategy conformed to the 

larger purposes of the state—ceded pride of place to 

lower-level considerations. The consequences were 

ultimately disastrous.19

Why Is Grand Strategy So Difficult?

In many ways, the challenge of grand strategy 

flows directly from its meaning. As defined in this 

monograph, grand strategy is an inherently difficult 

endeavor that will tax the abilities of even the most 

capacious leader. It requires a holistic view of interests, threats, and resources, as well as an understanding of the multidimensional yet finite nature of power. 

Grand strategy demands the ability to make sense of a 

multitude of complicated and confusing international 

events, and an awareness of how a country’s responses to these events may complement or contradict one 

another. Doing grand strategy also necessitates the vision to link today’s policies to a country’s highest and 

most enduring interests, and the willingness to make 

hard decisions about priorities and trade-offs. In sum, 
11

grand strategy is not simply a struggle against one 

enemy or another; it is a fight against the complexity, disorder, and distraction that inevitably clutter the 

global scene. It is bound to be an exacting task, one 

full of potential pitfalls.

Indeed, if grand strategy is an important pursuit, it 

can also be a deeply problematic one. Grand strategy 

has been referred to as an ecological discipline, in that 

it calls for a holistic perspective on world affairs. Yet, 

it is also a reductionist discipline, because it impels 

leaders to impose a sense of order and coherence on 

a stubbornly complicated international environment. 

This tendency is unavoidable, of course, but when 

taken too far, it can also be pernicious. The world is 

far too complex to be reduced to any single organizing framework. There is thus a fine line between clarity and dogmatism, between a useful heuristic and a 

distorting myopia. As U.S. officials often found during the Cold War, in fact, too intense a focus on any 

particular principle or strategy can lock a country into 

inflexible interpretations of events that are inevitably 

idiosyncratic. This tension between coherence and rigidity is a constant in the making of grand strategy, 

even in the best of circumstances.20

Unfortunately, grand strategy is rarely made in the 

best of circumstances. Rather, it must be forged by officials who operate under significant constraints and 

pressure, and who are prone to the same cognitive fallibilities that plague all humans. Like all people, statesmen operate in a world of bounded rather than perfect 

rationality.21 Their decisions are shaped by the limits 

of their own intelligence as well as the potent mixture 

of values, experience, and ideology that make up their 

worldview.22 Moreover, they make these choices in a 

world of imperfect information, and where conditions 
12

can change rapidly and unpredictably. “The greater 

our involvement in the world, the more the railroad 

train which always seems to be coming down the 

track toward you is likely to hit you,” Henry Kissinger once remarked. “And while the chance that the 

train will hit you is growing enormously, your ability 

to deal thoughtfully with issues is of course declining.”23 Grand strategy cannot, in these circumstances, 

be a product of pure rationality and total awareness; it 

derives from a mishmash of cognitive influences and 

an incomplete understanding of world affairs. 

Simply devising a coherent grand strategy is thus 

challenging enough for most policymakers. Unfortunately, conception represents only half the battle, for 

there are numerous stumbling blocks to implementation as well. One such obstacle is the bureaucratic 

system through which any grand strategy must be 

executed. Bureaucracies are designed to provide expertise and routinization—both of which can be quite 

helpful to foreign policy. Yet, in the American system 

as in other systems, bureaucracies can also be ponderous, resistant to change, and hostile to policies—however wise or foolish those policies may be—that seem 

detrimental to their own organizational interests. As 

a result, what is desired by a policymaker and what 

is actually implemented by the bureaucracy can be 

two very different things.24 Conflict between different 

bureaucracies within a single government can similarly hinder the formulation and execution of policy. 

Finally, even if the bureaucracy seeks to implement a 

leader’s policy faithfully, the process of transmission 

between the high-level officials and planners who 

craft a grand strategic concept and the diplomats, soldiers, and other lower-level individuals who carry it 

out brings with it the risk of distortion. “Even if we 
13

had the most excellent conceptual foundation for an 

American foreign policy and the greatest mastery of 

diplomatic method in our external relations,” George 

Kennan once remarked, “I feel we would still find 

ourselves seriously hampered, as things stand today, 

by the cumbersomeness of our governmental machinery.”25

Grand strategists also have to contend with the 

characteristics of the American political system. 

Contrary to what is sometimes thought, it is far too 

simplistic to see democracy solely as an impediment 

to purposeful statecraft. Walter Russell Mead, for instance, has compellingly argued that democracy is 

good for the long-term health of grand strategy, because it provides mechanisms for aggregating interests and correcting flawed policies. Similarly, democracy and grand strategy must always go together in 

the American system, for the simple reason that the 

highest purpose of the latter should be the preservation of the former.26

But even so, the push and pull of democratic politics is very much a mixed blessing when it comes to 

grand strategy. The diversity of interests within a 

large nation like the United States can make it difficult 

to identify a single “national interest.”27 Even if such 

an interest is defined, the routine features of democratic rule—partisan wrangling, legislative-executive 

discord, the state of public opinion—can throw the 

entire process off kilter. Democratic governance may 

reward statesmen for placing acceptability above effectiveness, and it may punish them for making more 

enlightened choices.28 To the extent that a successful 

grand strategy requires secrecy and surprise, it may 

prove even more challenging to execute in a system 

that prizes openness and transparency.
14

Internal obstacles aside, grand strategy must be 

implemented in the same tumultuous international 

environment in which it is formulated. Rarely do 

events conform to the expectations of even experts on 

international affairs. More commonly, implementation of policy will be buffeted by a range of surprising 

and unwelcome developments. A country’s actions 

can be frustrated by those of its enemies; they can also 

produce blowback in the form of unpredicted (and 

perhaps unpredictable) third- or fourth-order reactions. Clausewitzian friction is a constant; what that 

Prussian officer wrote about war is no less applicable 

to grand strategy: 

Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest 

thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end 

by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable 

unless one has experienced war. . . . Countless minor 

incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—

combine to lower the general level of performance, so 

that one always falls far short of the intended goal.29

At best, then, the doing of grand strategy is a 

daunting task that requires flexibility, resilience, and 

a capacity for adaptation. The end point of a grand 

strategy may remain constant, but the route between 

here and there will have to be adjusted as new threats 

and opportunities arise. This being the case, grand 

strategy places a premium not just on leadership and 

a willingness to look ahead, but on the judgment and 

wisdom needed to determine whether perseverance, 

adaptation, or some mixture of the two constitutes the 

proper route forward. 

Yet, this is undeniably a tall order—so tall, in fact, 

that any number of U.S. officials have questioned 

whether consistent, purposeful grand strategy is even 
15

possible. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance put the issue squarely in the late 1970s. “Policy is baloney,” he 

said—better to simply deal with world events on a 

case-by-case basis.30 Some 15 years later, President Bill 

Clinton explicitly rejected the notion that grand strategy was a useful concept. “Strategic coherence,” he 

told one adviser, “was largely imposed after the fact 

by scholars, memoirists and ‘the chattering classes’.”31

These critiques of grand strategy may say as much 

about the limitations of these particular officials as 

about the limitations of the concept itself. Still, the 

fact remains that the dilemmas of grand strategy have 

long perplexed even the most geopolitically minded 

and competent of American presidential administrations. Both the importance and the difficulty of this 

process are evident from a brief examination of the 

experiences of two such administrations: the Truman 

administration in the late 1940s and early-1950s, and 

the Nixon/Ford administrations 2 decades later. 

TRUMAN AND THE “GOLDEN AGE”

The Truman years (1945-53) are often thought of 

as the golden age of American grand strategy, a time 

when a determined President and a group of talented 

subordinates laid down enduring policies for containing Soviet power and stabilizing a shaken global 

order. Dean Acheson famously (and immodestly) 

titled his account of these years Present at the Creation, 

while Clark Clifford, another of Truman’s advisers, 

later opined that “we saved Europe, and we saved 

the world.”32 Since the end of the Cold War, pundits 

and policymakers alike have similarly described the 

Truman era as a time of unmatched grand strategic 

foresight and innovation, and invoked it as a refer-
16

ence point in debates on present-day foreign policy.33

A brief review of this period can thus be useful in illuminating the full messiness of Truman-era grand 

strategy, and in clarifying the insights for our own era.

The basic grand strategic problem of the Cold War 

flowed directly from the outcome of World War II. 

The defeat of Germany and Japan opened up massive 

power vacuums in Europe and East Asia, while also 

advancing Soviet influence deeper into these regions 

than ever before. Hopes for continued superpower 

cooperation soon faded amid a series of bilateral disputes, and by early-1946, U.S. officials were confronted with the prospect of a geopolitical struggle against 

a ruthless totalitarian regime that seemed well-positioned to exploit the instability of the postwar world. 

“We have here,” wrote George Kennan in his famous 

Long Telegram, “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the United States, there can 

be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and 

necessary that the internal harmony of our society be 

disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the 

international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet 

power is to be secure.”34

Kennan’s Long Telegram, and his later “X Article” 

in Foreign Affairs, laid out the intellectual rationale for 

the containment policy that would guide the United 

States for the next 4 decades. The Kremlin was determined to seek the “total destruction of rival power,” 

he argued, but was in no hurry to do so. Badly weakened by World War II, and conscious of the superior 

overall power of the United States, the Soviets would 

retreat when met with determined resistance. War 

could thus be avoided; it should be possible to check 

Soviet advances through “a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unal-
17

terable counterforce at every point where they show 

signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful 

and stable world.” Over the long term, in fact, such 

a policy would reveal the falsity of Marxist-Leninist 

dogma, exacerbate the inner rottenness and decrepitude of Kremlin rule, and thereby bring about “either 

the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.”35 Through calm and patient statecraft, the United 

States might transcend the Soviet challenge altogether. 

Kennan’s writings helped crystallize the incipient 

Cold War consensus in Washington, and provided an 

intellectual backdrop for a series of moves designed 

to thwart the spread of Soviet influence—whether actual or merely feared—in 1946 and early 1947. Among 

other things, the Truman administration confronted 

the Kremlin over the presence of Soviet troops in 

northern Iran, lent strong diplomatic support to Turkey in a dispute over Soviet access to the Dardanelles, 

and took steps to prevent Moscow from participating in the occupation of Japan or gaining control of 

the entire Korean peninsula. When the cash-strapped 

United Kingdom (UK) terminated support to Greece 

(whose government was under assault by communist 

guerrillas) and Turkey in early-1947, the Truman administration pledged to fill the void, with the President declaring, in universalistic terms, that the United 

States must henceforth “support free peoples who are 

resisting subjugation by armed minorities or outside 

pressures.”36

Containment had thus become the organizing 

principle for U.S. foreign policy. Even into the first 

months of 1947, however, this determination to hold 

the line against Moscow had not yet been translated 

into a coherent grand strategy for attaining that goal. 

