Welcome to the new books network. Hello everyone and welcome back to new books in diplomatic history, a podcast channel on the new books network. I'm Andrew Pace, the host of the channel. Our guest today is Donald Stoker, a professor of national security and resource strategy in the Dwight D. Eisenhower school at the National Defense University. Today we'll be talking about his new book and really I think his magnum opus purpose and power US grand strategy from the revolutionary era to the present, which was published this year in 2024 by Cambridge university press. Hi, Don welcome to the show. Hello, Andrew. Thanks for having me been looking forward to it. It will be fun. Would you start us off done by just telling us a little bit about yourself and how your work in military theory and grand strategy led to this book. Well, I'm originally from Cairo, Georgia, which is a tiny, tiny town, not far from Tallahassee, Florida that spelled just like Cairo, but properly pronounced and my Egyptian neighbors in California when I lived there were very amused by where I was from because he was from the real Cairo. So he's to laugh at me about it pick on me about it was pretty fun, but I did my PhD at Florida State University. I finished in 97, but I went to work for the Naval War College in 1999 teaching strategy and that I'd always had interest in I did my degree in military and diplomatic history and particularly European history and so I but working for the Naval War College are exposed to the methodology they use in the emphasis on theory. And that really sparked I'd always had an interest in theory and always read it, but they supplied you with frameworks on how to think about it, which was useful and the methodology that they use, which I've kind of adapted, which they stole from Oxford and they will probably tell you that. So and that you know teaching strategy for so long for the Naval War College. That inspired me to write this book and to write the stuff that I've written on theory because one of the struggles always when you're working for the various military organizations and you're especially trying to develop curriculum is what do you use for readings and that's always a difficult thing. And so the book in many respects is written is written for for people that do what I do that try to teach strategy and try to teach diplomacy and so on. And to me, learning what we knowing what we did in the past and how the country used power and for what aims is really, really critical to understand that because there are a lot of a lot of myths about use of American power. Yeah, and you start your book off with this framework for strategic analysis, which I think is important to to understand some of the theory that's really underpinning your analysis and argument here. But what what is grand strategy. It's, it's kind of a hot topic and it's always a hot topic in diplomatic history circles, but there seems to be a lot of talk about grand strategy. What is it and how is that different from foreign policy. Yeah, see, this is this is the first obstacle to overcome. Because when you throw out the word grand strategy, it's the deal joke about economists. You asked three economists a question. You get four answers. The same thing applies to to ask historians, political scientists, IR people, what grand strategy is, and you get 42 different answers, all, all of which will conflict because there's in the literature, the literature, frankly, a wreck. And there's just no agreement on what it even means. Is it the aim? Is it how you're using power? Is it some combination of these things? Is it something that has to be long term? Can small states have it or not? And so, you know, but I can show you sources that have all of these things and sometimes multiple meanings for it in the same source. And so the first thing I had to sort out in my mind was, okay, what does this even mean? How do you make it useful? And here's where the the methodology that the naval war college uses came in handy and kind of underpins it because, you know, strategy is how you use your power, how you use your power to get what you want. And you could lock off the word grand strategy and just use the word strategy and that would be acceptable. But part of the part of the reason some of the difficulty with people sorting it out is, is the word grand. And so they immediately think it has to be big and overarching. Well, maybe it isn't, you know, so it kind of imposes, we kind of impose a restriction impose a constraint on our own thinking there with that. But so I built this framework where, okay, so countries act because they're driven by their interests and this can be very subjective and it varies can vary by the leader, you know, example I use. You know, and, you know, when we look at the Korean War, the American intervention, the Korean War, if you would ask American military leaders, oh, is it in our interest to fight a war here in Korea? If you asked them that in early 1950, they would have told you know when it was insane. But, you know, in July of 1950, we're fighting in war in Korea because the administration has decided it's within the Americans interest and now at this point to do so. And so interests usually drive what a country does. And so, but then ideally they then develop political aims or have political aims that they wish to accomplish when they get involved in things, whether in peace or in war. And so then they harness their national power again ideally, they harness their national power elements of national power in order to achieve these political aims that they've decided they either have to achieve or that they wish to achieve. And so here's where you get the idea of grand strategy because you have your various elements of power elements of strategy. And you have the diplomatic strategy, information strategy, which can include things like ideology, intelligence, propaganda, diploma, and then you have military strategy, how you use your military power, both in peace and in war. And then your economic strategy how you use your economic