Chapter 7 briefly recaps the cost-balancing theory and arguments, extends the theory to other issue areas in Chinese foreign policy and the behavior of other states, and finally discusses the implications of this book for the study of international relations and Chinese foreign policy. Building upon existing research on coercion, reputation and credibility, and economic interdependence, this book proposed the cost-balancing theory to explain China’s coercion calculus. The book has implications for understanding China’s grand strategy and predicting China’s future trajectories. Furthermore, this book adds to the burgeoning literature that looks beyond purely military coercive instruments by analyzing how a rising China utilizes nonmilitarized coercion and what drives its decision to choose between military and nonmilitary tools. This book, therefore, contributes to theorizing coercion in an era of global economic interdependence. It sheds new light on policy implications for understanding China’s grand strategy, managing China’s rise, and avoiding great power conflicts, while pointing out potential pathways where the cost-balancing theory can be applied to non-China cases.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

Introduces the book as an empirical case study of the 1917 Entente spring offensive which analyses five key command tasks to illustrate the story of the German army in the First World War. Situates the book in the debate about how Germany was able to hold out for four years. Explains the significance of the offensive and its defeat for Germany, Britain and France at each level of war – grand strategic, strategic, operational and tactical.

Reviews scholarship on the offensive and German command, then explores German thinking on command from Moltke the Elder to 1917 and the linked question of the army’s ability to adapt. Emphasises its unresolved dichotomy between modernity and conservatism. Outlines modern thinking on command. Draws all this together to deduce the army’s five command tasks, explores the sources for analysing them and demonstrates the new insights into the German army and First World War produced by this approach.

Chamberlain’s first challenge on becoming chancellor in 1931 was how to deal with the Great Depression. The reasons why his policies on trade and war debts placed strains on Anglo-American relations, and the consequences for Britain’s ability to wage war in future, are explained, as are the reasons why Churchill agreed with his actions. The responses of the two men to the deterioration in international relations, beginning with the Manchurian crisis and the breakdown of the Geneva Disarmament Conference are compared. There then follows an analysis of how defence policy was transformed in 1934 by Chamberlain working within government for priority for the RAF and by Churchill pressing in the House of Commons for parity with Germany in the air. Priority for air defence implied delay in preparing the army to fight in Europe at the outbreak of war. Chamberlain was also successful in ensuring that Germany rather than Japan was recognised as the main threat, but he failed to persuade Cabinet colleagues that Britain should seek a non-aggression pact with Japan, the chief obstacle being the adverse effect such a pact might have on Anglo-American relations.

At the end of the Cold War, the United States came to pursue a policy of “liberal primacy” that would maintain America’s hegemonic status while expanding the liberal institutions that constituted the postwar international order. At least three important, long-standing questions persist about liberal primacy. First, was liberal primacy consistent with, or a radical departure from, US strategy during the Cold War? Second, how did the United States come to embrace primacy as a central objective of its foreign policy in the post-Cold War period? Finally, why did the United States choose specific strategies of expansion, especially its decision to enlarge NATO, rather than pursue other options like Partnership for Peace? We suggest that focusing on the legitimation of US foreign policy can shed light on these questions. Over the decades, US leaders have consistently invoked familiar liberal concepts and tropes to justify US foreign policy. From a legitimation perspective, there is much more continuity than change between Cold War and post-Cold War US foreign policy. We argue liberal legitimation made the post-Cold War strategy of primacy palatable both at home and abroad. Finally, liberal legitimating language bolstered the proponents of NATO expansion, clearing the path for expansionist policies.

What will be the contours of the “post-post-Cold War” world? This chapter takes up that question by examining the defining international and domestic characteristics of this new age and assessing their similarities with previous eras. We begin by identifying three defining attributes of the Cold War: ideological clash, limited economic exchange, and nuclear arms racing between the American and Soviet-led blocs. Next, we explore the central feature of the post-Cold War era - namely, American primacy. We then examine the trends that have eroded primacy's material underpinnings and produced new domestic and International conditions — global power shifts, technological change, and sociopolitical fragmentation -- then project forward how those trends are likely to evolve over the next ten to fifteen years. Finally, we examine the extent to which those trends are distinct from, or continuous with, the conditions facing the United States during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, and find that some important continuities remain even as meaningful discontinuities will disrupt existing patterns of international order. The chapter concludes by arguing that the post-post-Cold War world requires a new strategic approach for the United States — one guided by a principle of openness, rather than Cold War-style containment or post-Cold War-style liberal universalism.

The Cold War’s denouement not only saw profound political changes throughout Eurasia, but an unprecedented power shift resulting from the Soviet Union’s decline that ultimately ushered in the United States’ “unipolar era.” Nevertheless, the United States’ response to the late Cold War power shift remains underexplored. This chapter fills the gap by examining the processes by which the United States recognized the power shift underway and adapted its foreign policy. I make three arguments. First, American policymakers in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations acknowledged that Soviet decline rebounded to the United States’ geopolitical advantage. Second, American policymakers responded by exploiting Soviet problems, driven by recognition that Soviet decline allowed for American gains, yet worried that the window for gains would soon close. Third, this effort altered European security, as the United States undercut the Soviet Union as a challenger while fostering conditions that could allow it to dominate European security irrespective of whether Soviet problems continued. Put simply, the United States used the Soviet decline to reify American advantages in Europe, garnering oversight over a region that had long been the cockpit of geopolitical contestation. The result meant that unipolarity also translated into American near-hegemony in Europe.

