The Democratization of Grand Strategy
By
Sean F. X. Barrett
Journal Article |
Aug 4 2013 - 6:02pm
The Democratization of Grand Strategy
Sean F. X. Barrett
Calls for a formalized strategic planning process and grand strategy have been mounting for years.
However, those sounding these calls erroneously remember a past that rarely if ever existed and
overestimate the importance of a formalized process and a final product. Most disconcertingly, they
assume that government is necessarily the only supplier of grand strategy, while ignoring that those in
government are not incentivized to actually produce it. In fact, the proliferation of communications
technology, which provides the means for accessing a wealth of open source intelligence and for
disseminating ideas, and the plethora of academics, analysts, and other intellectuals outside of official
government communities provide a more effective, democratic, and transparent substitute to the
(oftentimes imagined) Project Solariums of the past. The environment in which these intellectuals operate
nurtures “real devils,” who vigorously propose policy and strategy alternatives in which they truly believe
and have a stake in seeing implemented, resulting in a
de facto
strategic planning process, whose merits
far exceed those of a
de jure
one.
While a lot of ink has recently been spilled discussing the Department of Defense’s (DOD) ongoing
Strategic Choices and Management Review and the upcoming 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR),
[i]
calls for a formalized strategic planning process and grand strategy have actually been mounting for
years. For example, The Princeton Project on National Security was established by Michèle Flournoy, a
future Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the first Obama Administration, to foster more strategic
thought by undertaking a three-year bi-partisan initiative to develop its own sustainable and effective
national security strategy formulation process for the United States. She and Shawn Brimley dubbed their
input into this initiative “A Project Solarium for the 21
st
Century,” in reference to the era immediately
following the conclusion of World War II, when strategy was deemed more purposeful, impactful, and
necessary due to the growing Soviet threat. President Eisenhower’s administration undertook an immense
project, Project Solarium, to develop an anti-Soviet strategy that would, ultimately, guide United States
foreign policy until the end of the Cold War. Flournoy and Brimley lamented that it is “both remarkable
and disturbing that the United States has no truly effective strategic planning process for national security
. . . no integrated planning process from which to derive the vital strategic guidance necessary to protect
U.S. national interests and achieve U.S. objectives.”
[ii]
Charles Hill, the Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy at Yale University and author of
Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order
, has repeatedly “made the case” for grand
strategy as a framework for better understanding the “big picture” of America’s role in the world.
[iii]
Former Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, even took to the pages of the
Wall Street Journal
to call for an end
to “the barrage of ad hoc, short-term policy initiatives,”
[iv]
and while Governor Bush seems to mistake