power and ideally this machine is being harnessed to accomplish certain political ends or political aims. And ideally these political aims are all in the interest of the country to achieve doesn't always work that way obviously because sometimes countries don't act wisely sometimes their aims aren't necessarily good ones sometimes they see games that they can't achieve. Sometimes they're very inefficient at harnessing their power. And so that's the thing I had to do at first was in my mind lay lay out this framework to do it. I mean it's not a revolutionary framework it takes something it takes ideas from different places but tries to make it into a framework where okay here's what we're doing and then feeding into this framework you have you're always at the risk you undertake the assessments that you have to make and the constant reassessment with it as well because it's constantly information comes in their actions that they're taken third party actors involved that you might not have considered so it's, it's a very, you know, iterative process, which can be function well or not function and there are a lot of things you can't predict but that was to me that was the thing you had to do first like how are you even going to tackle this. And so I built this this framework taking these ideas from different places. And then I use as a template to apply it to American history, both for each administration and some of them I have to blend together because it's a lot to cover. And particularly though for each for each war, that the United States, or the bulk of them, some I've had to grind into a paragraph. Sure, because the book is 800 pages that covers a lot. Well, and you do a nice job of explaining the relationship or interrelationship between political aims policies interests and strategy and pointing out that the United States has often had, as you say grand strategies, right? There's an economic component. There's a military. There's an information component, a diplomatic component, but you start your book in 1776 and the revolutionary era. And you say that for most of its history, the United States has pursued security, sovereignty, and expansion. What did those three purposes mean for the United States. And how did the US pursue those aims. Yeah, I mean, those, those go up there. There are other aims obviously as well. But I found those were consistent up until the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Until the first Roosevelt administration. And, you know, obviously when you start looking at the American Revolution, and you think about security, or you think about sovereignty, you think about security, you think about expansion. The sovereignty issue was, of course, a driving thing here. The United States wants its independence. It wants to be completely rule itself. To govern itself and not have anybody else interfere with it and that's spelled out really clearly in the Declaration of Independence says this is what we want. But also, then they want to secure that they want to hold that as well afterward and that's a driving point and ends up influencing how we how we deal with the countries, the colonial possessions of those other places around us. And the expansion part is there even from, even before the Declaration of Independence, even before they actually have made a country and actually decided to fund independence. The Continental Congress is already talking about how to have Canada, and they would like to take land from the Indians in the West. And so these three things end up being huge drivers. And throughout the 19th and throughout the 19th century, and their drivers both in peace and in war, because you look at the numerous wars we fight with the Indians and various Indian nations and a lot of these are fought purely to take their land. Sometimes they're not fought for that reason, but very often it's actually spelled out very clearly when these wars have aimed sometimes they don't because sometimes they started spontaneously and they figure out what they want later. Settlers would go into Indian lands and stir up the Indians and then they would be fighting in a massacre and then the army would have to come in and they're like what a mess they never want to do it but it always ends up being their job to clean up the mess. But you can see how in, like, you know, war of 1812 the sovereignty issue, very clear there this is in the British don't respect American sovereignty, dealing with the British threat as a security issue as well, expansion into Canada. There's an argument about whether that's an aim or not, but certainly the administration certainly wanted it. When you look at like the Jefferson administration and you look at. In Roe Adams and others, even in peacetime, they're seeking expansion whether you're taking your buying Louisiana purchase or your John Quincy Adams and my secretary of state and he's, you know, well the Spanish are a problem when he took part parts of Florida because they're a problem. We have to engineer a war on the way we can figure that. Now, but we've got this problem with the British, you know, so, and so you see all through that, all through that century where sometimes it's done by force. Sometimes it's not sometimes it's done by purchase sometimes it's by negotiation. And the most ruthless example of it has to be the Mexican war because it's so clearly. Pulp must be the most Machiavellian president we have yet had. So because he's so determined to get I'm going to get Mexico if I can't bribe my way through it or buy it or get it through diplomacy then I will simply go to war and take it from you you guys choose which one of these you want I'm fine with either. So because he's very clear I'm going to go to Mexico here are the things I'm going to take here's what I'm willing to settle for. So it's very just brute force my belief brute force of power no excuses no doubts in his mind whether or not it's right or so. So it's just it's fascinating when you because I had not looked at some of these wars closely I'd read about them but I had had never looked