Neither the Long Telegram nor the X Article went be-
18

yond vague generalities in describing what a policy 

of containment should actually look like. Means and 

ends were badly out of alignment, as fears of inflation 

and pressures from a retrenchment-minded Congress 

led Truman to slash military expenditures just as his 

administration was piling up commitments along the 

Eurasian periphery. “We were spread from hell to 

breakfast,” Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett later 

recalled, “all around the world.”37 Bureaucratic disarray and interservice rivalry compounded the problem, preventing the emergence of any unified scheme 

of priorities in the struggle with Moscow. “There has 

been a notable lack of any central planning on American policy,” noted Secretary of the Navy (later Secretary of Defense) James Forrestal in April 1947.38

A grand strategy did gradually begin to take shape 

in 1947-48, primarily under the leadership of Secretary of State George Marshall, Forrestal, Kennan (now 

head of policy planning at the State Department), and 

a collection of other second-tier officials. The administration first responded to a dramatic deterioration 

of social and economic conditions in Western Europe 

by launching the Marshall Plan in June 1947. The European Recovery Program (ERP), as it was formally 

known, aimed to use an infusion of U.S. aid to revive 

self-confidence and economic growth in the region, 

rehabilitate and reconstruct the western zones of Germany, and thereby avert the prospect of communist 

gains in the region. In early-1948, Kennan’s Policy 

Planning Staff (PPS) oversaw a similar shift in U.S. 

policy toward Japan. U.S. authorities largely ended the 

punitive aspects of the occupation, focusing instead 

on restoring economic growth and political stability 

under a conservative, anti-communist leadership. In 

both cases, the overriding goal of U.S. policy was to 
19

restore a stable global balance by revitalizing forces 

of resistance in the major industrial areas of Eurasia. 

Kennan concisely summarized this grand strategy in 

1948. “Any world balance of power means first and 

foremost a balance on the Eurasian land mass,” he 

said. “That balance is unthinkable as long as Germany 

and Japan remain power vacuums.”39

As this comment indicates, the grand strategy that 

developed during 1947-48 was rooted in a determined 

effort to establish priorities and derive maximum utility from limited resources. As it focused on Western 

Europe and Japan, the administration also sought to 

scale down its commitment to exposed or untenable 

positions, reducing support for Chiang Kai-Shek’s 

corrupt regime in China in late-1947-48 and eventually withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea as well. 

It was necessary, Marshall said in 1948, “to conserve 

our very limited strength and apply it only where it 

was likely to be most effective.”40 In the same vein, 

the administration placed primary importance not on 

rearming to compensate for the Kremlin’s conventional superiority in Europe and the Far East, but on 

using political and economic measures to foster longterm stability in these areas. “The United States had 

everything which the world needed to restore it to 

normal and the Russians had nothing—neither capital 

nor goods nor food,” said Forrestal. Provided that the 

United States retained superior overall power, it could 

therefore emphasize economic and political reconstruction in the key areas of Eurasia and tolerate otherwise-intimidating asymmetries in the conventional 

military balance. “As long as we can out produce the 

world, can control the sea and can strike inland with 

the atomic bomb, we can assume certain risks otherwise unacceptable,” Forrestal commented. “The years 
20

before any possible power can achieve the capability 

effectively to attack us with weapons of mass destruction are our years of opportunity.”41

Over the long term, the benefits of this approach 

would be substantial. Historians generally agree that 

the Marshall Plan played a key role in breaking bottlenecks, stabilizing trade, encouraging regional integration, and catalyzing the economic recovery that took 

hold in the late 1940s and 1950s. The “reverse course” 

in Japan had a similar effect, acting as the indispensable first step toward decades of growth and stability.42 Additionally, and in a broader sense, the decision 

to avoid the high costs associated with a major rearmament campaign lessened the chances of a political 

blowup at home that might have undercut Truman’s 

internationalism before it even got off the ground. In 

this respect, a key advantage of the administration’s 

grand strategy was that it minimized the pain—economic and political—of American globalism in the 

crucial early period of the Cold War.

It would take some time for these advantages to 

become apparent, however, because in early-1948, 

the geopolitical situation looked as threatening and 

tenuous as ever. The Marshall Plan would eventually 

put Western Europe on the road to recovery, but in 

the short term, it actually touched off a new set of crises. Launching ERP had required Western European 

governments to take risky steps, like evicting communists from their own governments and acquiescing in the economic revival of West Germany. Not 

surprisingly, these measures raised tensions with the 

Soviets, antagonized powerful communist parties in 

Italy and France, and exacerbated feelings of insecurity throughout Western Europe. Anxieties ran high, 

essential economic reforms stalled, and the future of 
21

the continent looked ominous indeed. European fears 

only intensified in 1948, with the Soviet-backed coup 

in Czechoslovakia and the onset of the Berlin blockade. The Europeans, Marshall told Forrestal and the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), were “‘completely out of 

their skin, and sitting on their nerves,’ and hope must 

be recreated in them very soon.”43

The crisis in Europe showed that while the overall 

goals of American grand strategy remained sound, 

the tactics needed adjustment. The Truman administration had not initially planned to make a formal military commitment to Western Europe; the expectation 

was that economic aid would be sufficient to restore 

stability. Yet, it was now becoming clear that economic and political reconstruction could proceed only in 

the climate of security that an American defense guarantee would provide. The crux of the matter, wrote 

one official in 1948, was that “neither ERP nor military 

support . . . can achieve success without the other.”44

As a result, the administration found itself assuming 

a new set of obligations in Europe. It launched a major military assistance program for the region; more 

significantly still, it agreed to full U.S. participation 

in a transatlantic military alliance, the North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization (NATO), and pledged to defend 

Western Europe at the Rhine in case of war. The idea, 

as Charles Bohlen put it, was to “instill that sense of 

security in the people which they felt so essential if 

recovery was to go forward.”45 If it took the nation’s 

first peacetime military alliance to do this, so be it.

Meanwhile, American responsibilities in Asia were 

also expanding during the late 1940s. With resources 

stretched thin, U.S. officials had little desire to undertake major commitments on the Asian mainland, but 

remaining aloof from the area quickly proved impossi-
22

ble. Revitalizing the Japanese economy meant finding 

markets for its exports and raw materials for its industries, and Southeast Asia in particular loomed large 

as a source of both. Japan was “the natural workshop 

for the Far East,” Kennan noted in 1949. “You have 

the terrific problem of how then the Japanese are going to get along unless they again reopen some sort of 

empire toward the south.”46 This imperative, in turn, 

led the Truman administration to become increasingly 

preoccupied with the prospect that the communist-led 

Vietminh might come to power in French Indochina. 

The result was as logical as it would ultimately be 

tragic. By 1949, the United States was firmly committed to the survival of the French-backed monarchy in 

Saigon; by the early-1950s, the United States would be 

paying most of the costs of Paris’s war in Indochina. 

Truman’s grand strategy emphasized defending the 

core industrial areas of Eurasia, but it led to questionable commitments along the periphery as well.47

While the liabilities of U.S. involvement in Indochina would become apparent only with time, other 

strategic dilemmas facing the administration were 

far more immediate. As America’s responsibilities 

had accumulated in 1948-49, its capabilities had not 

kept pace. In Western Europe, the administration had 

pledged to defend the Rhine in wartime, but because 

Truman was determined to hold military expenditures 

down, the United States possessed nothing like the 

conventional military capabilities necessary to fulfill 

this obligation. “The trouble,” Marshall pointed out as 

early as February 1948, “was that we are playing with 

fire while we have nothing with which to put it out.”48

American officials continued to believe that the atomic 

monopoly provided an insurance policy of sorts, but 

they were aware that this was an increasingly thin reed 
23

to lean on in the event that war broke out by miscalculation or design. As Truman acknowledged, “We have 

the atomic bomb; but we must recognize the present 

limitations of our strategic methods for delivering it, 

and the vast problem of subduing a sprawling empire 

stretching from Kamchatka to the Skaggerak [sic] with 

this weapon.”49 Looking back on the period, Acheson 

(Marshall’s successor at State) put it even more bluntly: “Mr. Truman’s period of retrenchment in 1948 and 

1949 . . . put means out of relation with ends.”50

The political foundations of American grand strategy were also shakier than they appeared. Between 

early-1947 and mid-1949, the Truman administration 

had been blessed with a remarkable degree of bipartisan support for its major policy initiatives. That support owed partially to the administration’s assiduous 

courtship of leading Republicans like Senator Arthur 

Vandenberg, and also to its use of highly ideological 

and even Manichean rhetoric to market the Truman 

Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO at home. “The 

only way we can sell the public on our new policy,” 

wrote one official in early 1947, “is by emphasizing 

the necessity of holding the line: communism vs. democracy should be the major theme.”51 Such rhetoric 

served its immediate political purpose, but it also limited the administration’s subsequent ability to control 

the domestic debate. As one scholar has recently noted, “Much of the rhetoric used in the service of ratifying the Marshall Plan—often hyperbolic, apocalyptic, 

and brazenly anti-Communist—became woven into 

the cultural milieu, largely to the dismay of American 

policymakers.”52

It was in this uncertain climate that the United 

States absorbed two geopolitical shocks in late 1949. 

The triumph of communist forces in China in October 
24

had long been anticipated by the Truman administration; yet, it nonetheless had a jarring effect on policymakers and the American public. Having earlier touted the “communism vs. democracy” line, Truman and 

his advisers now found it difficult to explain why the 

“loss” of the world’s most populous country was not a 

major setback in the struggle against Moscow. Sensing 

weakness, Republican critics savaged Truman’s China 

policy, severely limiting his flexibility in dealing with 

the new regime in Beijing.53 No less problematic, the 

conclusion of the Sino-Soviet treaty of friendship and 

alliance several months later led U.S. officials to fear 

that China might became a launching pad for efforts 

to destabilize the entire region. “From our viewpoint,” 

Acheson commented, “the Soviet Union possesses 

position of domination in China which it is using to 

threaten Indochina, push in Malaya, stir up trouble in 

the Philippines, and now to start trouble in Indonesia.”54

More unsettling still was news of the first Soviet 

atomic test in August 1949. Most U.S. officials believed 

that Moscow still desired to avoid war, but they worried that an emboldened Joseph Stalin might launch 

limited probes around the periphery or seek to intimidate Western Europe and Japan into distancing themselves from the United States. “As the Soviet military 

potential increases relative to that of the United States 

and its allies,” one intelligence estimate predicted, 

“the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] will 

doubtless be willing to take greater risks than before 

in pursuit of its aims.”55 The potential for “blackmail,” 

the JCS told Truman, was “tremendous.”56 The United 

States had lost a key strategic advantage, and the policy of limited rearmament now seemed unacceptably 

dangerous. 
25

These developments thus set in train another key 

shift in U.S. strategy. In early-1950, Truman approved 

the development of thermonuclear weapons, and 

called for a comprehensive review of national security 

policy. The result, known as National Security Council (NSC)-68, endorsed the overall goals of American 

policy, but it argued that the United States could secure a favorable balance of global power only through 

the sort of comprehensive rearmament program that 

Truman had so far avoided. “Without superior aggregate military strength,” wrote Paul Nitze, the primary 

drafter of the document, “a policy of containment . . . 

is no more than a policy of bluff.”57 The United States 

needed the capabilities to make good on its proliferating global commitments, and to confront the Kremlin with superior strength at every turn. “The United 

States and the Soviet Union are engaged in a struggle 

for preponderant power,” he later wrote. “To seek 

less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat.”58 To achieve this level of power, Nitze estimated, defense expenditures would have to rise roughly 

threefold from their current level of less than $15 billion annually.

