Peter Dombrowski - Böcker

This book develops a new approach in explaining how a nation's Grand Strategy is constituted, how to assess its merits, and how grand strategies may be comparatively evaluated within a broader framework.The volume responds to three key problems common to both academia and policymaking. First, the literature on the concept of grand strategy generally focuses on the United States, offering no framework for comparative analysis. Indeed, many proponents of US grand strategy suggest that the concept can only be applied, at most, to a very few great powers such as China and Russia. Second, characteristically it remains prescriptive rather than explanatory, ignoring the central conundrum of why differing countries respond in contrasting ways to similar pressures. Third, it often understates the significance of domestic politics and policymaking in the formulation of grand strategies - emphasizing mainly systemic pressures. This book addresses these problems. It seeks to analyze and explain grand strategies through the intersection of domestic and international politics in ten countries grouped distinctively as great powers (The G5), regional powers (Brazil and India) and pivotal powers hostile to each other who are able to destabilize the global system (Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia). The book thus employs a comparative framework that describes and explains why and how domestic actors and mechanisms, coupled with external pressures, create specific national strategies. Overall, the book aims to fashion a valid, cross-contextual framework for an emerging research program on grand strategic analysis.

This book develops a new approach in explaining how a nation's Grand Strategy is constituted, how to assess its merits, and how grand strategies may be comparatively evaluated within a broader framework.The volume responds to three key problems common to both academia and policymaking. First, the literature on the concept of grand strategy generally focuses on the United States, offering no framework for comparative analysis. Indeed, many proponents of US grand strategy suggest that the concept can only be applied, at most, to a very few great powers such as China and Russia. Second, characteristically it remains prescriptive rather than explanatory, ignoring the central conundrum of why differing countries respond in contrasting ways to similar pressures. Third, it often understates the significance of domestic politics and policymaking in the formulation of grand strategies - emphasizing mainly systemic pressures. This book addresses these problems. It seeks to analyze and explain grand strategies through the intersection of domestic and international politics in ten countries grouped distinctively as great powers (The G5), regional powers (Brazil and India) and pivotal powers hostile to each other who are able to destabilize the global system (Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia). The book thus employs a comparative framework that describes and explains why and how domestic actors and mechanisms, coupled with external pressures, create specific national strategies. Overall, the book aims to fashion a valid, cross-contextual framework for an emerging research program on grand strategic analysis.

In Buying Military Transformation, Peter Dombrowski and Eugene Gholz analyze the United States military's ongoing effort to capitalize on information technology. New ideas about military doctrine derived from comparisons to Internet Age business practices can be implemented only if the military buys technologically innovative weapons systems. Buying Military Transformation examines how political and military leaders work with the defense industry to develop the small ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced communications equipment, and systems-of-systems integration that will enable the new military format. Dombrowski and Gholz's analysis integrates the political relationship between the defense industry and Congress, the bureaucratic relationship between the firms and the military services, and the technical capabilities of different types of businesses. Many government officials and analysts believe that only entrepreneurial start-up firms or leaders in commercial information technology markets can produce the new, network-oriented military equipment.But Dombrowski and Gholz find that the existing defense industry will be best able to lead military-technology development, even for equipment modeled on the civilian Internet. The U.S. government is already spending billions of dollars each year on its "military transformation" program-money that could be easily misdirected and wasted if policymakers spend it on the wrong projects or work with the wrong firms. In addition to this practical implication, Buying Military Transformation offers key lessons for the theory of "Revolutions in Military Affairs." A series of military analysts have argued that major social and economic changes, like the shift from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, inherently force related changes in the military. Buying Military Transformation undermines this technologically determinist claim: commercial innovation does not directly determine military innovation; instead, political leadership and military organizations choose the trajectory of defense investment. Militaries should invest in new technology in response to strategic threats and military leaders' professional judgments about the equipment needed to improve military effectiveness.Commercial technological progress by itself does not generate an imperative for military transformation. Clear, cogent, and engaging, Buying Military Transformation is essential reading for journalists, legislators, policymakers, and scholars.

Regional Missile Defense from a Global Perspective explains the origins, evolution, and implications of the regional approach to missile defense that has emerged since the presidency of George H. W. Bush, and has culminated with the missile defense decisions of President Barack Obama. The Obama administration's overarching concept for American missile defense focuses on developing both a national system of limited ground-based defenses, located in Alaska and California, intended to counter limited intercontinental threats, and regionally-based missile defenses consisting of mobile ground-based technologies like the Patriot PAC-3 system, and sea-based Aegis-equipped destroyer and cruisers. The volume is intended to stimulate renewed debates in strategic studies and public policy circles over the contribution of regional and national missile defense to global security. Written from a range of perspectives by practitioners and academics, the book provides a rich source for understanding the technologies, history, diplomacy, and strategic implications of the gradual evolution of American missile defense plans. Experts and non-experts alike—whether needing to examine the offense-defense tradeoffs anew, to engage with a policy update, or to better understand the debate as it relates to a country or region—will find this book invaluable. While it opens the door to the debates, however, it does not find or offer easy solutions—because they do not exist.

Regional Missile Defense from a Global Perspective explains the origins, evolution, and implications of the regional approach to missile defense that has emerged since the presidency of George H. W. Bush, and has culminated with the missile defense decisions of President Barack Obama. The Obama administration's overarching concept for American missile defense focuses on developing both a national system of limited ground-based defenses, located in Alaska and California, intended to counter limited intercontinental threats, and regionally-based missile defenses consisting of mobile ground-based technologies like the Patriot PAC-3 system, and sea-based Aegis-equipped destroyer and cruisers. The volume is intended to stimulate renewed debates in strategic studies and public policy circles over the contribution of regional and national missile defense to global security. Written from a range of perspectives by practitioners and academics, the book provides a rich source for understanding the technologies, history, diplomacy, and strategic implications of the gradual evolution of American missile defense plans. Experts and non-experts alike—whether needing to examine the offense-defense tradeoffs anew, to engage with a policy update, or to better understand the debate as it relates to a country or region—will find this book invaluable. While it opens the door to the debates, however, it does not find or offer easy solutions—because they do not exist.