deeply at some of them and say what exactly are they thinking. You know at the very top here when they're launching these things yeah so it ends up being very fascinating sometimes. Right. And then all of a sudden there's this shift yeah John Quincy Adams famously announces in 1821 that the United States goes not forth in search of monsters to destroy. Yeah, and that's exactly what the United States did through much of the 20th century up until today yeah so some respects. So why did the United States become this dragon slayer so to speak and pursue security sovereignty and democracy during the 20th century. So expansionism idea goes away, you know with the conquest of the West and we take a few things in the Caribbean and then Roosevelt takes Panama essentially to get to build the canal. Then we buy some islands like in 1916 by some islands in the Caribbean but that's it for the expansionism ends at that point which is an interesting thing because a lot of times America's accused accused of being an empire builder and expansionist in the time after that. We don't acquire anything after that and we don't go to war to do so after that I mean that we're just not interested none of the administrations are interested in doing that. And that's something that the Europeans don't stop doing until you know second world war. So which was interesting distinction to make, but you have with the arrival of the of the Wilson administration. This idea that American power can be used to make the world safer democracy, which is a pretty ambitious thing to say the least here. And where now what's interesting is his idea is not completely new obviously there are other people writing about it before and you see even see some inklings of this. And in a different form obviously back to Jefferson who Jefferson one time Jefferson always was postulating ideas and one of them was one of his thoughts about having a continent that had other American democracy like democracies on it as you know that America didn't necessarily control but they would be democratic and you know so so you see this idea of spreading democracy and debate about it it kind of perks up from time to time. But Wilson you know he essentially weaponizes the progressive impulse to make to make the world safer democracy and then this becomes something that it doesn't necessarily always drive. You know because again there are other aims there are other things you know but it's one of the big one of the big impulses and one of the big purposes for what power will be used. And when we go to war with other nations we generally will try to leave a democratic power there afterward. Not always the case obviously there are always exceptions to this but it ends up being but it's a very different thing when you think about it. Can you go from expansion to trying to leave a democratic colleague ally and competitor you know behind what happens as well when you think we created democracies in Japan and Korea and created to very powerful economic competitors in the course of doing it so it's a very it's an interesting shift to watch because you know I didn't have this idea about these things going into the book I mean it kind of evolved as I started doing their search and looking at it and saying well what do they really want. What are they really looking to achieve here and it kind of I mean sure other people have written about similar things obviously but you know the formation of it was a little slow to come to me. It's that time of the year your vacation is coming up you can already hear the beach waves feel the warm breeze relax and think about work you really really wanted all to work out while you're away. Monday.com gives you and the team that peace of mind when all work is on one platform and everyone's in sync things just flow wherever you are tap the banner to go to Monday.com. There's also a, I guess a less obvious shift in your book. In two really detailed chapters that you have on World War II and the Korean War. And you talk about the purposes of American power. And then you, you say that, that the United States mislabeled the situation after 1945 by calling this rivalry with the Soviet Union a cold war and you instead refer to it as a hot piece. Why, why do you say that the Cold War is mislabeled and how, how did that matter for American administrations. Yeah, I'm not the first person to make the argument obviously with that I mean and, and it makes sense system when you look at why they call it a cold war if you're sitting in the position of the American leaders at the time. It makes perfect sense as to why they do it because they've just come out of the experience of the Second World War this great conflagration that kills perhaps 60 million people. And then they are suddenly thrust in this position to where they were the United States has a role that is never had before. And it's directly threatened by a very aggressive and expansive Soviet Union. And they just don't know what to do and the situation then becomes so intense. And, and especially by the time of the Korean War but even before this the situation is so intense that it feels like a war to them. You know, it's not a war, but it feels like a war to them. So it's very understandable why, why they branded that. But one of the referees, the three referees for the book was pretty normal. One of the referees was appalled that I dared say it wasn't a war. But, but, you know, it wasn't a war. This was what we call a strategic competition now. You know, we weren't at war with the Soviet Union and some of these other communist countries. I mean, we were, we practiced a version and espionage and a hundred other things. But, so, but the problem, I think is, and when you call something a war and it's not a war, it colors how you define it. And the reality is that war and peace are two different things, despite what a lot of people are writing and some of the military literature nowadays. And some of the doctoral publications, even they, they confuse this very much. And, but once had an argument in a meeting and the