New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy: A Review Essay

Overview

Colin Dueck of the University of Colorado critiques five recent books on U.S. grand strategy: A Grand Strategy for America, by Robert Art; America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power, edited by G. John Ikenberry; The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century, by Charles Kupchan; At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy, by Henry Nau; and The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, by Joseph Nye. Among the common threads that Dueck finds running through these five volumes is acknowledgment of a significant shift in the understanding of the strategic options of the United States. Dueck also notes that the authors, realists and liberals alike, agree that “great power counterbalancing against the United States is by no means inevitable. It can in fact be prevented through the use of careful strategy. If, however, the United States acts aggressively and unilaterally, it is likely to “undermine the sources of its own success.”