Crafting a better US grand strategy in the post-September 11 world: lessons from the early years of the Cold War

Abstract

This article compares the instruments of statecraft used to construct grand strategies in the early years of the Cold War—the Truman and Eisenhower administrations—with the Bush administration’s grand strategy and the Global War on Terror (GWOT). It argues that the Bush strategy relied heavily on the military instrument of statecraft in attempts of defeating Al-Qaeda and did not develop robust and concerted diplomatic, psychological and economic tools to undermine Al-Qaeda’s ideology and influence. The early days of the Cold War hold valuable lessons for crafting an integrated grand strategy that can fight both the Al-Qaeda network and its ideology.