Truman initially hesitated to endorse this amount 

of defense spending, but his reluctance was overcome 

by the onset of the Korean War in June 1950. U.S. officials had not considered the defense of South Korea 

to be a vital interest in the period prior to the invasion; 

American troops had been withdrawn in 1949, Pentagon war plans envisioned the abandonment of the 

peninsula in the event of global conflict, and Acheson 

had placed Korea outside the U.S. “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific in his speech to the National Press 

Club in early 1950. Yet, given the streak of Soviet successes in the run-up to Korea, Truman and his advisers 
26

feared that a failure to act would have disastrous psychological consequences around the world. “We must 

draw the line somewhere,” said JCS Chairman Omar 

Bradley.59 Truman agreed, dispatching U.S. forces to 

meet the invasion. Amid an unexpected crisis, the administration found itself recommitting to a position it 

had earlier sought to discard. 

The Korean War also cleared the way for the approval of NSC-68 and a variety of measures meant to 

achieve the preponderant power that Nitze sought. 

Defense spending soared from an expected $13.5 billion to over $48 billion during fiscal year 1951. NATO 

become an integrated military structure, as Truman 

named Dwight Eisenhower supreme commander of 

the alliance and made preparations to send at least 

four additional divisions, with accompanying tactical airpower, to Western Europe. The administration 

also began to seek West German rearmament under 

NATO auspices, took steps toward a peace treaty and 

security alliance with Japan, increased its aid to the 

French in Indochina, and used naval forces to neutralize the Taiwan Strait and ensure the survival of Nationalist forces on that island. The basic ethos of U.S. 

policy was best captured by Acheson in late 1950: 

It would not be too much if we had all the troops the 

military want. If we had all of the things that our European allies want it would not be too much. If we 

had a system for full mobilization it would not be too 

much. Secretary Acheson said that how we get there 

he doesn’t know, but he feels that the danger couldn’t 

be greater than it is.60

As Melvyn Leffler observed, U.S. grand strategy 

had come to emphasize waging limited war in Korea while seeking what Acheson called “situations of 

strength” in Europe and other key theaters.61
27

In the overheated climate of mid- and late-1950, 

however, the administration made a major geopolitical blunder. Truman, Acheson, and other top officials 

understood that the United States should not risk a 

wider war in Korea before the military buildup associated with NSC-68 had taken full effect. Yet following Douglas MacArthur’s dramatic success at Inchon, 

Korea, in September, Truman nonetheless permitted his field commander to seek the destruction of 

enemy forces and the reunification of the peninsula 

rather than a return to the status quo ante. Anything 

less than full victory, administration officials feared, 

would represent “a policy of appeasement” at a time 

when McCarthyism was in full flower, and would 

constitute a forsaken chance to deal a sharp blow to 

world communism. “If this is not done,” wrote one 

State Department official, “the people of Korea will 

lose all faith in the courage, intelligence, and morality 

of the United States. And I, for one, would not blame 

them.”62 The upshot was a massive Chinese intervention in November 1950, resulting in one of the worst 

military setbacks in American history and leading to 

fears that nuclear—even global—war might be in the 

offing. 

The Truman administration’s response to this setback demonstrated both the promise and perils of its 

grand strategy. Truman, Acheson, and Bradley wisely rejected MacArthur’s call to expand the war into 

China, instead focusing American energies on a slew 

of initiatives to strengthen the broader U.S. geopolitical position. “We should not think in terms of Korea 

alone,” Acheson insisted, “but in world-wide terms 

and what we face around the world, principally in Europe.”63 The administration pushed ahead with plans 

for German rearmament, expanded NATO to include 
28

Greece and Turkey, and signed defense pacts with 

Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. 

The U.S. Army grew by nearly 1 million personnel 

and 10 divisions; the Navy added some 450 ships and 

over 400,000 sailors; the Air Force roughly doubled 

in size; the Marine Corps grew from 74,000 to 246,000 

personnel. The U.S. atomic arsenal increased from 

299 weapons at the end of 1950 to 841 by 1952, giving 

Washington a 17-to-1 advantage in nuclear arms.64 By 

early 1953, Truman had assembled a position of great 

geopolitical strength and effectively ensured that the 

key geostrategic regions of Western Europe and East 

Asia would remain tightly linked to the United States.

Yet, the price of all this was significant. Truman’s 

policy of limited war left the United States mired in a 

bloody conflict that placed great strain on American 

resources. Korea, commented Marshall (now Secretary of Defense) in 1951, was “a great inconvenience 

. . . a very heavy drain on us.” There were also questions as to how long the United States could afford the 

massive military buildup prescribed by NSC-68. “Our 

resources are not inexhaustible,” Truman lamented in 

1952. “We can’t go on like this.”65 Nitze and Acheson 

disagreed, but most scholars have since concluded 

that the combination of high taxes, wage and price 

controls, and budget deficits that NSC-68 entailed 

would have been economically unsustainable over the 

long run. In any case, they were politically unsustainable in the short and medium term. Eisenhower called 

for a balanced budget and defense cuts upon taking 

office in 1953, and Truman left the White House as 

one of the least popular Presidents in modern history. 

The “golden age,” in other words, did not appear so 

golden at the time.66
29

So what can all of this tell us about Truman-era 

grand strategy, and about the broader challenges of 

grand strategy as a national endeavor? First, it is clear 

that there was real creativity, wisdom, and purpose in 

American policy during the Truman years. Relatively 

early on, the administration came to two fundamental 

grand strategic insights that made up the intellectual 

core of containment: the realization that there was a 

middle ground between appeasement and war, and 

the idea that checking Soviet advances meant, first and 

foremost, establishing a favorable balance of power in 

Europe and East Asia. The United States subsequently 

constructed that balance through seminal initiatives 

like the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the rehabilitation 

of former enemies in West Germany and Japan. It then 

defended that balance through the rearmament program and political-military initiatives undertaken in 

response to the Korean War and NSC-68. In this sense, 

grand strategy did its job: it provided the intellectual 

ballast that allowed Truman to navigate the dangers 

of the early-Cold War. 

Yet, Truman-era grand strategy was also a messy 

affair, and in some cases a deeply problematic one as 

well. Containment did not spring forth fully formed 

from the pen of George Kennan; it was an idea whose 

practical implications had to be worked out amid the 

myriad crises and shocks of the day. That workingout process, in turn, could be quite vexing for the Truman administration. The President and his advisers 

continually struggled to reconcile America’s growing 

military and political commitments with its limited capabilities, and to mobilize domestic support without 

overheating the Cold War climate. They occasionally 

found it difficult to maintain a sense of proportion in 

meeting the challenge of the moment—as their short-
30

sighted expansion of the Korean War illustrated—and, 

no less so, to contain the Soviet Union without taking 

on losing propositions like a colonial conflict in Indochina. The Truman era was indeed a period of grand 

strategic innovation and purpose, but it was also one 

of frequent frustration and difficulty. 

This critique of Truman’s grand strategy should 

not be taken too far, for the administration made real 

strides toward accomplishing its most essential goal—

the creation of an advantageous configuration of 

power in Eurasia.67 What these issues suggest, rather, 

is that grand strategy was in the 1940s and 1950s what 

it remains today—a disorderly, iterative process that 

is never easy and demands frequent recalibration if it 

is to work at all. It is a process that may originate in 

a flash of geopolitical insight a la Kennan, but those 

insights must then be translated into action amongst 

the disruptions, fears, and crises that perpetually 

characterize both domestic and foreign affairs. This 

was something that Mr. X himself understood. “The 

purposes of foreign policy will always be relative to 

a moving stream of events,” he wrote in 1948. “Thus, 

any formula for U.S. foreign policy objectives can 

only be an indication of direction, not of final destination.”68 It was an apt description of Truman-era grand 

strategy, and of the difficulties of grand strategy writ 

large. 

THE HEROIC STATESMAN: GRAND STRATEGY 

IN THE KISSINGER YEARS

If the Truman administration is generally credited 

with building the postwar order, the Nixon and Ford 

administrations had the misfortune of governing as 

that order was coming undone. Containment was in 
31

crisis in the late 1960s, with the Soviets approaching 

nuclear parity and Communist China emerging as a 

great power in its own right. Instability was rampant 

in the Third World, and many of America’s alliances 

were under strain. On top of all this, there was the 

Vietnam War, which by 1969 had laid bare the limits of American power and caused a massive crisis of 

authority at home. The “problem we face,” wrote National Security Adviser (and later Secretary of State) 

Henry Kissinger, was “the generally deteriorating 

strategic position of the United States during the past 

decade.”69

It was, in many ways, a situation nicely tailored to 

Kissinger’s own ambitions. From 1969 to 1977, Kissinger served as the driving intellectual force behind 

American grand strategy.70 He was guided in this 

task by geopolitical instincts honed from nearly 2 decades of studying the major problems of Cold War 

foreign policy, and by an abiding faith in the power 

of inspired statesmanship. Kissinger believed that 

great leaders need not simply react to the crises they 

confronted or watch as their nations sank into decline. Through bold and creative policies, they could 

transcend these trials and seize hold of the course of 

history.“Anyone wishing to affect events must be opportunist to some extent,” Kissinger observed in 1968. 

“The real distinction is between those who adapt their 

purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality 

in the light of their purposes.”71 This, in Kissinger’s 

view, was the essence of grand strategy—not simply 

matching means to ends, but waging the more profound struggle to “shape the currents of our time in 

the light of our values.”72

Guided by this ethos, the Nixon and Ford administrations thus pursued something that was very much 
32

a grand strategy. As Kissinger envisioned it, the United States would use innovative diplomacy to draw 

its chief rivals into a more advantageous triangular 

balance, devolve responsibility while maintaining 

credibility, and ultimately position itself as the pivot 

of a more stable global order. The challenge, he commented during the 1970s, was “to build a new building while tearing down the old beams and not letting 

the structure collapse.”73 Through dynamic statecraft, 

America would transcend its moment of relative decline. 

The cornerstone of this grand strategy was to be 

a revamped relationship with the great powers. With 

respect to the Soviet Union, Kissinger and Nixon did 

not so much abandon containment as modify it. They 

believed that, in an age of growing Soviet power, the 

key to dealing with Moscow was to provide it with 

a mixture of positive and negative inducements for 

behaving with restraint. This was the logic behind 

the policies collectively known as “détente.” Strategic 

arms talks would satisfy Soviet desires for nuclear parity while also imposing limits on the Kremlin buildup. 

