The Grand Strategies of Great Powers (Routledge Studies in Modern History)

What is grand strategy and what is it good for? What are great powers, and which states are great powers today? What are the grand strategies available to great powers? What are the conditions under which a certain strategy is suitable and when should it be rejected? What are the factors affecting the success or failure of a given grand strategy? The present volume provides answers to these questions by introducing a typology of great power grand strategies, as strategies of rising, status quo, and declining powers, as well as through historical illustrations of each type. The reader is thus exposed to strategies such as divide and conquer, biding your time, opportunity strike, primacy, semi-detachment, concert, and appeasement through the experiences of leaders such as Bismarck, Peter the Great, Metternich, Deng Xiaoping, Neville Chamberlain, and Stalin. This analysis is then brought to bear on present developments in the grand strategies of the United States, China, and Russia. The volume should be of interest to both the academic and foreign policy-making communities, and in particular to students of international relations, diplomacy, history, and current international affairs.

Tudor A. Onea is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He has been educated in Japan and Canada, has received his Ph.D. from Queen’s University in Kingston, and has pursued post-doctoral stages in the United States, Canada, and Singapore. He has written a previous book, US Foreign Policy in the Post-cold War: Restraint versus Assertiveness from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama (2013) and has published in Review of International Studies, International Studies Review (forthcoming), European Journal of International Security, and International Relations.