STRATEGIC

About Strategy—Grand or Otherwise 143
Strategies can be seen as a hierarchy of conceptualizations, from
the highest level of a national “grand strategy”—“ultimate ends and
basic means”—to tactical-level actions. 15 Developing effective strategies
for dealing with competitors or adversaries requires identifying
critical asymmetries, “pivot points,” or sources of leverage that can
magnify a nation’s power relative to its adversaries. 16 Implementation
of a strategy may include the use of “stratagems”—schemes or tricks
designed to deceive or outwit an adversary. Few uses of the concept of
a strategy get down to the precision and detail of a policymaker’s operational
application:
A real strategy has to have a tangible plan, it has to have a clear
program to implement that plan, and it has to have the budget
and resources to make it work. This means making difficult tradeoffs
and setting clear priorities. It means establishing accountability
and having measures of effectiveness. It also means justifying
the choices with a clear analysis of the risks and costs involved. 17
To make the subject of strategy still more complicated, each U.S.
administration publishes one or more documents entitled “National
Security Strategy of the United States.” However, a comparative assessment
of the most recent set of these documents reveals that they are not
really statements of “strategy.” They are aspirational or visionary expressions
of the kind of world the incumbent wants to shape, and they list
priorities among the many challenges facing the country. They have
been criticized as “lists of eminently desirable goals with hardly a hint
as to how they might be achieved under existing resource constraints
and in the face of active opposition from American adversaries.” 18
The lead volume of the Strategic Rethink project laid out choices
for the United States—key issues that will face the administration that
15 Luttwak, 1987, p. 70.
16 Richard P. Rumelt, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2011.
17 Anthony H. Cordesman, “Strategy, Grand Strategy, and the Emperor’s New Clothes,” Commentary,
Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 17, 2015.
18 Andrew F. Krepinevich and Barry D. Watts, Regaining Strategic Competence, Washington,
D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2009, p. 11.