How grand is grand strategy? Frank Hoffman, a friend and WOTR contributing editor, wrote an article titled “Grand Strategy: The Fundamental Considerations,” available behind the paywall at Orbis, the journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Like all of Hoffman’s work, it is well written, sensible, and meticulously sourced. Should you have the means, I urge you to read it. Hoffman offers eight “considerations” that influence the making of grand strategy, but more to the point, U.S. grand strategy:
- Context and culture
- Constraints
- Compromise and consensus by council
- Competiveness
- Coherence
- Contingency
- Continuous assessment and adaptation
- Communication
Each consideration is thoroughly explored, and the piece is chock full of supporting quotes from the grandees of strategy. Seven of Hoffman’s considerations are spot on, coherent, and complete, yet one of his arguments—his discussion of constraints—inspired an epiphany worth sharing. He writes,
There are pundits in the United States that believe strategies should be unconstrained, reflecting that American predisposition towards engineered solutions and massive resources.
He continues, “Thinking of strategy without understanding the limits of means or resources is woefully delusionary.” Later still, he writes, “Future U.S. national security strategies will have to seek creative and relevant solutions with fewer resources.”
While his essay claims to deal with grand strategy, this passage is one of a few places where it dips clearly into military strategy, an area in which the ends-ways-means construct adds rigor and structure to thinking. Grand strategy is different, because as Hoffman acknowledges, it “requires the conceptualization of all the elements of national power.” Therefore, a true grand strategy does not ignore resource constraints so much as it seeks to define (and redefine) them. I would go so far as to say that while grand strategy may not be resource “unconstrained” it must surely be the least constrained layer of strategic thinking, in that it can and should—as a product of its own logic—re-order a nation’s economy and resources in order to achieve the desired strategic ends.
One example of this surely must be the last successful grand strategy that the United States pursued, that of containment. Think back to NSC-68, and then try and fit all that it entailed, the national effort it required—centered around defense spending but not solely a product of it—into the “available resources” the nation provided in the five years after the defeat of the Axis powers. No one associated with the shaping of containment threw up their hands and gave up because the resources to implement it were not immediately available after a long and expensive war. The grand strategy itself provided the thinking and effort required to generate the necessary resources and direct them toward an ambitious, global, and grand strategy.
However, for some reason, the masters of strategy would knowingly deprive today’s grand strategists of one of the most important elements of national power: the power of the nation to produce goods and services. All manner of noise is made about grand strategy representing the highest synthesis of all the elements of national power toward a set of defined ends, and then the grand strategist is handcuffed by having to devise a grand strategy “within the limits of means or resources,” which in practice, means “the budgetary outlay devoted to national security.” This is self-defeating, it is illogical, it is counterfactual, and it results in an impoverished set of strategic options. Keep in mind that we are limiting ourselves here to the realm of grand strategy, in its broadest terms. The making of military strategy must be guided by respect for resources, because presumably, by this time a coherent grand strategy would have suggested the proper allocation of national resources to the military instrument.
I have come to the conclusion that in the realm of grand strategy, the strategist who enters the argument with a pre-conceived notion of what general portion of the GDP will be allocated to achieving desired ends is guilty either of delusional thinking or practicing something other than the making of grand strategy. More to the point, it is the job of the grand strategist to assess the total resources available to achieving the desired ends and suggest alternative proportions that re-allocate resources away from less critical uses to more critical uses. In other words, anyone making grand strategy who accepts current “…limits of means or resources…” has skipped the most important first step, which is to define or re-define those limits.
Perhaps my view of the matter raises the realm of grand strategy to a level above even that which Hoffman and others would grant it. If so, we must either accept my view and sweep away all this nonsense about limits and resources, or we should stick to the resource constrained view, redefine what grand strategy actually is, and sweep away all this nonsense about it being that grand and involving “all the instruments of national power.” Only one of the two approaches is logical and coherent.
Bryan McGrath is the Assistant Director of the Hudson Center for American Seapower and the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC.
Alan Wolfe 
Jack Soucy 
Bryan McGrath 
BenK 
Paul Darling 
Scott Sundt 
John Allen Williams 
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martin 
While a grand strategy might be without bounds, that doesn’t mean that a defense strategy should be developed without budgetary constraints. One of the many failures of the Quadrennial Defense Review report is that Congress demands a defense strategy without resources, which makes it a pipe dream and an ineffective guide for long-term planning.
Very well said Sir! Indeed, to not let grand strategy drive resource allocation with impunity is, in my more humble words, to doubt what exactly we are fighting for as a nation.
See final sentence of the third paragraph from the end.
I bow to your wisdom, sir.
It’s pretty simple. Real grand strategy works on many fronts.
One of those is the internal allocation of resources for various arms of the effective strategy itself. The Cold War involved supporting guns and butter, at home and abroad, and the real grand strategy involved tactically modulating the debate over the ‘guns to butter ratio.’
