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Political Theory and Foundations of Grand Strategy
John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Updated Edition (New York, NY: Norton, 2014).
Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2010).
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: McGraw Hill, 1948).
Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics,” International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (1992).
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.
Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983).
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract.
General Works on Grand Strategy and Debates in the Field
John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).
Michael Fuchs, “America Doesn’t Need a Grand Strategy,” Foreign Policy, July 28, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/28/america-doesnt-need-a-grand-strategy-big-think-trump/.
Benjamin H. Friedman and Justin Logan, “Why Washington Doesn’t Debate Grand Strategy,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter 2016), pp. 14-45.
Gen. Jim Mattis, “A New American Grand Strategy,” Hoover Institution, February 26, 2015, https://www.hoover.org/research/new-american-grand-strategy.
Peter Campbell and Richard Jordan, “Forming the Grand Strategist According to Shakespeare,” Texas National Security Review, https://tnsr.org/2020/01/forming-the-grand-strategist-according-to-shakespeare/.
Offshore Balancing, Restraint, and Retrenchment
Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014).
Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent, Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).
Eugene Gholz, Daryl Press, and Harvey Sapolsky, “Come Home, America: The Strategy of Restraint in the Face of Temptation,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 5- 48.
Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America’s Future Grand Strategy,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 86-124.
Joseph M. Parent and Paul K. MacDonald, “The Wisdom of Retrenchment,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (November/December 2011), pp. 32-47.
Barry R. Posen, “Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 1 (January/February 2013), pp. 116-128.
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior U.S. Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 4 (July/August 2016).
Kyle Haynes, “Decline and Devolution: The Sources of Military Strategic Retrenchment,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 3 (September 2015), pp. 490-502.
Selective Engagement/Primacy/Deep Engagement
Robert J. Art, “Geopolitics Updated: The Strategy of Selective Engagement,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Winter 1998/99), pp. 79-113.
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “American Primacy in Perspective,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 4 (July/August 2002), pp. 20-33.
Barry R. Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 5-46.
Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America: The Case Against Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7-51.
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “The Once and Future Superpower: Why China Won’t Overtake the United States,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 3 (May/June 2016), pp. 91- 104.
Patrick Porter, “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment,” International Security, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Spring 2018), pp. 9-46.
Liberal Internationalism
G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Tony Smith, Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and its Crisis Today (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
Geography and Geopolitics
Sir Halford Mackinder, “The Geographic Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4 (April 1904), pp. 421-437.
Colin Gray, “In Defence of the Heartland: Sir Halford Mackinder and His Critics a Hundred Years On,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (January-March 2004), pp. 9-25.
Robert J. Art, “The United States, The Balance of Power, and World War II: Was Spykman Right?” Security Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2005), pp. 365-406.
Geoffrey Sloan, “Sir Halford J. Mackinder: The Heartland Theory Then and Now,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2-3 (1999), pp. 15-38.
Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, “Balancing on Land and at Sea: Do States Ally Against the Leading Global Power?” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Summer 2010), pp. 7-43
Alexandros Petersen, The World Island: Geopolitics and the Fate of the West (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011).
C. Dale Walton, Geopolitics and the Great Powers in the 21st Century (New York: Routledge, 2007).
Military Technology, the Offence/Defence Balance, and Grand Strategy
Andrew F. Kreprinevich, “From Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions,” National Interest, No. 37 (Fall 1994), pp. 30-42.
Keir Lieber, “Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 71-104.
Sean M. Lynn-Jones, “Offense-Defense Theory and its Critics,” Security Studies, Vol. 4 (Summer 1995), pp. 660-695.
Stephen Van Evera, “Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Spring 1998), pp. 5-43.
Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Coercion
Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Furhmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006).
Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Nukes We Need: Preserving the American Deterrent,” Foreign Affairs (November/December 2009).
Matthew Fuhrmann and Todd S. Sechser, “Signaling Alliance Commitments: Hand-Tying and Sunk Costs in Extended Nuclear Deterrence,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 58, No. 4 (October 2014), pp. 919-935.
Nicholas L. Miller, “The Secret Success of Nonproliferation Sanctions,” International Organization, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Fall 2014), pp. 913-944.
Francis J. Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation,” International Security, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Summer 2015), pp. 9-46.
Francis J. Gavin, “Rethinking the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy,” Texas National Security Review (January 2019).
Dianne Pfundstein Chamberlain, Cheap Threats: Why the United States Struggles to Coerce Weak States (Washington, D.C.” Georgetown University Press, 2016).
Military History and Strategy, History of Grand Strategy, and Alliances
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (Vintage Books, 1989).
Williamson Murray, Macgregor Knox, Alvin Bernstein, eds., The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and Wars (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Williamson Murray, Richard Hart Sinnreich, and James Lacey, eds., The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Politics, Diplomacy and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Peter Paret, Gordon Craig, and Felix Gilbert (eds.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton University Press, 1986).
Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and WIlliam B. Feis, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States from 1607 to 2012 3rd. Ed. (New York: The Free Press, 2012).
Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977).
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).
Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Peter R. Mansoor and Williamson Murray, eds., Grand Strategy and Military Alliances (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski, The End of Grand Strategy: U.S. Maritime Operations in the 21st Century (New York: Cornell University Press, 2017).
