Description
This panel will seek to challenge the West-centric, realist-dominated approaches that permeate scholarly understandings of grand strategy. Grand strategy has traditionally been defined as how states employ their resources to achieve victory in war. Recently, studies have transitioned away from this narrow definition, to instead examine how states employ various tools of statecraft in peace and war alike to advance their long-term goals. Yet, the literature is often still critiqued for its rationalist bias and great power fixation. Correspondingly, this panel will seek to further broaden the boundaries of grand strategy scholarship, by highlighting the research of emerging scholars. It will bring together a multinational array of mid-and-early career academics: from post-docs and research associates to lecturers, based in the EU, the UK and Israel. The presentations will: challenge the realist-dominated literature focusing on systemic explanations to instead identify how domestic politics, ideas and beliefs shape grand strategy (Yorke, Lofflman); propose and illuminate case studies and a framework for analysing grand strategy beyond great powers (Briffa) and; critically assess the research programme’s cumulative scholarly outputs and disciplinary deficiencies (Geist Pinfold). In sum, this panel will both critique existing trends and suggest new research foci, thereby diversifying the voices and case studies included within the purview of grand strategy.
The proposed participants and papers are:
Convenor and Chair:
Dr. Cornelia Baciu – The University of Copenhagen (Convenor, Discussant)
Dr. Rob Geist Pinfold – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Chair, Presenter)
Presenters:
Dr. Rob-Geist Pinfold – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: ‘Grand Strategy: A Research Programme for the West and Not the Rest?’
Dr. Claire Yorke – The Center for War Studies: ‘The Grand Strategic Value of Empathy’
Dr. Hillary Briffa – King’s College London: ‘Small States and Grand Strategy: A Comparative Study of Neutrality’
Dr. Georg Löfflmann – The University of Warwick: ‘A House Divided: Populism and Grand Strategy’