How do two conventionally powerful, nuclear armed, but commercially oriented great powers, reliant on sea lanes and global maritime infrastructure, engage in a long-term strategic rivalry? When do such competitions lead to crisis instability and even war? This book presents a research agenda using a variety of methods to explore this unique competitive environment for China and the United States.The most likely great power friction points today are located at sea. Any shots fired between China and the United States will likely be between navies and air forces rather than armies. While much security studies understandably concentrates on land forces, basic concepts such as the importance of territory, the offense-defense balance, technological competition, economic warfare, and crisis stability do not comfortably apply to maritime competition. The chapters in this volume consider the use of naval power - including blockades, naval diplomacy, fleet engagements, and nuclear escalation - across the spectrum of global politics and international conflict. The volume encourages applying the many classic approaches of security studies to this high-stakes relationship while considering maritime conflict as distinct from other forms, such as land and nuclear, that have traditionally occupied the field.This work will be of great interest to students of strategic studies, international relations, maritime security, and Asian-American politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Security Studies.

How do two conventionally powerful, nuclear armed, but commercially oriented great powers, reliant on sea lanes and global maritime infrastructure, engage in a long-term strategic rivalry? When do such competitions lead to crisis instability and even war? This book presents a research agenda using a variety of methods to explore this unique competitive environment for China and the United States.The most likely great power friction points today are located at sea. Any shots fired between China and the United States will likely be between navies and air forces rather than armies. While much security studies understandably concentrates on land forces, basic concepts such as the importance of territory, the offense-defense balance, technological competition, economic warfare, and crisis stability do not comfortably apply to maritime competition. The chapters in this volume consider the use of naval power - including blockades, naval diplomacy, fleet engagements, and nuclear escalation - across the spectrum of global politics and international conflict. The volume encourages applying the many classic approaches of security studies to this high-stakes relationship while considering maritime conflict as distinct from other forms, such as land and nuclear, that have traditionally occupied the field.This work will be of great interest to students of strategic studies, international relations, maritime security, and Asian-American politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Security Studies.

The field of grand strategy is exceptionally American-centric theoretically, methodologically and empirically. Indeed, many scholars treat the United States as a unique case, and thus incomparable. This Element addresses the shortcomings of this approach by developing a novel framework for the purpose of systematic comparison, both within and among different countries. Using the United States as a benchmark, three dimensions are considered in which grand strategy can be compared: first, attributes of the major types commonly discussed in the literature; second, similarities and differences in the implementation of grand strategies over time, using US strategic relations with contemporary Russia as an example; and finally, across space, properties of the grand strategies that are interactively employed by other major powers in relation to the United States in the Indo-Pacific. The Element can be used by scholars and students alike to expand analysis beyond the confines that currently dominate the field.

In The End of Grand Strategy, Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski challenge the common view of grand strategy as unitary. They eschew prescription of any one specific approach, chosen from a spectrum that stretches from global primacy to restraint and isolationism, in favor of describing what America's military actually does, day to day. They argue that a series of fundamental recent changes in the global system, the inevitable jostling of bureaucratic politics, and the practical limitations of field operations combine to ensure that each presidential administration inevitably resorts to a variety of strategies. Proponents of different American grand strategies have historically focused on the pivotal role of the Navy. In response, Reich and Dombrowski examine six major maritime operations, each of which reflects one major strategy. One size does not fit all, say the authors—the attempt to impose a single overarching blueprint is no longer feasible. Reich and Dombrowski declare that grand strategy, as we know it, is dead. The End of Grand Strategy is essential reading for policymakers, military strategists, and analysts and critics at advocacy groups and think tanks.

The Indian Ocean, with its critical routes for global commerce, is a potentially volatile location for geopolitical strife. Even as the region's role in the international economy and as a highway to conflict zones increases, the US has failed to advance a coherent strategy for protecting its interests in the Indian Ocean or for managing complex diplomatic relationships across the region. The Indian Ocean and US Grand Strategy presents a range of viewpoints about whether and how the US should alter its diplomatic and military strategies for this region. Contributors examine US interests in the Indian Ocean, assess the relative critical importance or imperiled nature of these interests, and propose solutions for American strategy ranging from minimal change to maximum engagement. The book concludes with a comparative assessment of these options and a discussion of their implications for US policymakers. This volume's perspectives and analysis of the Indian Ocean region will be valued by scholars and students of US foreign policy, South Asia, and security studies as well as by diplomats, military officers, and other practitioners.

The Indian Ocean, with its critical routes for global commerce, is a potentially volatile location for geopolitical strife. Even as the region's role in the international economy and as a highway to conflict zones increases, the US has failed to advance a coherent strategy for protecting its interests in the Indian Ocean or for managing complex diplomatic relationships across the region. The Indian Ocean and US Grand Strategy presents a range of viewpoints about whether and how the US should alter its diplomatic and military strategies for this region. Contributors examine US interests in the Indian Ocean, assess the relative critical importance or imperiled nature of these interests, and propose solutions for American strategy ranging from minimal change to maximum engagement. The book concludes with a comparative assessment of these options and a discussion of their implications for US policymakers. This volume's perspectives and analysis of the Indian Ocean region will be valued by scholars and students of US foreign policy, South Asia, and security studies as well as by diplomats, military officers, and other practitioners.