History remembers Ronald Reagan as the ultimate hard-liner, whose campaign of maximum pressure across domains brought down the Soviet Union. But there was more to the fortieth president’s approach to the Soviet Union than that: As much as he went on the offensive, he also advocated for sustained engagement with Soviet leaders. US foreign policy in the 1980s, thus, was every bit as much carrot as it was stick; and it offers a host of lessons about dealing with a resurgent and intransigent Russia today. This chapter will examine the core tenets of Reagan’s grand strategy, and what they — and their successes and failures — can tell us about the way forward in US foreign policy today.

Continuity in Russian strategy reflects a set of enduring predilections indicative of strategic culture preferences, and habitual responses to persistent, or recurring challenges. While individual leaders and their ideas matter, the pursuit of a geopolitical space where Russian interests predominate has remained central to Russian thinking, along with a quest for status, and influence as a Great Power. The strategy for pursuing these goals, and for dealing with other leading powers like the United States, has proven sticky. Contemporary Russian strategy reprises the offensive approach which defined much of the Soviet Union’s consensus, investing in the military means for direct competition and leveraging indirect approaches to sustain a contest against a much stronger opponent in the international system. Russian grand strategy has proven evolutionary: While it grapples with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the post-Cold War world, there is greater continuity than change in the calculus and ambitions that define Russian decision-making.

This chapter looks at the grand strategic implications of the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s, which was successfully thwarted by a Sino-Korean alliance that emerged out of China’s obligations to Korea as part of the so-called tributary system of foreign relations. The Great East Asian War of 1592–1598, known to Koreans as the Imjin War, was the largest conflict on the globe in the sixteenth century yet it is still barely known outside of East Asia. The chapter will offer an overview of how the war fit into the ongoing grand strategy of Ming-dynasty China as it sought to preserve its hegemonic position in East Asia. It will also examine the motivations and strategic calculations of the Japanese hegemon, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), who sought to overturn the longstanding Ming order and create a new international system that could have fundamentally altered the course of Asian, if not world, history had it succeeded. In the end, the defeat of Hideyoshi’s ambitions preserved the East Asian world order and China’s hegemonic position therein for another 250 years. In addition to examining the motivations and ramifications of the war through primary research, this chapter touches upon some of the recent historical and political science literature concerning the war and its broader implications for the study of international relations and power politics in the early modern East Asian context.

The Tang dynasty, which lasted from 618 to 907, was typical of China’s great imperial regimes in that it owed its creation to successful military action and saw its subsequent fortunes shaped to a very great extent by events on the battlefield; when its military power waned the dynasty faltered, and when that power had dissipated completely it fell. In the Tang, as under earlier and later dynasties, the ruling elites were intensely interested in matters of military policy and strategy, with military expenditures claiming the largest portion of the state’s revenues. For the Tang, as for all of the other dynasties, the image of Confucian sage kings ruling by moral suasion, without reference to force of arms, belongs to the realm of myth rather than reality.

This chapter deals with the early stages of World War II in Europe, which was to some extent a repetition of World War I, but with a German victory in May-June 1940. Allied and German grand strategy. The Soviet-Finnish war. Russian annexation of the three Baltic states. The German invasion of neutral Norway, with naval and ground battles against the Allied forces. Churchill replaces Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Planning on both sides for the main Western Front in 1940. The German Blitzkrieg invasion of France and the Low Countries. The Allied evacuation of Dunkirk, the second phase of the invasion, and the French surrender. Air battle over Britain. Inability of the German Army to invade Britain, and Hitler’s decision to invade Russia.

The introduction lays out the basic arguments, and also explains the emphasis on grand strategy and operations. The Axis powers declared their aim as a ‘new order of things’, notably in their 1940 Tripartite Pact. This contrasted with the ‘old’ order created by the Allies after World War I, exemplified by the Paris peace treaties of 1919 and Washington Treaty of 1922. These treaties dealt with Europe and Asia respectively, and they demonstrate that the causes and course of the next struggle would be global. World War II began in China in July 1937, rather than in Europe in 1939; the Asia-Pacific war was as important as the war in Europe. The book’s focus on grand strategy and military operation is warranted, partly for reasons of space and partly because this is the history of a war, and the outcome was victory or defeat.

Given the strength of prospective push factors, a plausible plan for shaping and managing migration must include incentives for aspiring migrants to play by the rules rich governments set. The strategy most likely to succeed (success being relative) combines an annual lottery, a point system, and offshore processing and migration-preparation centers. A lottery along with clearly articulated means for accumulating points (e.g., acquiring proficiency in the host country’s language) would give prospective migrants renewable hope that their turn for legitimate entry will come round. Ideally, the EU, in conjunction with the UNHCR, would establish offshore havens where asylum claimants would not only be given humanitarian relief but in addition opportunities to accumulate points through language and vocational training. Internally, rich states would require biometric identification for all transactions and would incentivize and test new arrivals’ capacity for economic and social integration and would organize mentoring of migrants by citizens, protect expressions of religious identity, suppress hate speech, and use the schools to inculcate an inclusive national narrative. Policing would be combined with social services. Compulsory national service is key to deep integration and adequate staffing of schools and overseas havens.