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Grand Strategy and Military Power

This chapter examines military power through the lens of grand strategy. It begins by identifying the First World War as the main origin of the distinctive idea of grand strategy resulting in its core meaning and ambivalence. It then shows how grand strategy acts as a force multiplier, before exploring the ways in which military successes and failures affect grand-strategic effectiveness. Finally, it discusses the ways in which military power as a component of peacetime grand strategy can produce its psychological effects on the will of the adversary through the display and threat of force or competitive defense procurement rather than actual fighting. The chapter concludes by arguing that the specific characteristics of military power help identify some of the limits of grand strategy, notably its underestimation of contingency arising from the dynamic interaction with a thinking adversary.