Description
Conventional scholarly approaches to the study of grand strategy – particularly in the United States (e.g. Showalter, Murray, Krasner etc.) – have perpetuated the assumption that few powers have the sufficient resources to formulate and implement a Grand Strategy. Motivated by the increasing interest in scholarship on small states as distinct units of study in international relations, together with the revival of interest in grand strategy as a result of perceived strategic atrophy in the West, this paper challenges the validity of the claim that grand strategy is solely the preserve of great powers. It does so on the basis of a comparative case study of the grand strategy of neutrality, as pursued by three European small states with discrete priorities: Switzerland, Ireland and Malta. In so doing, it demonstrates how small states can practice grand strategy in ways that are distinct from larger actors, but which still afford them agency and enable them to accrue status in the international system. Given that the two subsets of strategic studies (grand strategy and small states studies) have rarely been brought together in previous work, this paper bridges the gap, while testing the proposition that grand strategy may be a useful means for small states to pursue their long-term goals in the international system.
