Grand Strategy is What States Make of It: #Reviewing Wars of Revelation

Christi Siver

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Reconsideration of U.S. grand strategy is critical in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine alongside rising tensions with China. Rebecca Lissner’s Wars of Revelation makes a compelling argument that past U.S. military interventions have played an important role in shaping U.S. grand strategy. Grand strategy is a broad concept encompassing both threats to national security and possible responses. Drawing on extensive archival research, she examines events around the U.S. interventions in Korea, Vietnam, and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and argues past wars are formative in that they reveal foreign policy objectives, the ability to apply military power, the capabilities of militaries of certain profiles, and the relative will of polities to achieve their aims.[1] Wars of Revelation provides a rich description of the information gained through military intervention but lacks a generalizable explanation of how actors use that information to change U.S. grand strategy.

THE CASES

Lissner begins at the outset of the Cold War in Korea, concluding the Korean War reframed the threat posed by Communism in the minds of American policymakers.[2] Rather than major wars between the great powers, the more likely threats were smaller, low-intensity conflicts.[3] This persuaded President Truman to reassess U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons as a deterrent. The uneven performance of U.S. forces also provided information about the limits of the military’s capabilities and led to an inward reassessment, elevating the importance of conventional means suitable for conducting limited war.[4] Lissner provides archival evidence that construction and support for overseas military bases increased in response to the Korean war.

According to Lissner, the U.S. engagement in Vietnam, on the other hand, demonstrated the United States had perhaps overestimated the threat from communist forces. U.S. policymakers had committed themselves to repelling any Communist advance in the region, embracing the so-called Domino Theory.[5]

However, information learned during the Vietnam War ultimately drove U.S. policymakers to reassess the threat of expansion by the Soviet Union and China. Anti-war protests in the United States also demonstrated there were limits to the public’s willingness to fund expensive and costly wars. Lissner concludes that “Vietnam broke the containment orthodoxy by demonstrating that it was domestically unsustainable—but also strategically unnecessary.”[6]

For Lissner’s final case study, she argues that the 1991 Persian Gulf War encouraged U.S. policymakers to embrace the vision of a “New World Order,” ushering in an era of greater interdependence and cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Lissner argues: “U.S. grand strategy after the Gulf War thus placed significant emphasis on deterring and defending against Iraq and Iraq-like threats, which became the central preoccupation of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War period.”[7] As with the other conflicts, Lissner finds that this intervention significantly informed U.S. grand strategy, particularly about the nature of future threats and the dominance of U.S. capabilities.

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President George H. W. Bush addresses a joint session of Congress regarding the end of the war with Iraq, U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC.06 March 1991, declaring a “new world order.” (George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum/Wikimedia)

THE FUZZY NATURE OF STRATEGY

Lissner’s argument might seem as obvious as it is compelling. She stresses that her research and analysis goes beyond the merely intuitive and provides insight into how interventions provide crucial opportunities for information gathering. However, it is difficult to generalize from her analysis because three key questions are left unaddressed. First, what is grand strategy? Second, who makes grand strategy? Finally, is grand strategy a stable concept?

Pinning down a concept like grand strategy is challenging. However, it is important for the reader of Lissner’s book to understand what it is and how it is to be observed. Lissner’s initial definition, which describes grand strategy as “the highest-order and most consequential dimension of statecraft” is fuzzy.[8] Something so vast and important seems difficult to discern, and it's not clear that it could be found in a single document or that it would be authored by a particular person or even group.

Lissner refers to grand strategy almost as though it hangs in the ether. She questions explanations of grand strategy focused on leaders, arguing its evolution was much more continuous than a great leader focus would suggest.[9]

Lissner does not clearly specify the roles and influence of the various policy makers involved in creating and revising grand strategy. In each case study she provides substantial archival evidence of civilian and military leaders gaining information from each intervention and ultimately revising U.S. grand strategy. However, it is not clear who is consistently engaged in the creation and revision of grand strategy and how differences between the players might be resolved.

For example, one might ask why it took the United States so long to learn from the intervention in Vietnam. Lissner notes: “From Johnson’s escalation in 1965 through the end of 1967, however, the Vietnam War’s adverse trends went largely unexamined. To some extent, the messy and multifaceted nature of the conflict on both sides of the north-south border obscured data from coalescing into clear patterns.”[10] The lack of clarity on the positions of various decision makers and the process of creating grand strategy weakens Lissner’s ability to make testable and generalizable claims.

Lissner’s analysis presumes that policymakers agree on a unitary understanding of U.S. grand strategy. Given that grand strategy includes military, economic, and diplomatic calculations, it is hard to imagine that it can be pinned down to one agreed upon meaning at any time. It is possible at any one time that decision makers, holding different kinds of information, could have divergent views of U.S. grand strategy.

CONCLUSION

Lissner’s Wars of Revelation is a rich and thoughtful discussion of how military interventions provide information to civilian and military leaders about the global security environment and current U.S. capabilities. However, her book leaves unresolved questions about how grand strategies are created, negotiated, and revised. Given the importance of thinking about grand strategy, this book should spur greater discussion about who is involved in these conversations and what influence they have.

GIVEN THE IMPORTANCE OF THINKING ABOUT GRAND STRATEGY, THIS BOOK SHOULD SPUR GREATER DISCUSSION ABOUT WHO IS INVOLVED IN THESE CONVERSATIONS AND WHAT INFLUENCE THEY HAVE.

Christi Siver is currently a Professor of Political Science at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University. She earned her MA in International Relations and International Economics at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Washington. She teaches courses on international relations and international security and is the author of Military Intervention, War Crimes, and Civilian Protection.