Negotiations over superpower flashpoints like Berlin 

would reduce tensions and lower the potential for crises. Offering Moscow trade credits and most-favorednation (MFN) status would give Kremlin officials reason to behave well and pave the way for Moscow’s 

eventual integration into the global economy. Tying 

these policies together was the concept of “linkage,” 

or the idea that the United States would demonstrate 

progress on any one of these issues contingent on 

across-the-board Soviet restraint. The Soviets “cannot 

expect to reap the benefits of cooperation in one area 

while seeking to take advantage of tension or confrontation elsewhere,” Kissinger explained.74 The relative 
33

power balance might be shifting, Kissinger believed, 

but a precise structuring of Moscow’s incentives could 

still allow the United States to exert great influence 

over Soviet behavior. 

The counterpart to U.S.-Soviet détente was a parallel opening to China. During the Sino-Soviet border 

clashes of 1969, the administration made clear that it 

would not condone a larger Soviet war against China, 

and Nixon and Kissinger subsequently began diplomatic overtures to Beijing. These maneuvers were 

based on a straightforward calculation that it would 

be disastrous to allow Moscow to again dominate the 

international communist movement, and also on the 

more subtle and ambitious thesis that a triangular balance of power—featuring the United States, the Soviet 

Union, and China—would be more stable and advantageous for the United States. As long as Washington maintained decent bilateral ties with China and 

Moscow, both communist powers would have to contemplate an American partnership with a dangerous 

rival, and both would therefore need to make their 

own arrangements with the United States. “In a subtle 

triangle of relations between Washington, Beijing, 

and Moscow,” Kissinger had written in 1968, “we improve the possibilities of accommodations with each 

as we increase our options toward both.”75 In an age of 

limited resources, the United States would shape the 

international environment through non-ideological 

diplomacy rather than raw power.

Kissinger brought an equally creative approach to 

the second aspect of his grand strategy—getting out of 

Vietnam. Kissinger and Nixon understood that Vietnam was a strategic disaster, but they also believed 

that a precipitous withdrawal would be devastating to 

U.S. credibility. “In the conduct of long range Ameri-
34

can policy throughout the world,” Kissinger commented, “it was important that we not be confounded 

by a fifth rate agricultural power.”76 Between 1969 

and 1972, the administration thus conducted a phased 

withdrawal from South Vietnam, while using greatpower diplomacy and displays of American military 

might to encourage Hanoi to agree to a compromise 

settlement. In Beijing and Moscow, Kissinger told his 

interlocutors that they must push Hanoi toward a 

peace deal or endanger their incipient détentes with 

the United States.77 At the same time, the administration employed sharp, unpredictable military action to 

punish North Vietnam and signal to Beijing, Moscow, 

and Hanoi that the war might spin out of control. The 

bombing and eventual incursions into Cambodia and 

Laos fit this mold; so did Nixon’s decision to bomb 

Hanoi and mine Haiphong harbor in 1972. By synchronizing negotiations with tactical military escalation, Kissinger and Nixon hoped, the United States 

might still find Hanoi’s “breaking point” and salvage 

an acceptable outcome in Southeast Asia.78

The war in Vietnam was closely related to the third 

component of Kissinger’s grand strategy, which consisted of efforts to decrease America’s burdens along 

the global periphery without endangering the overall 

stability of the international order. As in Vietnam, the 

administration took a two-pronged approach to this 

task. On the one side, Nixon and Kissinger (and later 

Ford) used military sales, economic assistance, and 

other indirect support to cultivate anti-communist 

“regional sheriffs”—Israel, Iran, Indonesia, Brazil, 

and others—who could assume greater responsibility for policing the Third World.79 On the other side, 

they used sharp, sometimes dramatic action to demonstrate that the United States would not allow the 
35

international order to unravel completely. The United 

States had to retrench, Kissinger believed, but it also 

had to “prevent a complete collapse of the world’s 

psychological balance of power.”80

This latter consideration underlay a series of provocative, even aggressive policies in the Third World. 

Beginning in 1970, the administration sought to 

overthrow Salvador Allende’s elected socialist government in Chile, on grounds that a failure to do so 

would be seen “as indifference or impotence in the 

face of clearly adverse developments in a region long 

considered our sphere of influence.”81 More dramatic 

still was U.S. policy during the Yom Kippur War in 

October 1973. If Egypt and Syria—two Soviet clients—

were allowed to defeat America’s ally Isreal, Kissinger 

commented, it “would have disastrous consequences 

not only there but elsewhere, and would encourage 

adventurism on a global scale.”82 The U.S. response 

to the Arab surprise attack was striking in its scope 

and risk. After first providing Israel with a massive 

military resupply, and then encouraging it to press the 

advantage against battered Arab armies (even to the 

point of violating a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire), the administration ordered a global nuclear alert 

to deter Moscow from interceding. At a time of global 

transition and U.S. retrenchment, Kissinger believed 

that a bold—even dangerous—approach to crisis 

management was essential.83

Tying all of these policies together was a fourth 

and final component of Kissinger-era statecraft—its 

emphasis on extreme secrecy and centralization of 

power. Kissinger and Nixon believed that their grand 

strategy could not succeed unless they were able to 

operate outside the normal constraints of the American system. “The bureaucracy is the curse of the mod-
36

ern state,” Kissinger commented in 1970.84 “One cannot put a negotiation before 45 members of the House 

Foreign Affairs Committee,” he said on another occasion.85 Accordingly, he and Nixon sought to keep 

many of their most significant moves—the opening 

to China, the destabilization of Chile, the bombing 

of Laos and Cambodia—hidden from public view. 

They disdained and even obstructed congressional 

oversight of foreign policy, instructing subordinates 

to stonewall on issues like human rights. Finally, they 

conducted high-level talks with the Soviets, Chinese, 

and North Vietnamese through backchannels kept secret even from the State Department, and attempted 

to shut out many of the administration’s most senior 

officials—Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, Secretary of State William Rogers, Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) Director Richard Helms, the JCS—from 

the policy process. “Dr. Kissinger alone enjoys both 

the intimate day-to-day contact and confidence of the 

President,” one JCS staffer commented ruefully in 

1970.86 In the Nixon administration, policy took on a 

conspiratorial tone. 

For a time, this grand strategy produced impressive results. Triangular diplomacy was particularly 

well-suited to the climate of international politics in 

the early 1970s. As Kissinger and Nixon had hoped, 

Chinese insecurity vis-à-vis the Soviet Union facilitated Sino-American ties, leading to a rapprochement 

that dramatically improved an overtaxed U.S. global 

position. While Kissinger later exaggerated the degree 

to which the “China card” had influenced U.S.-Soviet 

relations, Moscow did hasten to achieve its own détente after it learned of the American opening to Beijing.87 The United States was “building a new strategic 

alignment of forces in international politics in Asia and 
37

in the world as a whole,” Soviet ambassador Anatoly 

Dobrynin noted in early 1972, and Moscow needed to 

keep pace.88 By mid-1972, Nixon and Kissinger had finalized the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) 

and Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) agreements with 

the Soviet Union, concluded an accord that removed 

Berlin as a superpower flashpoint, and inked another 

that laid the basis for expanded East-West commerce. 

With respect to great-power relations, Nixon and Kissenger's grand strategy looked to be well on track.

The regional-sheriff policy also paid some initial 

dividends. This approach worked well in the Persian 

Gulf, as the Shah’s Iran kept pressure on the Sovietbacked regime in Iraq and used U.S.-supplied military 

equipment to stifle a leftist revolt in Oman. “The Shah 

is a tough, mean guy,” Kissinger told Ford. “But he is 

our real friend.”89 The situation was similar in Latin 

America, where Brazil’s military government advanced U.S. interests by targeting leftist movements 

at home and abroad. In 1971, the Brazilian military 

conspired with Bolivian conservatives to overthrow 

the left-leaning government in La Paz, and stationed 

thousands of troops on the Uruguayan border in case 

a popular front organization took power via elections 

in that country.90 Following the U.S.-backed coup in 

Chile in 1973, Augusto Pinochet quickly emerged 

as another loyal ally in the region. As Kissinger had 

hoped, friendly dictators combated regional instability and relieved the strain on American resources. 

Kissinger scored an even-more-striking success 

in 1973, during and after the Yom Kippur War. By 

strongly supporting Israel while also keeping an open 

line with Egypt, the Nixon administration put itself 

in a strong position to shape the postwar settlement. 

Although Nixon himself was increasingly consumed 
38

by Watergate, Kissinger subsequently used this opportunity to excellent effect. Shuttling between Jerusalem, Cairo, and Damascus, he gradually produced 

agreements that achieved the disengagement of Israeli 

and Arab forces, initiated the process by which Egypt 

and Israel would eventually make peace, and—most 

important of all—rendered Moscow largely irrelevant 

to regional negotiations. The accords cemented Kissinger’s reputation as a master of international diplomacy, and served for him as confirmation that the 

gifted statesman could indeed see beyond the curve 

of history and impose his own purpose on events. “If 

one studies our tactics carefully and thoughtfully,” 

he told Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, “one must 

come to the conclusion that our way of dealing with a 

crisis is to try to judge the crest of the crisis and try to 

anticipate the events that are happening and thereby 

dominate them.”91

The methods of Kissinger’s grand strategy—particularly secrecy and the centralization of power—

played a key role in many of these accomplishments. 

As Dobrynin later attested, the existence of a secure 

backchannel was essential in developing détente and 

bringing SALT to a conclusion. “Without that channel,” he later wrote, “it would hardly have been possible to reach many key agreements in a timely manner or to eliminate dangerous tensions that arose 

periodically.”92 Similarly, even Kissinger’s critics 

acknowledged that secrecy and personal diplomacy 

were crucial to moving toward accommodation with 

Beijing without exposing the process to interference 

by actors—the Taiwan lobby, U.S. allies in Asia, Soviet 

experts in the State Department—with an interest in 

disrupting it.93 Finally, Kissinger’s ability to act with 

“quasi-presidential” authority in 1973-74 allowed him 
39

to tie together the various implements of American 

power in managing the Yom Kippur War and choreographing the delicate disengagement talks that followed.94

Yet, if these successes seemed to vindicate both the 

methods and concepts of Kissinger’s grand strategy, 

other events threw those methods and concepts into 

doubt. For all their creativity, Nixon and Kissinger 

could not retrieve victory from defeat in Vietnam; the 

best they could do was to reach a deeply flawed peace 

agreement that quickly collapsed, taking South Vietnam with it. Kissinger struggled to master unexpected 

challenges that emerged during the 1970s, as issues 

like human rights and petro-politics tested his worldview. Détente was also on the rocks by mid-decade, 

with follow-on arms control negotiations stalled and 

the Soviets supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in Third World locales such as Angola. By the 

time Kissinger left office in early-1977, his grand strategy was clearly running out of gas. 