Not including this discussion in the strategy means working at some lower level, not quite grand. Strategic thinking, perhaps, for the military, or a service, or some subsidiary organization; but not for the nation as a whole.
I concur with Mr. McGrath’s point.
Grand Strategy must be unconstrained. You are, after all, visualizing the end state you wish to achieve. If you constrain your end state, you constrain your thinking.
Ronald Reagan succinctly defined his grand strategy vis a vis the Soviet Union.
“We win. They lose.” This is unconstrained Grand Strategy. The means by which he did it was could be both brutally direct or overly nuanced. But the end state was unwavering and unconstrained.
Now, the policy and strategies that flow from that grand strategy will, by necessity, be constrained. But that is a different discussion.
Likewise, in the absence of existential threats, can the US develop a coherent grand strategy that can survive being sacrificed on the altar of domestic political exigencies?
Doubtful. George Bush’s Grand Strategy versus Islamic Terrorism died with President Obama’s election. Likewise Obama’s strategy will die with his administrations replacement.
We continue to search for another Solarium solution without realizing that it is the threat which dictates clarity of vision, not the temporary occupant of the White House.
So what is the fundamental purpose of a Grand Strategy for a nation-state? In my mind its pretty simple: survival of the state. And if survival of the state is the ultimate goal of a GS then the question, within the context of an unconstrained and limitless resource application, becomes the degree to which a nation is willing to go to ensure its survival. This requires us to look into our darkest thoughts and really determine just how far we, as a nation, would go to survive. So let’s put it out there–we would be willing to engage in thermonuclear war to ensure our survival. Further, we would destroy everything and and everyone to ensure the survival of our nation and our way of living. If you don’t think we would do this you are deluded. Ultimate survival forces people to do things they would never ever consider possible. The high moral road gives way pretty quickly if one’s existence is truly threatened. So start with the premise that Grand Strategy is based on ultimate survival of the state and then see how many of the Elements of Statecraft can be brought to bear to ensure that survival. Resources mean nothing in that context because in a very true sense, there is no tomorrow if the state ceases to exist. And don’t be fooled by military constraints–those are self-imposed in the narrow realm of conventional warfare. Our true military capability is never fully brought to bear on the global scene. Unconstrained and limitless should cause much introspection.
Brian McGrath and Frank Hoffman continue to burnish their well-deserved reputations as master strategists with this interchange — which is interesting in itself and provoked some thoughtful reflections in response.
Being included with Frank Hoffman on any list is an honor. You are very kind.
There are two axioms for a Grand Strategy: (1) The strong will do what they will; the weak suffer what they must; and (2) Never say never. The first axiom is as true today as it was 2500 years ago with Thucydides; the second is a pragmatic Machiavellian assessment of human nature and nation-states. A nation must realistically evaluate where it ranks on the world stage and then decide what it can do and what it will do to ensure its ultimate survival. Thus, all countries are constrained or limited in this strategic sense. This becomes a direct reflection of the amount of blood and treasure (e.g. resources) a nation decides to expend on its “national interests”. The sad truth is that most countries, including the U.S. appear to be incapable of looking past the next election or the next crisis of the moment to ever be able to focus long enough on a credible, realistic, and pragmatic Grand Strategy.
strategy is strategy is strategy (balancing ends, ways and means), no matter at what level practised. A nation’s resource envelope is as bounded as a military’s. The U.S. Government of the day writing NSC68 did have constrained national resource, they just chose to dedicate a larger percentage of them to defence.
I like reading the dead Europeans, they had a clarity of thought and expression that we don’t often see today. I also like the three legged stool metaphor for strategy, but it is intended to illustrate the considerations in formulating strategy rather than define what is ‘strategy’. It assumes that the adherents understand the difference between planning and strategy. A plan is about efficiently employing resources to deliver a desired objective. A strategy is about employing power to prevail in a contest of wills.
Strategy is messy and imprecise and is built around probabilities rather than certainties. Strategy needs an adversary, the better you understand your adversary, the more precise you can be. As the strongest global power, the US may not want to think in term of adversaries, but when it comes to power relativities the weaker states do.
Intelligence is key – not data, meta data, or live video streaming – real human intelligence built on a deep cultural understanding of the adversary. There are many elements of national power, but the allies have been over relying on the military component for too long in circumstances where arguably the military is unsuited to the task.
This essay and the comments immediately bring to mind “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy. Kennedy is a historian of grand strategy. Those who recall his book are reminded of a trenchant historical analysis of grand strategy in the context of resources. The upshot: while innovative planning at all levels is aided by unconstrained thinking – those nations that continuously overextend themselves suffer historically. At some point unconstrained strategizing has to give way to choices and priorities in budgeting.