Grand Strategy and the Presidency ─ Foreign Policy, War and the American Role in the World

This book examines the role and importance of the Presidency in the formulation and conduct of US grand strategy.

The text discusses US strategic history, with particular emphasis on the period from the end of the Cold War to the present day. While the United States periodically has enjoyed exceptional presidential leadership in the past, this book argues that few future presidents will meet high standards of leadership in foreign affairs. In turn, this will undermine the ability of the United States to construct and maintain a coherent grand strategy appropriate to the multipolar world of the twenty-first century.

Grand Strategy and the Presidency explores the role that the holders of the presidential office have played in the past development of the United States as a great power. Drawing upon examples from history, the textual analysis is shaped around the description of the long-term strategic development of the United States. The author then considers what the events of recent decades portend for the future of US strategy and foreign policy.

This book will be of interest to students of Presidential Studies, US foreign policy, Strategic Studies, and IR/Security Studies in general.

C. Dale Walton is a Lecturer in International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, UK. He is the author of Geopolitics and the Great Powers in the Twenty-First Century: Multipolarity and the Revolution in Strategic Perspective (Routledge, 2007) and The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam (Frank Cass/Routledge, 2002).