These failures and disappointments reflected numerous factors, not all of which can be discussed in 

detail here. There was, however, a common theme 

that ran through many of Kissinger’s travails. As 

noted above, Kissinger was taken with the “heroic” 

style of leadership. He believed that great statesmen 

could overcome the challenges their societies confronted through sheer creativity and brilliance, provided they were given the decisive authority necessary to turn wisdom into policy. As one biographer 

put it, “Kissinger’s strategy depended on an almost 

mythic grandmaster. . . . He allocated to the statesman 

omniscient knowledge and initiative.”95 Kissinger 

was talented enough to make this approach work for 

a time, as his numerous accomplishments showed. 
40

As the 1970s went on, however, it became clear that 

this performance could not be sustained. There were 

simply limits to what even creative statecraft could accomplish in a complex and dynamic world, and the 

methods of Kissinger’s grand strategy eventually ran 

into resistance as well. 

These problems confounded Kissinger in a variety 

of settings during the 1970s. In Vietnam, triangular diplomacy and tactical escalation did eventually make 

Hanoi more forthcoming in the secret peace negotiations, which eventually produced the Paris Accords 

of early-1973. But these tactics could not compel Moscow and Beijing to cease their vital material support 

for the North, which was essential if Kissinger’s plan 

for success was to work. (As it happened, both the 

Soviets and the Chinese, worried about losing influence vis-à-vis one another, actually increased their aid 

to Hanoi during the crucial years in the early-1970s.96) 

Nor could these tactics resolve the two essentially 

insoluble problems the administration faced—the 

underlying weakness of the Saigon regime and the 

increasing war-weariness of the American people. Together, these factors ensured that Nixon and Kissinger 

continued to fight a losing battle in Vietnam, and they 

eventually acknowledged as much by settling for a 

“decent interval” between a peace agreement and the 

ultimate defeat of the regime in Saigon. “We want a 

decent interval,” Kissinger wrote on a briefing book 

for the 1971 trip to China. “You have our assurance.”97

Indeed, the Paris Accords were sharply tilted against 

the long-term survival of the Saigon regime—among 

other things, they allowed North Vietnamese and Viet 

Cong troops to remain in place in the South—as the 

subsequent course of the war soon showed. 
41

Détente ran into similar problems as the 1970s went 

on. Détente was premised on the idea that the United 

States could use a precise balance of carrots—particularly, trade incentives—and sticks to regulate Soviet 

behavior. Yet, maintaining this balance required keeping firm control of the policy process, and by the mid1970s congressional opposition had made this impossible. Kissinger was partially to blame for this, as his 

condescending attitude toward Congress did him no 

favors, and his “consultation” with key congressional 

figures was often late and superficial. No less problematic, the cleavages caused by Vietnam and Watergate shattered the domestic consensus behind détente 

and spurred a full-fledged revolt against the very 

executive authority that was so central to the administration’s grand strategy. The consequences of this 

atmosphere became clear in 1974-75. A group of neoconservative senators led by Henry Jackson scuttled a 

major U.S.-Soviet trade agreement that Kissinger had 

viewed as a key pillar of détente, and then a bipartisan 

majority in the House terminated funding for a covert 

operation meant to thwart Soviet- and Cuban-backed 

rebels from winning a civil war in Angola. “We are 

being deprived of both the carrot and the stick,” Kissinger lamented.98

Détente also struggled because Kissinger overestimated the degree to which he could influence the 

Soviet Union. Contrary to what he had hoped, the 

Brezhnev government was not willing to accept the 

key premise of linkage: that Moscow had to show restraint in all areas in order to gain American cooperation in any. At a time when Soviet power was on the 

rise, Brezhnev and his aides perceived détente not as 

a guarantee of the global status quo, but as a way of 

achieving international legitimacy, limiting the dan-
42

gers of war, and paving the way for advances in other 

areas—particularly the Third World. The sense in 

the Kremlin, one official later recalled, was that “the 

world was turning in our direction.”99 The result was 

that the mid-1970s saw Moscow become more, rather 

than less, assertive in trying to shape the outcomes of 

Third World revolutions, even as it negotiated with 

the United States on arms control and other issues. 

With the global balance shifting, it was beyond Kissinger’s power to set the terms of world order.

In many ways, in fact, the events of this period 

showed how difficult it could be for even the most 

astute statesman to stay ahead of the curve in international affairs. Kissinger considered the handling of 

the Yom Kippur War to be one of his great triumphs, 

but an unforeseen consequence of that episode was 

the Arab oil embargo, which led to a fourfold rise in 

prices and severe economic distress in the West. While 

petro-states like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Iran enjoyed unprecedented profits and a new sense of global 

influence, the United States and its major allies experienced high inflation and depressed growth. The crisis 

upended Kissinger’s assumptions about the sources 

of global power, and left him scrambling to devise a 

response. “I’m convinced that the biggest problem we 

face now is possible economic collapse,” he said, “fall 

of the western world.”100 In the end, the consequences 

were not as dramatic as Kissinger feared, but they 

nonetheless illustrated how unexpected challenges 

can buffet even a carefully crafted grand strategy. 

The same could be said of Kissinger’s dealings 

with the growing human rights movement during 

the mid-1970s. By 1974-75, U.S. ties to Pinochet, the 

Brazilian generals, and other authoritarian rulers had 

come under fire from human rights activists and liber-
43

al congressmen and senators. Viewing human rights 

as a distraction, Kissinger essentially sought to ignore 

the problem, insisting that it was improper for the legislative branch to interfere with productive diplomatic 

alliances. “My position . . . [is that] I don’t yield to 

Congress on matters of principle,” he said.101 At a time 

of growing congressional assertiveness, however, this 

high-handed stance was counterproductive. Representative Donald Fraser and his allies passed legislation that linked foreign aid allotments to human rights 

performance, compelled the State Department to issue reports on rights abuses in countries that received 

American assistance, and reduced or terminated U.S. 

aid to Santiago, Buenos Aires, and other capitals.102 By 

late-1976, Kissinger’s Third World partnerships were 

increasingly difficult to maintain.

As the course of détente and the rise of the human 

rights issue demonstrated, the methods of Kissinger’s 

grand strategy became steadily more problematic as 

the Nixon-Ford years went on. As discussed previously, Kissinger reaped enough success to show that 

his secretive modus operandi had its utility. In the 

end, though, the conspiratorial style of grand strategy caused as many problems as it solved. It created 

a thoroughly dysfunctional climate within government, as Kissinger and Nixon waged a permanent 

campaign against the agencies that were meant to 

serve the President. It led to a sort of low-intensity warfare between Kissinger and other Cabinet 

heads—particularly Laird and his successors, James 

Schlesinger and Donald Rumsfeld—who resorted to 

leaks, intentional delays, and other methods of obstructing the decisionmaking process. It also deprived 

top officials of expertise and information from the 

bureaucracy. This liability repeatedly marred Kissing-
44

er’s dealings with Southeast Asia between 1969 and 

1971, when he and Nixon shut out State Department 

and intelligence officials who might have warned that 

attacking Laos and Cambodia would do little to improve the military situation but much to destabilize 

these countries.103

Finally, the reliance on secrecy eventually became 

self-defeating in a political sense. As noted previously, 

Kissinger’s methods alienated congresspersons and 

senators whose cooperation he needed. His style was 

also badly out of sync with the national mood in the 

mid-1970s. During a period when many Americans 

were determined to rein in the executive secrecy and 

power that had contributed to the disasters of Vietnam 

and Watergate, Kissinger and the Presidents he served 

seemed to be replicating—indeed, intensifying—these 

practices. Sure enough, when certain of the administration’s secret pursuits—the bombing of Cambodia 

and the destabilization of Chile and other countries—

came to light through news media reports and congressional inquiries, they fed a growing disillusionment with American policy. As Jimmy Carter charged 

during the 1976 campaign, Kissinger was pursuing “a 

kind of secretive, ‘Lone Ranger’ foreign policy, a oneman policy of international adventure.”104 By the time 

Kissinger left office in early 1977, both his methods 

and his policies had come under severe strain. 

There are many insights to be drawn from Kissinger’s experience, but two principal ones stand out. 

The first is that seeking to skirt the domestic and institutional constraints on grand strategy is inevitably 

a double-edged sword. Concentrating power and 

avoiding public oversight permitted great boldness 

and dexterity during the Kissinger era, and these techniques were central to some of the Nixon administration’s greatest achievements. But the level of secrecy 
45

and concentrated power that Kissinger and Nixon 

desired could not long be sustained, for it clashed too 

sharply with the way that the American system was 

meant to operate. The result was an eventual backlash 

both within and outside of government, and a growing sense—nicely captured by Carter during the 1976 

presidential campaign—that American policy had 

come loose from its democratic moorings. When it 

comes to grand strategy, working within the strictures 

of the American system can be quite difficult. As Kissinger discovered, however, trying to circumvent or 

ignore those strictures can also be deeply problematic. 

The second and related insight is that there is inevitably a limit to what even a bold and audacious 

grand strategy can accomplish. Kissinger’s experience 

was, in some ways, a testament to the potential of 

grand strategy, for it showed what purposeful statecraft could achieve, even at a time of relative national 

decline. In the end, though, Kissinger’s concepts too 

often ran up against domestic political constraints, the 

actions of opponents and rivals, and the general stubbornness and unpredictability of a world in which 

U.S. power was no longer unchallengeably ascendant. Grand strategy, then, was no panacea. In a difficult global environment, even innovative ideas and 

extraordinary cleverness could take Kissinger only 

so far. 

IMPLICATIONS: GRAND STRATEGY 

AS A NATIONAL ENDEAVOR

The Truman and Kissinger eras represent only a 

small slice of the history of U.S. grand strategy, but 

they nonetheless suffice to show both the importance 

and the difficulty of that undertaking. As we look 
46

toward the future, there is little reason to think that 

grand strategy will become either easier or less imperative. The United States now confronts an increasingly 

fluid international environment in which there is no 

overarching threat to focus its energies, but rather a 

variety of lesser but still intimidating challenges—international terrorism, the rise of China, nuclear proliferation, instability in the greater Middle East, the 

prospect of economic exhaustion, and others—that 

compete for attention and resources. Those resources, 

in turn, seem far scarcer than they did just a decade 

ago. These factors will both demand and complicate 

the doing of grand strategy; the fact that this task will 

have to be performed in a highly polarized political 

climate at home will only add to the challenge. The 

United States will certainly need a coherent grand 

strategy in the coming years, but whether it can produce and sustain one remains to be seen. 

What follows are six very basic suggestions for 

how American leaders might approach that task. 

These suggestions are not intended to provide answers to specific policy problems, or to advocate any 

particular grand strategy. They are meant simply as a 

set of guidelines for thinking about present-day grand 

strategy and the challenges it poses. 

