Description

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A clearly articulated, well-defined, and relatively stable grand strategy is supposed to allow the ship of state to steer a steady course through the roiling seas of global politics. However, the obstacles to formulating and implementing grand strategy are, by all accounts, imposing. The Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy addresses the conceptual and historical foundations, production, evolution, and future of grand strategy from a wide range of standpoints. The seven constituent sections present and critically examine the history of grand strategy, including beyond the West; six distinct theoretical approaches to the subject; the sources of grand strategy, ranging from geography and technology to domestic politics to individual psychology and culture; the instruments of grand strategy's implementation, from military to economic to covert action; political actors', including non-state actors', grand strategic choices; the debatable merits of grand strategy, relative to alternatives; and the future of grand strategy, in light of challenges ranging from political polarization to technological change to aging populations. The result is a field-defining, interdisciplinary, and comparative text that will be a key resource for years to come.

About the Author

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Thierry Balzacq, Professor of International Relations, Sciences Po Paris, Ronald R. Krebs, Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota Thierry Balzacq is Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po and Professorial Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po where he also serves as the director of graduate studies in International Relations. Balzacq held a Honorary Professorial Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh (2012-2015), where he was also Fellow for "outstanding research" at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. In 2015, Balzacq was awarded a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Diplomacy and International Security. He held a Marie Curie Visiting Chair in the Department of International Politics at the University of Aberystwyth (2017-2019). He has published over a hundred scientific works in English and French, on Security, IR Theory, and Diplomatic Studies. Balzacq also co-edits the Oxford Studies in Grand Strategy book series. Ronald R. Krebs is Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Ron Krebs has been named a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Israel (2012), as well as Scholar of the College of Liberal Arts (2017-2020), and a McKnight Land-Grant Professor (2006-2008) at the University of Minnesota. He has published numerous articles in both scholarly and general-interest journals, magazines, and websites. Prof. Krebs is currently editor-in-chief of the leading scholarly journal Security Studies. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Oxford University Press' Oxford Studies in Grand Strategy and of the Journal of Global Security Studies.