The Limits of Offshore Balancing

Is offshore balancing the right grand strategy for America? Is it time for Washington to roll back the vast system of overseas security commitments and forward military deployments that have anchored its international posture since World War II? This monograph argues that the answer to these questions is no. Offshore balancing represents the preferred grand strategy among many leading international-relations “realists,” who argue that significant geopolitical retrenchment can actually improve America’s strategic position while slashing the costs of its foreign policy. The reality, however, is rather different. The probable benefits of offshore balancing—both financial and geopolitical—are frequently exaggerated, while the likely disadvantages and dangers are more severe than its proponents acknowledge. In all likelihood, adopting this strategy would not allow America to achieve more security and influence at a lower price. The more plausible results would be to dissipate U.S. influence, to court heightened insecurity and instability, and to expose the nation to greater long-range risks and costs.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1443/thumbnail.jp

The Promise and Pitfalls of Grand Strategy

What is “grand strategy,” and why is it seemingly so important and so difficult? This monograph explores the concept of grand strategy as it has developed over the past several decades. It explains why the concept is so ubiquitous in discussions of present-day foreign policy, examines why American officials often find the formulation of a successful grand strategy to be such an exacting task, and explores the ways in which having a grand strategy can be both useful and problematic. It illustrates these points via an analysis of two key periods in modern American grand strategy—the Truman years at the outset of the Cold War, and the Nixon-Kissinger years in the late 1960s and 1970s—and provides several suggestions for how U.S. officials might approach the challenges of grand strategy in the 21st century.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1547/thumbnail.jp

Getting Serious About Strategy in the South China Sea

America is suffering from a strategy deficit in the South China Sea. For nearly a decade--and at accelerated speed since 2014--Beijing has been salami slicing its way to a position of primacy in that critical international waterway, while eroding the norms and interests Washington long has sought to defend. To date, however, Washington has struggled to articulate an effective response. The Obama administration opposed Chinese maritime expansion rhetorically and worked to improve the overall American military and geopolitical posture in the Asia-Pacific

The Return of Geopolitics: Latin America and the Caribbean in an Era of Strategic Competition

With the advent of the Biden administration, it is clear the idea of focusing U.S. foreign policy on strategic competition enjoys widespread bipartisan support. U.S. statecraft is increasingly directed at the threats posed by powerful state rivals—especially China—as opposed to Salafi-Jihadist extremists and other non-state actors. Yet geopolitical rivalry is not simply something that happens over there in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. It also happens over here, within the Western Hemisphere. As the United States enters a new period of geopolitical rivalry, it must update its understanding of strategic denial to fit the facts on the ground. This paper offers an intellectual starting point for that endeavor. It is intended to help the U.S. national security community think through the imperative of strategic denial and hemispheric defense in the twenty-first century.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/jgi_research/1036/thumbnail.jp

The Return of Geopolitics: Latin America and the Caribbean in an Era of Great-Power Rivalry

This article is taken from a larger report published by Ryan C. Berg and Hal Brands titled “The Return of Geopolitics: Latin America and the Caribbean in an Era of Great-Power Rivalry”. The full publication can be found at www.gordoninstitute.fiu.edu/research/publications

Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order

Hal Brands is assistant professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He is a historian whose research focuses on U.S. foreign policy and grand strategy, Cold War history, Latin American security and diplomacy, and other strategic and military issues. He previously worked at the Institute for Defense Analyses outside of Washington, D.C., and has served as a member of the RAND Corporation Grand Strategy Advisory Board. At Duke, he is an affiliate of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy and serves on the Executive Board of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies.Ohio State UniversityMershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent web page, Event photo