1. There Is No Good Alternative to Grand Strategy.

Given the growing complexity of the global order, 

a number of prominent observers have suggested in 

recent years that grand strategy is itself an anachronism. In an era in which there is no single, obvious 

theme around which to organize American policy, 

they contend, grand strategy has become a quixotic 

and even pernicious pursuit.105 This argument has 
47

some merit. As discussed above, the difficulties and 

drawbacks of grand strategy are undeniable. Moreover, the past few years have been replete with events 

that have challenged longstanding assumptions, upended existing policies, and sent strategic planners 

back to the drawing board—the Iraq war, the Arab 

Spring, the continuing world economic crisis, and 

others. “Given the divisions and uncertainties of the 

contemporary environment,” notes Stephen Krasner, 

“it is impossible to frame a responsible grand strategy.”106 Given that Krasner is a former director of the 

State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, his skepticism is all the more striking.

Krasner may be right, but it is hard to imagine that 

deliberately avoiding grand strategy offers a better alternative. “Strategic nihilism” will not, after all, allow 

the United States to avoid the dilemmas that make 

grand strategy so difficult; it will only exacerbate the 

confusion and contradictions within American policy.107 And even if it is impossible to formulate and 

fully implement a coherent grand strategy, doing the 

leg-work associated with this task will still be rewarding. As Dwight Eisenhower liked to say, “The plans 

are nothing, but the planning is everything.”108 Indeed, 

the simple doing of grand strategy can itself serve a 

variety of purposes. It can give policymakers a firmer 

understanding of priorities and interests. It can force 

them to think systematically about what American 

resources will and will not permit. Most important, 

doing grand strategy can provide an overall sense of 

direction, a sort of intellectual anchor amid the geopolitical storms. None of this will obviate recalibration 

and even improvisation. But it can increase the chances that these adjustments will be made intelligently, in 

ways that are more congruent than not with longerterm national objectives. Policymakers would be wise 
48

to be skeptical about grand strategy, but they would 

be foolish to dispense with it altogether. 

2. Start with First Principles.

Grand strategy can only be valuable, however, only 

if policymakers are willing to begin with the basics. 

It is a truism that grand strategy is about setting priorities and differentiating between the essential and 

the merely important. In practice, however, this often 

proves surprisingly difficult to do. “Vital” interests 

tend to expand along with a state’s power; expanding interests, in turn, bring new threats and temptations. It is easy, in these circumstances, for hierarchies 

of interests and threats to become blurred or collapse 

altogether. This was the problem that the Clinton 

administration ran into in dealing with an uncertain 

international environment during the 1990s. “We do 

have a set of priorities that have been established by 

Presidential Decision Directive that basically looks at 

the world and says that there are 10 or 15 things that 

matter most to American security,” Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told the Senate Select 

Committee on Intelligence in 1997. Tenet (and presumably Clinton) neglected to consider that having 15 

top priorities was probably equivalent to having zero 

top priorities, and this confusion was often evident in 

the Clinton-era foreign policy.109

The need for prioritization has become far more 

pressing since Clinton’s time in the White House. 

As Leslie Gelb has written, American leaders “must 

either choose or lose.”110 The past decade has shown 

that even hyperpowers have to deal with resource 

constraints, and in light of current fiscal and political realities, it seems likely that spending on national 

security programs will contract in the coming years. 
49

If American grand strategy is to be effective in these 

conditions, U.S. officials will have to go back to first 

principles. They will need to consider whether American security can be ensured only through a strategy of 

global primacy, or whether a more parsimonious approach like “offshore balancing” can do the job. More 

fundamentally still, officials will need to confront 

hard questions about which interests are truly vital 

and what threats demand most attention, and they 

will need to use these priorities as a guide in deciding how—and whether—to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. To do otherwise is to risk 

geopolitical exhaustion and domestic disillusionment, 

neither of which will be conducive to prudent policy 

over the long run.

3. Think of Grand Strategy as a Process, 

Not an Unalterable Blueprint.

None of this is to say that grand strategy should 

be thought of as an immutable blueprint from which 

policy must never deviate. In public parlance, grand 

strategy is too often associated with the promulgation of official “doctrines,” pronouncements that lay 

down—in advance—what the American response will 

be to a specified set of circumstances.111 Doctrines certainly have their uses—they signal national resolve and 

provide domestic and international observers with an 

easily understandable expression of U.S. goals—but 

grand strategy should be something different. 

Because foreign policy deals with a dynamic world, 

recalibration and adaptation are essential to any good 

grand strategy. As we have seen, the “golden age” of 

American grand strategy was characterized by repeated reassessments of what mix of means and commit-
50

ments was required to contain Soviet power, even as 

that overarching goal remained unchanged. Similarly, 

Eisenhower—another President known for his grand 

strategic competence—had his administration’s major 

planning papers revised almost annually to ensure 

that U.S. policies remained consistent with his overall goals and priorities. As Eisenhower understood, 

grand strategy required a firm sense of purpose, but 

significant tactical flexibility as well. 

The same is true today. “Real strategy,” note two 

observers, “is made in real time.”112 Grand strategy 

should start with systematic planning, the setting of 

goals and priorities, and the outlining of a realistic 

course of action for realizing those objectives. The 

time is ripe for a new Operation SOLARIUM-style 

exercise, a broad-based examination meant to tackle 

just these issues. But as was the case with the original 

Operation SOLARIUM, the subsequent progression 

of events will inevitably require that the initial roadmap be revised, assumptions reconsidered, and new 

routes plotted for getting from here to there.113 Grand 

strategy must therefore be seen as an iterative process, 

one that involves processing feedback and correcting 

course when necessary, all the while keeping core interests in view. 

4. Bring Planners and Operators Together.

As much of the foregoing indicates, one of the central difficulties of grand strategy is linking the longterm goals set by planners to the short- and mediumterm actions that operators can reasonably take to deal 

with the crisis of the moment. As Kennan and other 

dedicated planners often discovered to their chagrin, 

short- and long-term imperatives do not always align 
51

perfectly, and planners and operators have different institutional incentives to address this tension.114

There is no way to eliminate this problem, for it lies 

at the very heart of grand strategy. Yet, it may, perhaps, be somewhat mitigated by bringing planners 

and operators together at every stage of the process. 

Bringing operators into the planning stages of grand 

strategy can help sensitize planners to the nearer-term 

requirements of good policy; bringing planners into 

operations can help provide a longer-range perspective that is sometimes missing from the management 

of day-to-day affairs. None of this will resolve the 

underlying dilemma, but it might ease—if only by a 

degree—the bureaucratic disconnects that often exacerbate the problem.115

5. Embrace the Democratic Messiness 

of Grand Strategy.

The question of whether democracies can conduct 

a policy that blends thoughtfulness, strategic consistency, and tactical flexibility has long perplexed 

American officials. Kissinger, Nixon, and their intellectual brethren were certainly right in arguing that 

the vicissitudes of democracy and bureaucracy can 

have deleterious effects on foreign policy, and the 

present political climate often seems downright hostile to reasoned strategic debate. But just as there is 

no good alternative to grand strategy, so there is really no good substitute for embracing this messiness 

and making the best of it. It has yet to be shown that 

authoritarian regimes are consistently better at grand 

strategy than are democracies, because personalized 

rule and centralized power bring about their own pathologies.116 More to the point for American purposes, 
52

the experiences of those who sought to resolve this 

problem by dramatically centralizing power in the 

White House—read Kissinger and Nixon—have usually ended in grief. 

This hardly means that there is no place for secrecy 

or decisive executive action in foreign policy, for U.S. 

laws and the American political tradition provide room 

for both. Nor does it mean abandoning presidential 

leadership and doing a least-common-denominator 

foreign policy. What it means is that there is a crucial 

political aspect to grand strategy, one that requires as 

much attention as the diplomatic, military, and other 

aspects. Making any grand strategy work requires 

building consensus both within and outside an administration. Within the executive branch, Presidents 

would be well advised to involve the key bureaucratic 

players—military, intelligence, and diplomatic—early 

enough in the planning process so that they do not 

feel that they are simply being confronted with a fait 

accompli. Outside the executive branch, there is no 

substitute for persistent efforts to explain and sell an 

administration’s grand strategy once it is formulated, 

and for early, real, and regular consultation with the 

congressional leaders whose cooperation will be necessary to turn ideas into action. All this, in turn, will 

unavoidably entail bargaining, compromise, and the 

frustration that comes with them. This is never going 

to be a pretty or entirely satisfying process, but there 

is no good way around it.

6. Keep Expectations Realistic.

All of these suggestions point to a final imperative: 

the need to limit one’s expectations as to what grand 
53

strategy can accomplish. George Kennan, who is often 

thought of as America’s archetypal grand strategist, 

was fond of discussing the limitations of that concept—and of human foresight more broadly—in his 

famous talks at the National War College in Washington, DC, during the late-1940s. As he put it in his valedictory lecture prior to leaving the Policy Planning 

Staff at the end of 1949: 

It is simply not given to human beings to know the 

totality of truth. Similarly, no one can see in its totality 

anything so fundamental and so unlimited in all its 

implications as the development of our people in their 

relation to their world environment. . . . I sometimes 

like to think of the substance of human knowledge as 

a sort of sphere, and at the center of that sphere there 

must lie a core which is absolute truth. We keep charging into that sphere from various angles, knowing that 

we are always going to be deflected at tangents, like 

moths off the light bulb, before we get to the center.117

When it comes to thinking about grand strategy as 

a national endeavor, the same basic point still holds. 

Too often, grand strategy is thought of as a transformative project to remake the global order, or as a 

panacea that will wipe away the complexity of world 

affairs. Both of these aspirations are simply begging 

for disappointment. In view of the experience of the 

past decade and the current economic troubles, the 

United States will probably not be able to undertake 

any grand transformative schemes in the near future. 

Nor can any amount of planning or strategizing allow American policy to transcend the complexities of 

a changing international environment. At best, grand 

strategy can provide an intellectual reference point 

for dealing with those complexities, and a process 
54

by which dedicated policymakers can seek to bring 

their resources and their day-to-day actions into better alignment with their country’s enduring interests. 

Achieving this would be enough; expecting more 

would be quixotic.

ENDNOTES

1. Quoted in Michael Lind, “A Concert-Balance Strategy for a 

Multipolar World,” Parameters, Autumn 2008, pp. 48-60. On these 

subjects, see Ambassador Robert E. Hunter, “A New Grand Strategy for the United States,” Testimony before the Committee on 

Armed Services, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, 

U.S. House of Representatives, July 31, 2008, available from www.

rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/2008/RAND_CT313.

pdf; “A New U.S. Grand Strategy,” U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,” July 15, 2008, available from www.hsdl.

org/?view&did=34637; Niall Ferguson, “Wanted: A Grand Strategy 

for America,” Newsweek, February 13, 2011, available from www.

newsweek.com; Daniel Drezner, “Does Obama Have a Grand Strategy?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 4, July/August 2011, pp. 57-68; 

Parag Khanna, “America’s Non-Grand Strategy,” The Atlantic, 

September 2011, available from www.theatlantic.com/international/

archive/2011/09/americas-non-grand-strategy/244367/.

2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter 

Paret, eds. and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1984, p. 132.