people were appalled that I dared say that there was a difference between peace of war and it was kind of important to understand it. The only person who wasn't mad at me was the Marine officer who had three combat deployments in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. He was pretty sure there was a difference. He kind of thought I was right, you know. So, like, you guys take that for what you, for what you want with it. But, so, I mean, I think it's important to, I mean, sometimes I probably go a little overboard on trying to force people to define the terms. And that can be a little constraining sometimes, but I think it's really important to understand the basis of the argument that you're having and the debate that you're having because we don't understand the terms of the argument. How are you going to do your analysis? Where's the foundation for your analysis? And this is part of the problem with a lot of the grand strategy literature and the strategic studies literature in general where they don't really ever look at, or they don't take serious, don't seriously look at what the country that's involved in the struggles trying to achieve. And they focus upon the means being used, which is fine in the sense that it's important to understand this and it's important to understand how they're using the means. But the basis of the analysis is what they want, because what do they want, how badly do they want it, how much are they willing to fight for it. You know, Klaasovitz talks about the value of the object, you know, people will fight for the object as long as they're willing to pay the price for it. And when the day they aren't willing to pay the price, then you can start talking to them. So, and his idea is still valid. I mean, it hasn't changed with it. So, but if you're just looking at the means, if your focus is on the means a person, the country's willing to commit that that's valuable obviously for all host of reasons. But there are other pieces of the puzzle. You then talk about the end of the Cold War and the post Cold War world. And a lot of histories view US foreign policy during the 1990s as sort of aimless or purposeless after the fall of the Soviet Union in the end of the Cold War. And then argue that the US rediscovered or adopted a new national purpose after 9/11 with the global war on terror, but you link. Bush, too, with Bush one and Clinton in your book. Well, why do you see them as a, as a kind of package in the post Cold War era. Well, I mean, that some of the things are the same with them, they deal with some of the same problems and they're, well, for the Bush administration, the first Bush administration. They want to, I mean, they're really interested in consolidating the gains from the Cold War. I mean, the Cold War is over. Okay. Now, no one has thought about what to do after it's over, which is interesting. You spent 45 years dealing with this and then, Oh, what do we do when it ends? We don't have such an idea. No one's ever thought, which is fascinating to me to think about. People are still consumed with the problem. They don't think about what to do afterward. But the administration, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, and nobody's thinking, too, about what what's the role of NATO in the absence of a Warsaw Pact. Yeah, so where does where does NATO go from here? Yeah, and it becomes a tool for consolidating the gains and for of the Cold War and for building security in Europe and uniting Europe and in part of the process. So this is something that the Bush administration really pushes. They push, you know, a stronger EU. They want a Germany within NATO, because if it could just rip the guts out of the Soviet security system. They're very plain about that, not public statements, but they would also like to bring the entire East block and the Soviet Union into what former Soviet Union to a democratic world. So they're not interested in, you know, one of the things you see, particularly in the IR literature, I think, maybe as you see, oh, this idea of American hegemony afterward, it's complete nonsense. You know, there's no, no document. I found nothing that ever said any administration wanted hegemony and ever sought it. I mean, and that's one of the accusations made against the against the Bush administration. What they want is they want security. They like a peaceful world and they like to disarm, you know, and then they do these things. You know, if you're, if you're one hegemony, why you're disarming. And so some of the problems that the Bush administration has, because there's a lot of instability afterward and so trying to deal with these problems. It's difficult for them. And because, and the Clinton administration, some respect suffers the same, same difficulties because they both would like the Europeans to take more of a more of a role in the Balkans and places like that, but it just doesn't happen. The only way the Europeans end up acting in these places is with the Americans in the United States start to get involved. And it's a lot of chaos and a lot of disaster and a lot of bloodshed as you know. But, you know, they have some of the same problems and the same problem then Iraq, of course, is one of the problems for all three of these administrations as well. What do you do about Iraq and the first Bush administration was not interested was interested and not interested in the same time with overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And there's actually, I actually, since I've written the book, I was talking to someone who's doing some research on it and he's writing something that he's going to argue that they're more interested in overthrowing it than what we think now. So it'll be interesting, be interesting, excuse me to see where his research goes with that. But the Clinton administration officially adopts, you know, the overthrowing of Saddam as a as a as a political aim not they're not never serious about it do it for political reason or push toward it. But then you get the other Bush administration then does actually