Creed of an American Grand StrategistI am a great power. And so can you!by Thomas P M BarnettAmerica today must dramatically realign its own post-9/11 trajectory with that of the world at large - a world undergoingdeep transformation amidst great structural uncertainty. This realignment will require a new understanding of the worldand America’s role in its evolution. Such an understanding is found in the realm of strategic thinking known as grandstrategy.Every functioning state pursues some form of grand strategy, either purposeful or accidental. Sometimes leaders willseek to sell a national strategy to the public, hoping to garner popular support. Other times they will keep it secret,because they can or because they must. In ages past, one leader might encompass this whole process. In today’smodern government, the norm is for hundreds and even thousands of key people to be involved, for change to beincremental and spread over years, and for significant disjuncture to occur only with shifts in top political leadership.So when I speak of affecting significant and lasting change in America’s grand strategy, or its systematic approach toshaping this age of globalization, understand that I target not merely one administration or one party or one generationof leaders, but my nation’s sense of historical purpose - its political soul. America’s grand strategy must reflect itscomplex internal make-up as a people, but likewise its magnificent impact upon the world as its most successfulmultinational political and economic union. It must at once incorporate America’s imagined identity (we are the mostsynthetic of the world’s political creatures) and the world’s emerging ambitions, which we have enabled through ourstewardship of global affairs. This challenge properly met, we bequeath unto our children a most wonderful world.Abandoned, we condemn them to a fate of dead-ended dreams and open-ended conflicts.The modern grand strategist therefore aims to forge a lasting chain from analysis synthesized to vision spread to valuesembedded to leadership executed. A grand strategy is not an “elevator speech.” It cannot be slipped in like apassword. Its why must be inculcated in younger minds so that, when they become older hands, these leaders knowwhich levers of power to pull - and when.Grand strategy is like imagining the chess game from start to finish, except that, in today’s world of rapidly spreadingglobalization, it’s never quite clear how many players are involved at any one moment or which pieces they actuallycontrol. That may make it seem like there are no rules, but that means it’s important to make explicit our definition ofthe rules and realize that playing consists largely of making our rule set seem attractive to others, regardless of how thegame unfolds. This game-within-the-game resembles the highly iterative process of generating our own grand strategy.As Parag Khanna argues in his book, The Second World, the line distinguishing geopolitics (the relationship betweenpower and space) and globalization (the global economy’s expanding connectivity) has been effectively erased.Therefore, my grand strategy—regardless of content—is mostly about trying to shape every other state’s grand strategymore than they shape mine. What was once highly hierarchical is now far more peer-to-peer in dynamics, thanks toglobalization’s stunning advance. Still, while all great powers have grand strategies, some matter more than others.After two decades of engaging the US national security establishment as a grand strategist, these are my articles offaith:To be plausible, grand strategic vision must combine a clear-eyed view of today’s reality with a broad capture of thedominant trends shaping the near-term environment. It cannot posit sharp detours, much less U-turns, in history’sadvance. This river’s course is set even as our journey upon it remains fraught with both promise and peril. Thus thevision does not seek to change human nature, which got us to this point quite nicely, but to placate it, thereby ensuringthe portability of its strategic concepts (the dos and don’ts) among minds from different backgrounds, cultures and ages.No new human is required, just a solid fit between today’s inexhaustible ingenuity and tomorrow’s finite possibilities. Socheck your social Darwinism at the door, for all must gain admittance to this kingdom.Grand strategic analysis starts with security, which is always 100 percent of your problem until it’s reasonably achieved.Then it’s at most about 10 percent of your ultimate solution. Scaling Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” involves farmore than reaching that first rung. In any given conflict, if job creation is your only realistic exit strategy, then winninghearts and minds is an ephemeral victory at best. The grand strategist prefers stomachs and wallets any day. Humansare social creatures. They seek connectivity with one another across every possible avenue, leveraging each newtechnology to ends always self-fulfilling and sometimes self-destructive. This eternal search for new forms ofconnectivity defines globalization’s ceaseless advance throughout human history.To remain realistic in this age of emerging hyper-connectivity, grand strategy must begin with the premise that securitychallenges will grow exponentially as a result of technology’s advance - the more connections, the more potentialfailure points. But to admit that challenge is not to surrender to its implied “chaos,” a judgment frequently employed bysecurity experts to curtail serious exploration of grand strategy. All too often, they prefer to focus on contingencyplanning in a complex, “uncontrollable” world. Grand strategy purposefully aspires to be proactive, not merely protectingitself from failure, but exploiting avenues of success as they reveal themselves. Grand strategy is not a hypothesis butdiagnosis combined with prescription.Grand strategy is not clairvoyance; it does not seek to predict future events, but rather to contextualize them in aconfident worldview. The goal is an opportunistic outlook that welcomes the churn of global events for the new,alternative pathways presented (“I hadn’t considered going that way up to now!”), eschewing the fatalism encouraged bymass media commentary (“These events have - yet again - cast grave doubts upon the possibility of achieving ...”). Theunforeseen need not be the
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