Grand strategy comprises the "purposeful employment of all instruments of power available to a security community". Military historian B. H. Liddell Hart says about grand strategy:

[T]he role of grand strategy – higher strategy – is to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental policy.

Grand strategy should both calculate and develop the economic resources and man-power of nations in order to sustain the fighting services. Also the moral resources – for to foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power. Grand strategy, too, should regulate the distribution of power between the several services, and between the services and industry. Moreover, fighting power is but one of the instruments of grand strategy – which should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure, and, not least of ethical pressure, to weaken the opponent's will. ...

Steven Kent Metz (born June 30, 1956 in Charleston, West Virginia) is an American author, Chairman of the Regional Strategy Department, and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) where he specializes in insurgency and counterinsurgency, American defense policy, strategic theory, the African security environment, and future warfare. He has been with SSI since 1993, previously serving as Henry L. Stimson Professor of Military Studies and SSI's Director of Research. Metz has also been on the faculty of the U.S. Air War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and several universities. He has been an advisor to government agencies, political organizations, campaigns and commissions; served on many national security policy task forces; testified in both houses of Congress; and spoken on military and security issues around the world. He is the author of more than 100 publications and is frequently interviewed by print, television and radio media. He is a member of the RAND Corporation Insurgency Board and a regular blogger on national security policy for National Journal and The New Republic.

John J. Mearsheimer (born December 1947) is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is an international relations theorist. Known for his 2001 book on offensive realism, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer became better known for co-authoring with Stephen Walt the New York Times Best Seller The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007). His 2011 book Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics is described as cataloging "the kinds of lies nations tell each other." According to an interview with Mearsheimer in The Boston Globe, the lesson of the book is: "Lie selectively, lie well, and ultimately be good at what you do."

Mearsheimer was born in December 1947 in Brooklyn, New York. He was raised in New York City until the age of eight, when his parents moved his family to Croton-on-Hudson, New York, a suburb located in Westchester County.

When he was 17, Mearsheimer enlisted in the U.S. Army. After one year as an enlisted member, he chose to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point. He attended West Point from 1966–1970. After graduation, he served for five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.