3. On the difficulty of defining strategy and grand strategy, 

see Williamson Murray and Mark Grimsley, “Introduction: On 

Strategy,” in Alvin H. Bernstein, MacGregor Knox, and Williamson Murray, eds., The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, 

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 1-2; Timothy Andrews Sayle, “Defining and Teaching Grand Strategy,” 

Foreign Policy Research Institute, The Telegram, Vol. 4, January 

2011, available from www.fpri.org/telegram/201101.sayle.teaching

grandstrategy.pdf.
55

4. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, New York: Praeger, 1967 

[1954], pp. 333-372. Hart, it should be noted, limited his definition 

of grand strategy to the conduct of war. 

5. For various definitions of grand strategy, see Williamson 

Murray, “Thoughts on Grand Strategy,” in Murray, Richard Hart 

Sinnreich, and James Lacey, eds. The Shaping of Grand Strategy: 

Policy, Diplomacy, and War, New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 2011, p. 8; Sayle, “Defining and Teaching Grand Strategy”; 

Robert Art, A Grand Strategy for America, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003; Paul Kennedy, “Grand Strategy in War and 

Peace: Toward a Broader Definition,” in Kennedy, ed., Grand 

Strategies in War and Peace, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 

1991, pp. 1-7; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold 

War, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005; Gaddis, “What 

is Grand Strategy?” Karl von der Hayden Distinguished Lecture, Duke University, February 26, 2009; Colin Dueck, Reluctant 

Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy, 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008, pp. 9-10; Edward 

Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, Cambridge, 

CT: Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 409; Walter McDougall, 

“Can the United States Do Grand Strategy?” Orbis, Vol. 54, No. 1, 

Spring 2010, pp. 165-184.

6. Colin Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Theory and Practice, New 

York: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 17.

7. This definition is similar to that offered by Hal Brands, From 

Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War 

World, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2008; Dueck, 

Reluctant Crusaders, pp. 9-12. 

8. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State 

Department, New York: Norton, 1969, p. 214. See also Daniel W. 

Drezner, ed., Avoiding Trivia: The Role of Strategic Planning in American Foreign Policy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2009.

9. On these subjects, see Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: The 

Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic Books, 2001; 

Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, New York: 

Vintage, 1989.
56

10. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment.

11. In the United States, the demand for a public articulation 

of grand strategy became pronounced when the end of the Cold 

War led to some confusion—both within and outside government—as to the central purpose of American policy. See Brands, 

From Berlin to Baghdad, chaps. 2-3. 

12. Luttwak, Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, p. 409.

13. Murray, “Thoughts on Grand Strategy,” pp. 3-4.

14. On these issues, see Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great 

Powers. 

15. Brands, From Berlin to Baghdad, esp. pp. 336-340. The term 

“theateritis” is widely attributed to George Marshall. See Forrest 

Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945, New 

York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 335.

16. Gaddis, “What is Grand Strategy?”; “History, Grand 

Strategy, and NATO Enlargement,” Survival, No. 40, Spring 1998, 

pp. 145-151.

17. The phrase is from Stephen Krasner, “An Orienting Principle for Foreign Policy: The Deficiencies of ‘Grand Strategy’,” 

Policy Review, No. 163, October 2010, available from www.hoover.

org/publications/policy-review/article/49786.

18. See Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, “Lessons of 

War,” The National Interest, Winter 1988; also Millett and Murray, 

eds., Military Effectiveness, 3 vols., London, UK: Allen & Unwin, 

1988.

19. David D’Lugo and Ronald Rogowski, “The Anglo-German Naval Race and Comparative Constitutional ‘Fitness’,” in 

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of 

Grand Strategy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 65-

94; Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 

1984, pp. 109-116.
57

20. The classic treatment of this subject is Leslie Gelb and 

Richard Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1979. 

21. See Herbert Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality, Vol. 1, 

Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 

1984.

22. The literature on the role of ideology, emotion, irrationality, misperception, and other cognitive biases in decisionmaking 

is immense. See Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976; 

Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, New Haven, CT: 

Yale University Press, 1987; Frank Ninkovich, “Interests and Discourse in Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History Vol. 13, No. 2, 

Spring 1989, pp. 135-161.

23. Memorandum of Conversation with the Business Council, 

December 1, 1971, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003, I: Document # 101. Hereafter, documents from this series are cited as 

FRUS followed by year, volume, and page or document number.

24. For a classic discussion of bureaucratic politics and American foreign policy, see Morton H. Halperin and Arnold Kanter, 

Readings in American Foreign Policy: A Bureaucratic Perspective, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1973, esp. pp. 1-42; also 

Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile 

Crisis, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1971.

25. Kennan is quoted in Amy Zegart, “Why the Best is Not 

Yet to Come in Policy Planning,” in Drezner, ed., Avoiding Trivia, 

p. 119.

26. On these points, see Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, New 

York: Knopf, 2001; Michael Lind, The American Way of Strategy, 

New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 

27. See Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict 

and Change in American Foreign Policy, Chicago, IL: University of 

Chicago Press, 1998.
58

28. To make this argument is not to relitigate the long-running debate about whether public opinion is well or poorly informed, or whether democracy is a net positive or negative for 

the making of foreign policy. (In the aggregate, I tend to think 

that democracies are probably superior to the competition when 

it comes to making foreign policy.) Rather, it is simply to note that 

democratic politics can encourage suboptimal grand-strategic decisions. For a careful consideration of these issues, see Miroslav 

Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Fallacy of Political Realism, 

New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

29. Clausewitz, On War, p. 119. 

30. Quoted in Leslie H. Gelb, Power Rules: How Common Sense 

Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, New York: HarperCollins, 

2009, p. 103.

31. Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential 

Diplomacy, New York: Random House, 2002, pp. 133-134.

32. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation; Oral History with 

Clark Clifford, April 13, 1971, Oral History Collection, Harry S. 

Truman Presidential Library (HSTL), p. 81.

33. In 2011, for example, two military analysts published an 

article calling for a new “national strategic narrative” under the 

pseudonym “Mr. Y,” an echo of George Kennan’s famous nom 

de plume. See Mr. Y, “A National Strategic Narrative,” Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2011. See also, among many 

others, Thomas Friedman, “Rethinking Foreign Affairs,” The New 

York Times, February 7, 1992; R. W. Apple, “The Sense of Triumph 

Fades, Uncertainty and Unease Grow,” The New York Times, December 29, 1991; Jim Lacey, “Finding X: The Quest to Outline the 

U.S.’s Future Grand Strategy,” National Review Online, May 11, 

2011.

34. “Long Telegram,” February 22, 1946, available from www.

gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm. 

35. Ibid.; X (George Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 4, July 1947, esp. pp. 576-582.
59

36. “President Harry S. Truman’s Address Before a Joint 

Session of Congress,” March 12, 1947, available from www.

gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm; 

Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The 

Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford, CA: Stanford 

University Press, 1992, pp. 100-140. 

37. Quoted in Oral History Interview with Robert A. Lovett, 

July 7, 1971, Oral History Collection, HSTL.

38. Forrestal Diary, April 26, 1947, Box 146, James Forrestal 

Papers, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library (SMML), Princeton 

University.

39. Kennan National War College Lecture, December 21, 1948, 

Box 299, Kennan Papers, SMML. See also Melvyn Leffler, “The 

Emergence of an American Grand Strategy,” in Leffler and Odd 

Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. I, 

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 77-82.

40. Marshall is quoted in Henderson to Rankin, March 25, 

1948, FRUS 1948, IV: pp. 64-65. See also Memorandum for the 

President, November 26, 1948, Box 186, President’s Secretary File 

(PSF), NSC Files, HSTL; Omar Bradley to Forrestal, March 22, 

1949, Box 178, PSF, NSC, HSTL.

41. The quotes are from Forrestal Diary, 28 April 1947, Box 

146, Forrestal Papers, SMML; William Curti Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War, Ithaca, NY: 

Cornell University Press, 1993, p. 125.

42. See Wilson Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making 

of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950, Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1992, pp. 73-74, 252-270.

43. “Meeting of the Secretary of Defense and the Service 

Chiefs with the Secretary of State 1045 Hours,” October 10, 1948, 

Box 147, Forrestal Papers, SMML. See also Memorandum of Conversation, April 3, 1949, Box 12, Records of Dean Acheson, Lot 

53D444, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). 
60

44. “Memorandum,” November 11, 1948, Box 272, Averell 

Harriman Papers, Library of Congress. 

45. “Notes for Off-the-Record Remarks,” undated, Box 8, 

Charles Bohlen Records, RG 59, NARA. See also Melvyn Leffler, 

“The United States and the Strategic Dimensions of the Marshall 

Plan,” Diplomatic History Vol. 12, No. 3, Summer 1988, pp. 277-306.

46. “Record of Round-Table Discussion by Twenty-Five Far 

East Experts with the Department of State on ‘American Policy 

toward China,’” October 6-8, 1949, Box 151, PSF, HSTL.

47. On this point, see Michael Schaller, “Securing the Great 

Crescent: Occupied Japan and the Origins of Containment 

in Southeast Asia,” Journal of American History Vol. 69, No. 2, 

September 1982, pp. 392-414.

48. Forrestal Diary, February 12, 1948, Box 147, Forrestal Papers, SMML. 

49. Memorandum of Conversation, April 3, 1949, Box 12, Records of Dean Acheson, Lot 53D444, Record Group 59, NARA.

50. Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 735; also NSC 35, “Existing International Commitments Involving the Possible Use of 

Armed Forces,” November 17, 1948, Box 177, NSC Files, HSTL.

51. John Lewis Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United 

States: An Interpretive History, New York: John Wiley, 1978, p. 195. 

52. Marc Selverstone, Constructing the Monolith: The United 

States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950, 

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 88-89.

53. The domestic fallout from Chiang’s collapse is discussed 

in Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, pp. 295-296, 341-344.

54. USDEL to Webb, May 11, 1950, FRUS 1950, III: p. 1038.

55. ORE 32-50, “The Effect of the Soviet Possession of Atomic Bombs on the Security of the United States,” June 9, 1950, 

National Security Archive (NSA), Washington, DC. 
61

56. JCS to Johnson, 23 November 1949, FRUS 1949, I: 595-596; 

also Memo by the Defense Members of the Working Group of the 

Special Committee of the NSC, undated, FRUS 1949, I: 605-609.

57. NSC-68, “United States Objectives and Programs for 

National Security,” April 12, 1950, PSF, HSTL. 

58. “Paper Drafted by the Policy Planning Staff,” undated 

(1952), FRUS 1952-54, II: pp. 64-65; Samuel F. Wells, Jr., “Sounding the Tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat,” International 

Security, Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 1979, pp. 116-158.

59. Memorandum of Conversation, June 25, 1950, FRUS 1950, 

VII: p. 158; also William Stueck, The Korean War: An International 

History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 41-45.

60. Memorandum for the President, December 15, 1950, Box 

136, Paul Nitze Papers, Library of Congress. See also Gaddis, 

Strategies of Containment, pp. 110-111.