overthrow, which of course goes not as well as they expected to say the least so you do have the linkage in that era but 911 changes things as well. Because you have this this hope for this post or peace and stability the new global order, which ends up being very unstable and a lot more unstable than people hoped for it to be. So, and then 911 is kind of a kicker for a whole host of reasons obviously sure kind of changes things. And a lot of these linkages as you describe them continue into the Obama and Trump and Biden administrations Afghanistan Isis. Yeah, Iraq. Yeah, that's right. And, and, but again you, you, you title your final part of the book retreat and defeat. Do you, I guess what do you see as the, the major connections and the continuities and discontinuities I guess between Obama Trump and Biden, and the Bush and Clinton administrations that came for. Well, you see the continuity is the involvement with Iraq obviously in so many different ways because the list goes on problems there. But we never really ended either were very well, which is a problem because we don't end the war properly. Maybe you get to do it again. And it's easy to say that to end it properly extremely difficult in all the situations there. But you also see I work. I'm sorry. Can you hear me still? Yeah, I hear you. I'm just like, yeah. I called it retreat because a continuity that you see with the, and as a historian, I'm appalled that I'm writing about something so close to the subject. So we're supposed to wait 50 years, but you see with the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and the Biden administration, all of them will be appalled to think there's any continuity. So from both sides of the aisle, but you see, you're starting to see you're seeing this pulling back from American commitments. Part of it is because of the exhaustion from from Iraq and just the unwillingness to get involved. But the same time you see some of the same mistakes like the Obama administration is very critical of the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq, and they're not completely wrong about this. But then you see them launch this war in Libya where they make all the same mistakes possibly even worse and leave the country a complete wreck. So, but you see that and you see with the Obama's famous brow beating of Cameron into getting British government to pay 2%. Trump does the same thing. I mean, he just goes even farther with it. So you see that continuity. You want the same time. Both of them, particularly Obama by the end of his administration, he's trying to get out of place. He's trying to withdraw from places. Trump as well. And Biden, obviously as well, particularly with Afghanistan, he just, he just throws it away. So, so you see a continuity where you have this criticism of allies, sometimes abandoned men of allies, and you see in America, this trying to get rid of its commitments and trying to reduce its commitments. You can argue obviously the aims and the motivations and the procedures and how they do it for all three of these administrations. You can make a lot of arguments about the differences and what's going on. Yeah, that going endlessly. But there are some that the similarities with that are there as well, which is a change from where we saw during the Cold War and even in the post-Cold War, where we saw a growing American commitment to other nations, particularly, particularly democratic partners. This became a key plank of what every, just about every administration from Truman onward was dealing with democratic partners and with the Reagan administration pushing our partners who were not democratic to becoming democratic partners, of which they were very successful. So I see, you know, I'm oversimplifying it, obviously, but I do see some continuities there that maybe aren't so apparent when you first look, strip away some of the things they say about each other and see what they actually do. This book is really nicely telescoped and has to be to cover from the revolutionary era to the present. But, but zooming out, talking to flesh out some of these sort of major themes that you highlight. And what are the lessons that we should learn from the history of US grand strategy. And, and, you know, one of the things that comes through in your book is the importance of having clear political aims. And strategies that are coherent with those aims. And yet, so often you point out that US officials confused ends ways and means. Yeah. Why, why did that happen so often. I think one of the reasons is, you know, particularly in the last couple of decades where we have no clarity on how we teach these things and how we explain them and how we understand them. Nobody has the same definitions for them. No one understands what's important. You know, I think that's part of an example of how, you know, I've worked in strategic studies now for decades. And, you know, when I'm teaching, one of the things I do on the first day of class is I ask people, okay, define the word policy for me. You know, this is a little pedantic. I know, but you'd be shocked at the number of different answers that you get. Oh, it's policy what you do or what you want. Oh, is it the rules is the limits under what you can do. Is it the instructions that your agency has given you. So I do that in a class of students that are senior civilians or senior military officers or if I'm somewhere else teaching lecturing or something. And, you know, it's like having a whole room full of economists, you know, you get a whole bunch of different answers. See, and that's part of the problem. And then people just say policy and now I have no idea what they mean when they say policy and often they don't either. So it's part of the problem. I mean, how do you develop a standard lexicon for talking about this stuff? It's hard to do. I mean, it's because it's the different fields look at things at different ways. People don't emphasize things different way or don't. People don't think that certain things are as important as other people do. I mean, my