Description
How does the research programme of grand strategy represent, frame and scrutinise contemporary geopolitics? Contemporary scholars have broadened their understandings of grand strategy to examine how states use their hard and soft power assets in war and peacetime alike to advance their goals. Others have scrutinised the grand strategies of non-state actors. This paper assesses the impact of these trends, by constructing and reviewing an extensive database of grand strategy scholarship. In so doing, it identifies a paradox: most works now perceive grand strategy as a broad concept that is applicable to a diverse array of cases, time periods and actors. Nevertheless, the literature remains fixated on great powers and conventional tools of statecraft. Most problematically, grand strategy research remains dominated by American scholars who write almost exclusively on US policy. To rectify this bias, this paper identifies pathways to empower marginal, innovative perspectives that would bolster grand strategy’s relevance to contemporary world politics and the increasingly diverse discipline of international relations.
