Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment

    Author:
  • Patrick Porter
| Spring 2018

Summary

Since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a grand strategy of primacy, despite periodic criticisms and major changes in the international system. Why? The U.S. foreign policy establishment perpetuates primacy as the only legitimate grand strategy, foreclosing alternate perspectives. President Donald Trump is challenging this consensus, but the establishment has resisted change—so far.

Downloads

For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
For Academic Citation:

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, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00311.

The Author

Patrick Porter

Recommended
In the Spotlight
RSS
Brittany Janis and Melissa Shapiro write about the "Exploring Arctic Sustainability" program which brought together nearly 20 Indigenous youth from Alaska, Canada, Mongolia, Norway, and Sweden for a week of climate leadership training and dialogue.
Calder Walton writes in this Times piece that China is conducting an espionage onslaught against Britain unlike that undertaken by Western governments themselves. "It is broad, deep, accelerating, and multi-domain," he says.
Energy economist Severin Borenstein in this conversation with Robert Stavins discussed the many significant challenges facing the nation’s electricity power sector in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice."
Most Viewed

Tags