
President Barack Obama recently released his administration’s National Security Strategy–which outlines his vision for America’s role in the world and presents a broad blueprint for how the country can achieve security. Grand strategy is an academic term used to describe the highest level of statecraft. The theoretical formula for crafting a grand strategy is pretty straightforward: first, you define the interests of the state; second, you identify the threats to those interests; and third, you figure out how to protect and advance those interests using the political, economic, and military resources you have. Crafting an effective grand strategy in the real world, however, is much more difficult because you have to contend with the complex realities of the world: domestic…
