Defining Grand Strategy
By Peter Layton
August 18, 2020
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1871
The epigraph by Lewis Carroll neatly sums up the plight in which the term grand strategy finds itself. It is now a Humpty Dumpty word for which many hold their own unique understanding.[1] This has arisen because many historians and international relations scholars simply create a definition for themselves when writing that fits the arguments they wish to make. They mainly use the term to buttress their opinions about specific historical cases and particular academic theories. They are not trying— nor, indeed, intending—to create a general, generic definition.
Recognizing this, there is now a small cottage industry examining how the term varies between authors and across time. These works find what they set out to find, and many are fascinating historical works well worth exploring.[2]
However, it is surely past time to move on and try to develop a functional meaning of the phrase. This means moving away from today’s deliberately idiosyncratic formulations that are only useful in at best a few selected circumstances. Instead, a functional definition of grand strategy would aim to devise a generic meaning broadly applicable across numerous dissimilar cases. Being functional, though, implies the definition is for a specific task. Grand strategy is a methodology used by policymakers and practitioners to solve problems. It is for these people that a functional grand strategy definition would be of most use.
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