Grand strategy

Peter Feaver is a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University.

There, he also directs the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy and is co-principal investigator at the America in the World Consortium.

Previously, Feaver was special advisor for strategic planning and institutional reform at the National Security Council from 2005 to 2007.

David French is a columnist for The New York Times.

And that, that's fine.

That says-- Austin says, that's a change of grand strategy, right? But we need to be clear-eyed about what those risks are.

Can I, can I ask before we wrap up here, the, the idea of like a shift, shifting from conventional to, to these new capabilities, is that, is that really a shift? And we talk about kind of the cost-effectiveness of one versus the other.

Are there things that we do on the conventional side now that if we add these new nuclear capabilities, we no longer have to do, and you can kind of like cash in that, that cost savings and say, "Look, this is a more efficient way to accomplish the same objective"? Or is the premise that we're so far in the hole on that, that we need to do everything we're doing now, plus also this additional thing?

Mr. Mitchell was Assistant Secretary of State in the first Trump administration.

He's the author of the acclaimed book, The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire, and today we are discussing his newest book, Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger, published by Princeton University Press.

Welcome, Mr. Mitchell.

Thank you, Charles.

They have the ability to shape, uh, outcomes at the global level, and nowadays, I mean, they have the nuclear arsenals to wipe out all of humanity.

Uh, they're, they're responsible, maybe not in the sense of, uh, having, um, sh- of showing responsibility for a common good necessarily, although that's often been the case in the European state system, but more that they have an in- inherent, uh, because they have an inherent ability to shape events at the global level, that carries a kind of duty to tend to those things in a way that, uh, doesn't lead to the demise of the whole and, and in our time to a, to a, to a global nuclear war.

How would you define the term grand strategy as you employ it in the book?

Uh, grand strategy to me is, uh, simply the, uh, uh, use of all the means at a state's disposal.

The way that I invert it, however, is not to therefore try and look away from that at all.

It's to focus more on the Canadian side, which is to say, well, Canada itself, as far as I'm concerned, from this same grand strategy perspective, which, of course, you're completely conversant with, is... unable to recognize that the, even though it says it is, that the world around it has changed so dramatically, not just in terms of what America is doing, but in terms of what China has been doing before America, which has largely prompted what America is doing, what you're seeing even in Europe, what you're seeing in Australia, what you're seeing in the UK at the margins, what you are seeing in every Western liberal democracy, and also in other economies which are not Western and not liberal and not democracies, which is the return of neomechanicalism, as you said, economic statecraft, et cetera, et cetera.

In that environment, the only logical North American response strategically is to work together more closely.

And yet Canada, and I'm not trying to be anti-Canadian or bash anyone or be party political, but I think very objectively, if you look at the actions taken within that strategic framework, Canada has done the complete opposite almost every single term.

And on the other, some conversations I've heard muttered to me, and you may have heard similar, which is, well, we have a lot of guns in Canada.

So if America came over the border, we could resist from the hills and stuff.

And it's like, are we really seriously contemplating a future as Afghanistan? Like, I mean, this is an example of like, when you project forward, is this what a grand strategy is? We can be Afghanistan or we can be, you know, sovereignty free in the EU on the other side of the world and hope that structure heads together.

Or we can try and balance between the superpowers and think we won't be Finlandized by one or all of them.

Note here that the objective is not simply to destroy the current dictatorship, but to emplace a democratic system.

A grand strategy that limits its objective to merely destroying the incumbent dictatorship runs a great risk of producing another tyrant.

Section 6.2 Hurdles to Planning some exponents of freedom in various parts of the world do not bring their full capacities to bear on the problem of how to achieve liberation only rarely do these advocates fully recognize the extreme importance of careful strategic planning before they act consequently this is almost never done Why is it that the people who have the vision of bringing political freedom to their people should so rarely prepare a comprehensive strategic plan to achieve that goal? Unfortunately, often most people in democratic opposition groups do not understand the need for strategic planning or are not accustomed or trained to think strategically.

This is a difficult task.

Instead of liberation, it can lead to defeat, massive tragedy, or both.

In most situations, the dictatorship is best equipped for violent struggle, and the military realities rarely, if ever, favour the Democrats.

there are also activists who base their actions on what they feel they should do these approaches are however not only egocentric but they offer no guidance for developing a grand strategy of liberation Action based on a bright idea that someone has had is also limited.

What is needed instead is action based on careful calculation of the next steps required to topple the dictatorship.

Correct.

It's a book on Napoleon's grand strategy.

Which is apropos, because that's what we're going to talk about today.

But you and I were kind of talking before we came on the line.

When you say Napoleon's grand strategy, can you explain that to us in layman's terms?

Sure.

A lot of times the term strategy and the terms grand strategy and strategy are used interchangeably, but they're actually two very different terms.

For strategy, you've got three levels of war.