The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy. Edited by Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein. Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.
This book explores the idea of grand strategy and offers a full blown critique—both theoretical and empirical—of the gaps and inconsistencies that weaken modem realist theory. Grand strategy, the authors maintain, is determined as much by domestic politics as by international pressures.
The general theme underlying the book is that strategic assessments focusing only on material power, on changes in its distribution, and on external threat are radically incomplete. Rather, the authors argue, domestic groups, social ideas, economic restraints, and domestic political pressures play important roles in the selection of grand strategy. Individual chapters illustrate this point by focusing on particular critical episodes prior to the two world wars and at the start and end of the Cold War. They show the importance of domestic factors in the grand strategies of the major powers—Japan and the United States. Britain, Imperial and Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia.
Representing a new stage in the revision of both realism and the fundamentals of grand strategy, this book will be welcomed by political scientists and others concerned with security and defense studies, international relations, sociology, and political history.
Table of Contents:
Part One: Theory
Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein
Politics and Grand Strategy
Michael W. Doyle
The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy
John Mueller
Part Two: Practice
The Anglo-German Naval Race and Comparative Constitutional "Fitness"
David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski
Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence, and the Incoherence of Grand Strategy: The United States, 1938-1950Arthur A. Stein
British Grand Strategy and the Origins of World War II
Richard Rosecrance and Zara Steiner
Internal and External Constraints on Grand Strategy: The Soviet Case
Matthew Evangelista
The New Nationalism: Realist interpretations and Beyond
Jack Snyder
The State and Japanese Grand Strategy
Chalmers Johnson