American Grand Strategy

This chapter assesses how grand American grand strategy has been. If the containment followed by the United States in the Cold War is the most successful, or at least most celebrated, grand strategy the United States has ever pursued, it is worthy of a closer look. This chapter considers two foundational writings from the early Cold War: George Kennan's “X” Article, published in Foreign Affairs in 1947 (under the pseudonym “X”), which laid out the containment policy—that is to say, the containment of Soviet power—and National Security Council Memorandum 68 (NSC-68) of April 1950. Both of these documents are held to have played major roles in shaping the grand strategy that helped the United States deal successfully with the Soviet threat and ultimately win the Cold War. Each has indeed been referred to as the “blueprint” for US policy in the struggle. The chapter then addresses a second question: How much does grand strategy matter in the context of American history? History suggests that grand strategies do not alter the trajectory of great-power politics all that much. In the case of the United States, even radically imperfect strategies have not fundamentally affected its rise and fall.