An American Grand Strategy of Prudent Internationalism

• published: 28 Sep 2015
• views: 28

On September 23, 2015, Dr. Paul Carrese, Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy gave a lecture at The Institute of World Politics on "An American Grand Strategy of Prudent Internationalism." About the lecture American grand strategy recently has swung from the high ambitions and maximalism of the George W. Bush freedom agenda to the minimalism and retrenchment of the Obama strategy. We now face the strategic confusion and unsatisfactory results of these extremes, to include consequences for our friends, allies, security, and ideals. There is therefore a need to propose bedrock, consensus principles that can guide a less polemical, more stable debate about America's foreign policy and grand strategy during the 2016 electoral cycle for the presidency and a new Congress, and provide the foundation for a more stable and successful strategy. A sober middle ground of prudent internationalism would restore the post-1941 consensus on the importance of American global leadership, by taking bedrock guidance from George Washington's strategic principle - endorsed by President Eisenhower in the nuclear age - that American policy about war, peace, and world affairs must always seek the right balance between our legitimate interests, and our exceptional ideals of liberty and a rules-based international order. About the speaker Paul Carrese is professor of Political Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and holds a doctorate from Boston College in political science, and Master's degrees from Oxford University in theology and in philosophy & politics. He has been a Rhodes Scholar, a research fellow at Harvard, a Fulbright Scholar at University of Delhi, and a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program, Politics Department, Princeton University. His forthcoming book is Democracy in Moderation: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Sustainable Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He is co-editor of John Marshall's The Life of George Washington: Special Edition (Liberty Fund, 2001); of Constitutionalism, Executive Power, and the Spirit of Moderation (SUNY Press, forthcoming 2015); and, of American Grand Strategy: War, Justice, and Peace in American Political Thought (Johns Hopkins University Press, expected 2017). His essays on American grand strategy have appeared in Orbis, The American Interest, and Strategic Studies Quarterly. Video by Daniel Ericsson