November's Books of the Month

Dan, we can at least acknowledge the limitations of the phrase "grand strategy," can't we?

By "we" I don't mean the academics you know, but the rest of us. You don't have to have observed Washington very long to understand that many administrations can go years without having a grand strategy. Sometimes their doctrinal statements on things like foreign policy signify a strategy, grand or otherwise, but sometimes not. Moreover it occasionally happens -- at least it is theoretically possible -- that an administration can maintain consistent pursuit of a coherent set of objectives without ever describing (or even thinking of) it as pursuing a grand strategy.

"Grand strategy" is a phrase that suggests a modern equivalent to Roosevelt and Churchill meeting with the service chiefs and key diplomats to plot the destruction of the Axis. There is no very close analog to the Axis right now, hasn't been for years. And it's been a lot longer than since any American President bore comparison to Roosevelt or Churchill.

"On the one hand, it suggests that the administration has overemphasized the importance of demonstrating resolve as a means of advancing its interests."

The Bush Administration didnt happened in vacuum. It has a past history of US governement appeasing relating to Middle East.

Very interesting recommendations. However, as a historian I have to smile at the idea that Sartori has discovered something new. The notion of "reputation" and its value is totally familiar to any historian of European international relations in the 15th-17th centuries (or in the ancient world, for that matter). The problem of pacification in early modern Europe was that princes were so determined to uphold "reputation" that they would rather go to war than lose face. Early modern diplomacy was in large part about reducing this obsession with reputation, or rather reformulating reputation to include reputation for being a peacemaker.

Well, if "Saartori suggests that the reputation that matters is one of honesty", then let us apply that like any other theorum and "see" what we get.
Palestinians promise thousands killed by evil Jews in Jenin.
Fact, all the dead bodies comprising those thousands are contained within a little over a half hundred corpses which comprise all dead, even those dead of natural causes. This should mean that the Palestinians should have an uphill battle to contend because of an acknowleged lack of truthfulness, no?
No.
There could be literally dozens of examples, but as an empirical rule, if the claim is against the US, a US interest, or against a US ally, there are no consequences for abysmally untruthful claims. Almost as if the US State Department is staffed by people who refuse to permit actions (even as simple as denying credability) against those who do make such ludicrously untruthful claims.