Grand strategy

Grand strategy or high strategy is a state's strategy of how means (military and nonmilitary) can be used to advance and achieve national interests in the long-term. Issues of grand strategy typically include the choice of military doctrine, force structure and alliances, as well as economic relations, diplomatic behavior, and methods to extract or mobilize resources.

In contrast to strategy, grand strategy encompasses more than military means (such as diplomatic and economic means); does not equate success with purely military victory but also the pursuit of peacetime goals and prosperity; and considers goals and interests in the long-term rather than short-term.

In contrast to foreign policy, grand strategy emphasizes the military implications of policy; considers costs benefits of policies, as well as limits on capabilities; establishes priorities; and sets out a practical plan rather than a set of ambitions and wishes. A country's political leadership typically directs grand strategy with input from the most senior military officials. Development of a nation's grand strategy may extend across many years or even multiple generations.

Much scholarship on grand strategy focuses on the United States, which has since the end of World War II had a grand strategy oriented around primacy, "deep engagement", and/or liberal hegemony, which entail that the United States maintains military predominance; maintains an extensive network of allies (exemplified by NATO, bilateral alliances and foreign US military bases); and integrates other states into US-designed international institutions (such as the IMF, WTO/GATT, and World Bank). Critics of this grand strategy, which includes proponents for offshore balancing, selective engagement, restraint, and isolationism, argue for pulling back.

There is no universally accepted definition of grand strategy. One common definition is that grand strategy is a state's strategy of how means (military and nonmilitary) can be used to advance and achieve national interests in the long-term. Grand strategy expands on the traditional idea of strategy in three ways:

Thinkers differ as to whether grand strategy should serve to promote peace (as emphasized by B. H. Liddell Hart) or advance the security of a state (as emphasized by Barry Posen).

British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart played an influential role in popularizing the concept of grand strategy in the mid-20th century. Subsequent definitions tend to build on his. He defines grand strategy as follows:

[T]he role of grand strategy – higher strategy – is to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental policy.