Jasen J. Castillo, Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).
David M. Edelstein, Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).
Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 1981).
James D. Boys, Clinton’s Grand Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post Cold War World (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 1987).
Colonel Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn: America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency (New York: 2013).
Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1973).
John Avalon, Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).
David C. Hendrickson, Union, Nation, or Empire: The American Debate over International Relations, 1789-1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009).
Rajon Menon, The End of Alliances (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Rajan Menon, Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post–Cold War Order (Boston: MIT Press, 2015).
American Grand Strategy and China/East Asia
Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Lean Forward: In Defense of American Engagement,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 1 (January/February 2013), pp. 130-142.
Barry Posen, “Pull Back: The Case for Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 1 (Janurary/February 2013), pp. 116-168.
Christopher Layne, “The U.S. – Chinese Power Shift and the End of the Pax Americana,” International Affairs, Vol. 94, No. 1 (January 2018), pp. 89-111.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Will the Liberal Order Survive?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 96, No. 1 (January/February 2017), pp. 10-16.
Barry Posen and Andrew Ross, “Competing Visions for American Grand Strategy,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Winter1996/1997), pp. 5-53.
Asle Toje (ed), Will China’s Rise Be Peaceful: Security, Stability, Legitimacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Thomas J. Christensen, “Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and US Policy toward East Asia,” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Summer 2006), pp. 81-126.
Michael Beckley, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” International Security Vol. 36, No. 3 (2011/12), pp. 41-78.
Charles L. Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 49- 90.
Nina Silove, “The Pivot Before the Pivot: U.S. Strategy to Preserve the Power Balance in Asia,” International Security, Vol. 40, No. 4 (2016), pp. 45-88.
Caitlin Talmadge, “Would China Go Nuclear? Assessing the Risk of Chinese Nuclear Escalation in a Conventional War with the United States,” International Security, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2017), pp. 50-92.
Joshua Shifrinson, “The rise of China, balance of power theory and US national security: Reasons for optimism?” Journal of Strategic Studies, Published online December 26, 2018.
David C. Kang, American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
William J. Norris, Chinese Economic Statecraft: Commercial Actors, Grand Strategy, and State Control (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016).
American Grand Strategy and Russia
George S. Beebe, The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2019).
Agnia Grigas, Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
American Grand Strategy and the Middle East
Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House, 2016).
Steve A. Yetiv, The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972-2005 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
Sean Yom, From Resilience to Revolution: How Foreign Interventions Destabilize the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
Daniel Bolger, Why We Lost (New York: Mariner Books, 2015).
Geoffrey Kemp and John Allen Gay, War With Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences (Lanham, MD: 2013).
Economic Power, Oil, Energy, and Grand Strategy
Paul Viotti, The Dollar and National Security: The Monetary Component of Hard Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).
Agnia Grigas, The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).
Charles L. Glaser and Rosemary A. Kelanic, editors, Crude Strategy: Rethinking the U.S. Military Commitment to Defend Persian Gulf Oil (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016).
Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011).
Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).
David E. Brown, Africa’s Booming Oil and Natural Gas Exploration and Production: National Security Implications for the United States and China (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2013).
Monique Taylor, The Chinese State, Oil and Energy Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Rosemary A. Kelanic, Black Gold and Blackmail: Oil and Great Power Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020).
Ian Rutledge, Addicted to Oil: America’s Relentless Drive for Energy Security (New York: IB Tauris, 2006).
F. Gregory Gause III, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (Washington, D.C.: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994).
Ethics, War, and Strategy
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations 5th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
James M. Olson, Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006).
James M. Dubik, Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016).
Robert C. Doyle, The Enemy in Our Hands: America’s Treatment of Prisoners of War from the Revolution to the War on Terror (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010).
Other/Not Yet Categorized
C. Dale Walton, Grand Strategy and the Presidency: Foreign Policy, War and the American Role in the World (New York: Routledge, 2012) .
Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (New York: Cornell University Press, 2014).
William C. Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2009).
Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Ted Galen Carpenter, Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2018).
A. Trevor Thrall, American Foreign Policy and The Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2009).
Michael A. Cohen and Micah Zenko, Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).
Christopher J. Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).
Christopher J. Coyne, Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).
William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Christopher J. Fettweis, Psychology of a Superpower: Security and Dominance in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).
Michael J. Glennon, National Security and Double Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2008).
Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (New York: Anchor Books, 2008).
David C. Hendrickson, Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
John C. Hulsman, To Dare More Boldly: The Audacious Story of Political Risk (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).
Ted Galen Carpenter and Malou Innocent, Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2015).
George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy: Sixtieth Anniversary Expanded Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).
Walter A. McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
Rajan Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952).
Michael E. O’Hanlon, Beyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2017).
Paul R. Pillar, Why America Misunderstands the World: National Experience and Roots of Misperception (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Patrick Porter, The Global Village Myth: Distance, War, and the Limits of Power (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2015).
Christopher A. Preble, Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2019).
Christopher A. Preble, The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).
Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).
Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Benjamin H. Friedman and A. Trevor Thrall, eds., US Grand Strategy in the 21st Century (New York: Routledge, 2018).
Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018).
William Appleton Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1959).
