Rethinking American Grand Strategy

Elizabeth Borgwardt is an associate professor of history and law at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights.Christopher McKnight Nichols is Director of the Center for the Humanities and Associate Professor of History at Oregon State University and the author of Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age.Andrew Preston is Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge and the author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy and American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2019), among other books.

This excellent edited volume addresses both the main issues of US grand strategy and how to expand the concept....The subject's relevance is underlined—rather than undermined—by the rise of unconventional threats: terrorism, pandemics, autocracy and environmental problems....[The book] aims to show that American grand strategy would be more effective if it did not ignore marginalized voices in its design, especially those that traditional scholarship has neglected....Thus, it approaches grand strategy in America in a new way, whereas its historical interest in issues not normally covered in traditional accounts makes it a welcome addition to the literature.

• AcknowledgmentsContributorsIntroduction- Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew PrestonI. Frameworks1. Getting Grand Strategy Right: Clearing Away Common Fallacies in the Grand Strategy Debate- Hal Brands2. The Blob and the Mob: On Grand Strategy and Social Change- Beverly Gage3. Turning the Tide: The Application of Grand Strategy to Global Health- Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. TaylorII. Historical Grand Narratives4. Extending the Sphere: A Federalist Grand Strategy- Charles Edel5. Grand Strategy of the Master Class: Slavery and Foreign Policy from the Antebellum Era to the Civil War-Matthew Karp6. A Useful Category of Analysis? Grand Strategy and US Foreign Relations from the Civil War through World War I- Katherine C. Epstein 7. Grand Strategies (or Ascendant Ideas) since 1919- David MilneIII. Recasting Central Figures8. Woodrow Wilson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Beyond: American Internationalists and the Crucible of World War I-I- Christopher McKnight Nichols9. Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Grand Strategy: Constructing the Postwar Order- Elizabeth Borgwardt10. Foreign Policy Begins at Home: Americans, Grand Strategy, and World War II- Michaela Hoenicke Moore11. National Security as Grand Strategy: Edward Mead Earle and the Burdens of World Power- Andrew Preston12. The Misanthropy Diaries: Containment, Democracy, and the Prejudices of George Frost Kennan- David Greenberg13. Implementing Grand Strategy: The Nixon-Kissinger Revolution at the National Security Council- William Inboden14. George H.W. Bush: Strategy and the Stream of History- Jeffrey A. EngelIV. New Approaches15. Foreign Missions and Strategy, Foreign Missions as Strategy- Emily Conroy-Krutz16. The Unbearable Whiteness of Grand Strategy- Adriane Lentz-Smith17. Rival Visions of Nationhood: Immigration Policy, Grand Strategy, and Contentious Politics- Daniel J. Tichenor18. Disastrous Grand Strategy: US Humanitarian Assistance and Global Natural Catastrophe- Julia F. Irwin19. Denizens of a Center: Rethinking Early Cold War Grand Strategy- Ryan Irwin20. Reproductive Politics and Grand Strategy- Laura BriggsV. Reflections from the American Century21. Casualties and the Concept of Grandness: A View from the Korean War- Mary L. Dudziak22. American Grand Strategy: How Grand Has It Been? How Much Does It Matter?- Fredrik LogevallIndex