Grand Strategy: an American problem?

Abstract

The Founders designed a polity almost fated to become a world power.

Tocqueville's sense of democracy as a force of history was accompanied by his conclusion that democracies are "decidedly inferior" in the conduct of foreign affairs. Despite America's nineteenth-century reluctance to engage fully with world diplomacy, the U.S., as democracy's standard-bearer, emerged as "the leader of the Free World" in the course of twentieth-century wars waged by ideologically-driven powers seeking to overturn the established international state system.

In this new century, democracy has emerged as problematic in new ways, affecting the bond between it and the U.S. role in maintaining world order, with special reference to challenges in the Middle East and Asia.