61. Memorandum for the President, December 15, 1950, Box 

136, Paul Nitze Papers, Library of Congress. See also Gaddis, 

Strategies of Containment, pp. 110-111; Leffler, A Preponderance of 

Power, chap. 10.

62. “Memorandum by the Director of the Office of Northeast 

Asian Affairs (Allison) to the Director of the Policy Planning Staff 

(Nitze), July 24, 1950, FRUS 1950, VII: pp. 460-461. See also Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-

1948, New York: Knopf, 1972, pp. 355-356, 360; James Matray, 

“Truman’s Plan for Victory: National Self-Determination and the 

Thirty-Eighth Parallel in Korea,” Journal of American History, Vol.

66, No. 2, September 1979, pp. 314-333.

63. Memorandum for the President, November 28, 1950, Box 

187, NSC Files, PSF, HSTL.

64. Allan Reed Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common 

Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, New 

York: Free Press, 1984, p. 491; Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, 

chaps. 10-11. 
62

65. The quotes are from MemCon between Truman and Pleven, January 29, 1951, Box 142, PSF, HSTL; Meeting between President Truman and President Auroil, March 29, 1952, Box 142, PSF, 

HSTL.

66. See particularly Aaron Friedberg, In the Shadow of the 

Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 70-71, 

117-123.

67. The point is best made in Leffler, Preponderance of Power.

68. “Comments on the General Trend of U.S. Foreign Policy,” 

August 20, 1948, Box 163, Kennan Papers, SMML.

69. Kissinger to Nixon, undated (late-1969), FRUS 1969-1976, 

I: Document #39.

70. Nixon and Ford were, of course, ultimately responsible 

for that grand strategy, and Nixon in particular played a key role 

in shaping foreign policy until the Watergate scandal left him politically and emotionally crippled. As Jeremi Suri and John Lewis 

Gaddis have made clear, however, Kissinger provided the overarching intellectual framework within which many of those policies were lodged. See Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, chaps. 9-10; 

Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, Cambridge, MA: 

Harvard University Press, 2007, chaps. 4-6.

71. Kissinger, “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” Daedalus, Vol. 97, No. 3, Summer 1968, p. 910.

72. Henry Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of 

American Foreign Policy, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961, p. 8.

73. MemCon between Kissinger and TIME Editorial Board, 

November 11, 1974, Box 26, Henry A. Kissinger (HAK) Records, 

RG 59, NARA. See also Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, chap. 5. 

74. Nixon to Laird [letter drafted by Kissinger], February 4, 

1969, Box 220, NSC Files, Nixon Presidential Materials (NPM). See 

also Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, chap. 9. 
63

75. Quoted in Evelyn Goh, “Nixon, Kissinger, and the ‘Soviet 

Card’ in the U.S. Opening to China, 1971-1974,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 29, No. 3, June 2005, p. 475. 

76. MemCon between Kissinger and Schumann, August 4, 

1969, NSA.

77. MemCon between Nixon, Kissinger, and Dobrynin,

October 20, 1969, Box 489, NSC, NPM; Jussi Hanhimaki, Flawed 

Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, New York: 

Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 216-217. 

78. The “breaking point” comment is from Walter Isaacson, 

Kissinger: A Biography, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, p. 246. 

These initiatives are described in greater detail in Jeffrey Kimball, 

Nixon’s Vietnam War, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 

1998; Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam, New York: Touchstone, 2002.

79. Kissinger Background Briefing, February 16, 1970, FRUS 

1969-1976, I: Document #58. See also Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third-World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 200-201, 211-

212.

80. Editorial Note on a Conversation between Kissinger and 

Nixon, December 9, 1971, FRUS 1969-1976, XI: Document #256. 

See also Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 300-301.

81. Kissinger to Nixon, November 5, 1970, Box H-29, Meetings 

File, NSC, NPM. As historians have noted, there were various 

motives behind the decision to seek Allende’s overthrow. Nonetheless, it is clear that the desire to avoid looking weak was what 

crystallized this policy and lent it its urgency. See Hal Brands, 

Latin America’s Cold War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 

Press, 2010, pp. 148-150.

82. MemCon between Kissinger and Zhou Enlai, November 

11, 1973, NSA.
64

83. MemCon between Kissinger and Golda Meir, May 7, 1974, 

Box 7, Henry A. Kissinger (HAK) Records, Executive Secretariat, 

RG 59, NARA. See also Secretary’s Staff Meeting, October 24, 1973, 

Box 1, Secretary’s Staff Meetings, HAK Records, RG 59, NARA.

84. MemCon between Kissinger and Stanford Faculty and 

Students, May 6, 1970, FRUS 1969-1976, I: Document #65. 

85. MemCon between Kissinger and Various Congressmen, 

January 28, 1975, Box 22, HAK Records, Executive Secretariat, RG 

59, NARA.

86. Asaf Siniver, Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign Policy Making: The Machinery of Crisis, New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 2008, pp. 63-64. On the human rights issue, see Barbara 

Keys, “Congress, Kissinger, and the Origins of Human Rights 

Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 34, No. 5, November 2010, 

pp. 823-851.

87. Vladislav Zubok, “The Soviet Union and Détente of the 

1970s,” Cold War History, Vol. 8, No. 4, November 2008, pp. 435-

436; Hanhimaki, Flawed Architect, p. 152. 

88. Telegram from Ambassador Dobrynin to the Soviet Foreign Ministry,” March 8, 1972, FRUS: Soviet-American Relations,

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2007, Document #267. 

89. MemCon between Ford, Kissinger, and Scowcroft, August 

17, 1974, Box 5, MemCons, National Security Adviser (NSA) File, 

Gerald Ford Presidential Library (GFL). See also Douglas Little, 

American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 

1945, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008, 

p. 145.

90. Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, p. 158.

91. MemCon between Kissinger and Meir, May 2, 1974, Box 

7, HAK Records, RG 59, NARA. On the war and disengagement, 

see Salim Yaqub, “The Weight of Conquest: Henry Kissinger and 

the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” in Frederik Logevall and Andew Preston, eds., Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-1977, 

New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 227-248.
65

92. See “Foreword by Anatoly Dobrynin,” FRUS: Soviet-American Relations, p. xxi; Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s 

Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents, New York: Times 

Books, 1995, pp. 199-200.

93. See, for instance, Yukinori Komine, Secrecy in U.S. Foreign 

Policy: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Rapprochement with China, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008, chaps. 3-5. Marshall Green, one of the 

few State Department officials to work closely with Kissinger 

during his time as National Security Advisor, has since criticized 

Kissinger’s reliance on secrecy but acknowledges that it paid dividends in this case. “Kissinger must have recognized . . . that any 

real substantive progress in U.S.-PRC relations required careful, 

probably secret, preparations, and that the U.S. emissary would 

get nowhere unless he could meet directly with men like Mao 

and Chou [Enlai].” Marshall Green to William Bundy, January 18, 

1992, Box 17, Bundy Papers, SMML.

94. Kissinger, Years of Renewal, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, p. 1060; Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, 

chap. 6.

95. Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, p. 194.

96. Lorenz Luthi, “Beyond Betrayal: Beijing, Moscow, and the 

Paris Negotiations, 1971-1973,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 

11, No. 1, Winter 2009, pp. 60, 62, 73; Ilya Gaiduk, The Soviet Union 

and the Vietnam War, Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1996, pp. 239-241.

97. “Polo I Kissinger (Briefing Book) July 1971 Trip to China,” 

NSC Files, Box 850, NPM; also Jussi Hanhimaki, “Selling the ‘Decent Interval:’ Kissinger, Triangular Diplomacy, and the End of 

the Vietnam War, 1971-73,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 14, No. 1, 

March 2003, pp. 159-194.

98. MemCon between Kissinger, Scowcroft, and Ford, December 18, 1975, Box 17, MemCons, NSA File, GFL. See also MemCon 

between Kissinger, Scowcroft, and Ford, December 18, 1975, Box 

17, MemCons, NSA File, GFL; Robert David Johnson, “The Unintended Consequences of Congressional Reform: The Clark and 

Tunney Amendments and U.S. Policy toward Angola,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2003, pp. 215-243; Noam Kochavi, 
66

“Insights Abandoned, Flexibility Lost: Kissinger, Soviet Jewish 

Immigration, and the Demise of Détente,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 

29, No. 3, June 2005, pp. 503-530.

99. Odd Arne Westad, “Moscow and the Angolan Crisis, 

1974-1976: A New Pattern of Intervention,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8-9, Winter 1996/97, p. 21; also Westad, 

Global Cold War, chaps. 6-8.

100. MemCon between Kissinger, Fraser, and Others, December 17, 1974, NSA. See also Andrew Scott Cooper, “Showdown 

at Doha: The Secret Oil Deal that Helped Sink the Shah of Iran,” 

Middle East Journal, Vol. 62, No. 4, Autumn 2008, esp. pp. 575-585.

101. Keys, “Congress, Kissinger, and the Origins of Human 

Rights Diplomacy,” p. 838. 

102. Ibid., esp. pp. 838-850. 

103. William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign 

Policy in the Nixon Presidency, New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1998, pp. 147-148; Siniver, Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign 

Policy Making, pp. 72, 106.

104. Hanhimaki, Flawed Architect, p. 450; John Robert Greene, 

The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, Lawrence, KS: University Press of 

Kansas, 1995, pp. 175-176.

105. Robert Jervis, “U.S. Grand Strategy: Mission Impossible,” 

Naval War College Review, Vol. 51, No. 3, Summer 1998, pp. 22-

36; Fareed Zakaria, “Stop Searching for an Obama Doctrine,” The 

Washington Post, July 6, 2011; Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier, 

“Good Riddance to the Bush Doctrine,” The Washington Post, July 

13, 2008.

106. Krasner, “An Orienting Principle for Foreign Policy.” 

107. The phrase comes from Richard Betts, “Is Strategy an 

Illusion?” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 2, Fall 2000, p. 16.

108. Robert Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: 

How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy, New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1998, p. vii.
67

109. Brands, From Berlin to Baghdad, p. 202.

110. Gelb, Power Rules, p. 243.

111. As an example, see Zakaria, “Stop Searching for an 

Obama Doctrine.”

112. See Sarah Kaplan and Eric Beinhocker, “The Real Value 

of Strategic Planning,” Sloan Management Review, Vol. 44, No. 2, 

Winter 2003, p. 72.

113. The evolution of Eisenhower’s strategic thought is nicely 

covered in Campbell Craig, Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and 

Thermonuclear War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, 

esp. pp. 41-89.

114. See George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950, Boston, MA: 

Little, Brown and Company, 1967, p. 464. 

115. On this point, see Andrew P. N. Erdmann, “Foreign 

Policy Planning Through a Private Sector Lens,” in Drezner, ed., 

Avoiding Trivia, esp. p. 151.

116. The point is well made in John Lewis Gaddis, We Now 

Know: Rethinking Cold War History, New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1997, pp. 289-291.

117. Kennan, “Where Do We Stand?” National War College 

Lecture, December 21, 1949, Box 299, Kennan Papers, SMML.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

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Commandant

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STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

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Director of Research

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