Improving Thinking About Grand Strategy: Devising a Grand Strategy Diagnostic Process for Policymakers

Abstract

This thesis develops a diagnostic process for policymakers to use when thinking about grand strategy. Drawing upon Alexander George’s work about how International Relations (IR) theories could best assist policymakers, the thesis proposes a two-part process that incorporates IR theories into a structured, logical and useful policy analysis framework. There are some daunting practical difficulties in implementing George’s proposed approach. This thesis suggests overcoming these by stepping up to a higher level of abstraction to generate three broad types of grand strategy: denial, engagement and reform. This approach makes George’s desired policy-relevant knowledge both more feasible to build and more useable by busy policymakers.

The thesis has a four-part structure: a thematic review, a cognitive frame development section, a case study section, and a final evaluation section. A critical review determines that the principal function of grand strategy from a policymaking perspective is to create purposeful change and to build the power needed for implementation. An evaluation concerning ‘how policymakers think’ suggests that the poliheuristic choice decision-making architecture is the preferred policymaking approach. Using this foundation, a grand strategy typology is developed and offensive realism, new liberalism and agentic constructivism operationalized into three schemas suitable to guide policymaking. The schemas are then assessed through an empirical examination of nine case studies.

George’s general appeal to ‘bridge the gap’ between theory and practice in policymaking is realised through the populating of a poliheuristic choice model with optimized grand strategy schemas. In this way, George’s seminal work in the field has been extended through the development of a diagnostic process that can help policymakers’ structure their initial thinking about grand strategy alternatives. The case study analysis demonstrates that the process is applicable to real-world examples; reveals the scope of the three grand strategy types, their dynamics and outcomes; has utility for greater and lesser powers, and non-state actors; and meets George’s specifications for a diagnostic process. In this, the thesis cautions against formulating grand strategies using historical analogies or some combination of theoretical perspectives devised using analytical eclecticism.