Strategy & World Order
Strategy links political goals with the use of military force; it is typically focused on specific campaigns, battles, or shorter-term political goals. Grand strategy coordinates all national resources to achieve political objectives; it manages multiple threats simultaneously and goals are focused over a medium to long-term range.
What is the difference between strategy and grand strategy?
The balance of power
What principle helped maintain stability in the Westphalian system?
Security, prosperity, international order, and values
What are the four enduring US national interests?
A strategy to defend U.S. allies and territories along a line including Japan, the Philippines, and Pacific islands, but initially excluding Korea.
What was the Truman administration’s “defensive perimeter” concept in Asia?
This Soviet leader came to power as the general secretary in 1985 and introduced reforms known as perestroika and glasnost.
Who is Mikhail Gorbachev?
The concept held by a region or civilization about the nature of just arrangements and the distribution of power thought to be applicable to the entire world.
What is Kissinger’s definition of world order?
A political and social upheaval that overthrew France’s monarchy, abolished feudal privileges, and introduced ideals of liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty. It destabilized Europe by spreading nationalism and revolutionary ideas, challenging monarchies and disrupting the balance of power that upheld the Westphalian Order.
What was the 1789 French Revolution?
Believed in moral principles and universal democracy. He wanted to replace power politics with international law, collective security, and institutions like the League of Nations. He emphasized morality and ideals.
What was Woodrow Wilson’s view on world order?
To prevent a united communist bloc by driving a wedge between the Soviet Union and Communist China.
What was the purpose of Truman’s “wedge” concept between Stalin and Mao?
A significant event in the Cold War – NATO's military exercise that almost escalated to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Reagan realized that confrontation risked war; he began to de-escalate and focused more on negotiations and diplomacy.
What was the Able Archer Crisis and its results?
Prioritizing finite resources, maintaining coherence amid complexity, providing a heuristic for decision-making, dealing with competition and adversaries, difficult to compensate for flaws
What are Brands’s 5 reasons for why grand strategy is crucial?
Both are systems in which a small group of great powers hold disproportionate authority to preserve global order, intervene in conflicts, and prevent hegemonic domination.
How were the Quadruple Alliance and UN Security Council similar?
Representation, negotiation, implementation
What are the three core functions of diplomacy as an instrument of power?
The idea of connecting progress in arms control and trade with Soviet behavior in other areas, such as restraint in the Third World.
What was the concept of “linkage” in Nixon and Kissinger’s grand strategy?
The Soviet Union appeared strong militarily, but it was actually weak internally (economy, society, corruption). Through pressure, the US could exploit the USSR, ultimately leading to peace.
What was the fundamental idea of Reagan’s grand strategy?
Grand strategy is the tool through which a superpower like the US engages with, sustains, or reshapes world order to protect and promote its national interests and values.
How are World Order and Grand Strategy related from an American (or superpower) perspective?
The unity of the Concert of Powers dissolved, and the great powers increasingly pursued national interests rather than collective European stability.
How did the Crimean war lead to the dissolution of the Concert of Powers?
Culture, political values, and foreign policy.
What are the three main sources of soft power?
To balance Soviet power, gain leverage in Vietnam, or integrate China into the global system.
What was the rationale behind Nixon and Kissinger’s opening to China?
In his first term, Reagan emphasized confrontation through military buildup and ideological pressure, while in his second term he shifted toward negotiation and arms control with Gorbachev, leading to agreements like the INF Treaty.
How did Reagan’s approach to diplomacy with the Soviet Union differ between his first and second terms?
He proposed that lasting international peace could be achieved through a voluntary federation of republics committed to non-hostility, transparent governance, and reasoned peace by citizens.
What was Immanuel Kant’s contribution to the concept of World Order?
It shifted the balance of power and created a powerful centralized state that made the system unstable, reduced diplomatic flexibility, and led to the rise of WWI.
How did Germany’s unification impact the Westphalian Order?
Aid provides resources to influence other nations, trade creates leverage through market access and restrictions, and finance involves capital flows, sanctions, and investment to shape behavior.
How do aid, trade, and finance differ as economic instruments of power?
Because of domestic opposition in the U.S. and aggressive Soviet actions abroad, which undermined trust and support for continued cooperation.
Why did détente unravel under Nixon?
Unlike his predecessors, he scaled back Soviet involvement by withdrawing from costly conflicts (like Afghanistan) and reducing aid to proxy wars, signaling a shift from expansionism to reform and easing Cold War tensions.
How did Gorbachev’s foreign policy toward the Third World mark a shift from earlier Soviet leaders?