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3 November 2020

Why American Strategy Fails

By James A. Winnefeld, Michael J. Morell, and Graham Allison

In January, either a second Trump administration or a Biden administration will face the most difficult foreign policy test the United States has experienced since the early years of the Cold War. This test stems not just from specific challenges but also from a growing imbalance among four classic variables of grand strategy: ends, ways, means, and the security landscape. Left unrecognized and unaddressed, gaps between U.S. ambitions and the U.S. ability to fulfill them will generate increasingly unacceptable strategic risks.

From our experience as national security officials—in the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense—we understand why correcting this imbalance is easy to say but hard to do. The policy community resists setting priorities, mostly reacts to ongoing events, and uses the term “vital” promiscuously. Military services and warfare communities are wedded to long-cherished legacy systems that are in many ways misaligned

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