emphasis from the political aim is, is fed by all these years working for the Naval War College that I, you know, for 18 years. And then by my study of Clozovitz and other theorists as well. I mean, it just that is just such. And it, it, what's nice about that is it understanding the aim. It gives you an objective basis for analysis. Because then you could say, is this good? How are they going to get it? Is what they're doing? Does it make sense? And, you know, as since I had another problem, we don't think often seriously about the resourcing issues with it. I have to say that because I work at the Eisenhower School and that's one of our, one of our primary efforts. But, you know, the means is certainly critical. Can you generate the means to get what you want? Are you willing to use the means and that the fact is, you know, when you get into a war or something. A war, you're very, very difficult to ever understand what the means you're going to need. What means are you going to need? It's very hard to figure out because the war will not go like you thought it did or thought it would. You know, we, we see the artillery starvation in, in the Ukraine now. It's the same problem. They had in the First World War, you know, where they ran out of shells and stuff like that and people are scrambling all over the world to find ammunition now. Some of these problems repeat themselves. But, you know, educating Lucas Malefsky actually wrote an article about this wire a couple of years ago on a similar thing about it. And he said that his, he thinks part of the problem with why this is why the thinking and sometimes the execution is done so badly is because so often the people in charge, they don't really know anything about history. They don't really know how foreign relations was done in the past and what Secretary of State did what and why they don't understand the history of the past wars, and that the just the basic knowledge that so many people have in position to leadership just isn't there anymore. You know, so I don't know if he's right about it, but I don't disagree with him. His argument, I thought was pretty, pretty solid, but it's obviously not an argument that would fit with every one of everything, but it's something, something to consider. Sure. Well, and let's let's talk more about theory a little bit because you, you obviously have taken a strong theoretical approach to the study of a US grand strategy. And you talk in your conclusion about how, you know, Americans from, you know, the president on down to staff and policymakers need to have a better understanding of history and theory. And yet you also point out that US officials so often relied on flawed assumptions or theories like limited war domino theory. You, you critique Shilling's arms and influence and rosters and modernization theory strategy ever written. I make higher groups of people angry when I say that his historical bases are flawed. So he's making arguments on flawed history. I'm sorry, I said it out loud, didn't I? I'm not allowed to talk badly about shelling. Oh, my colleagues get so mad when I say that I said, but he's wrong. Here's why he's wrong. So become a joke with certain of my friends. So what, what are we to do, though, if, if on the one hand theory is so important, and yet we have a theory from bad theory. Right. And why have, why have American officials so often relied on flawed understandings of theory. Yeah. And how do, and how do we teach good theory? You know, we need a revival of closets and the foreign policy blob. Do we need, you know, more, more seminars focused on on war, you know, what, what, what's it going to take? The problem with teaching more closets is people teach it wrong, generally. So, which is, you know, I spent four years writing a biography of closets. It will reprogram your brain. If you actually seriously study him and you will become more logical. That's the only reason I have even a logical strand at all in my whole body is from that. But yeah, I mean, I should have looked at one of the lesson plans we have is we have a lesson on, okay, how do you tell good theory from bad theory? And, you know, is it factually based, you know, is it based on history? Is it logical? Does it work actually in the real world when it's applied? These are things that, you know, particularly the last one, when you look and see, you know, okay, the Kennedy administration labored under this idea of modernization theory, which in pulled down to a simplistic nutshell is everything the United States does is the best, and this will work anywhere else in the world because it's the best. Okay, so it worked out really well for them in Vietnam and other places. You know, it's this assumption that our methods are instantly transferable to another place when maybe perhaps it assumes a lot. You know, so when you, you know, it doesn't work in the real world. Well, when you think about shelling's whole signaling theory, which underpins the use of air power in Vietnam. Did it work in the real world? No, it failed miserably and killed thousands of people. Why is it still underpinning of how we teach strategy in a lot of our schools? You know, I teach it every, every term, but I teach it and say, well, here's why it was wrong. And here's all the people that killed in the 900 planes it got shot down because they did bad ideas and they didn't match it to reality. So, and then I will get nasty, you'll get nasty comments from making fun of shelling so, but, but my colleagues pick on me at work about it too so it's pretty fun. You, you've also written extensively about the importance of ending wars and America's struggles to do so, not just in this book but in in prior works and you recently published an article on ending the war in Ukraine. And the challenges of ending the war in the Ukraine certainly colleague of mine. Yeah. And, and understandably, a lot of the literature on military theory and strategic studies focuses on winning the war, but not on winning the peace. So, why is it so difficult to terminate wars successfully. And what does this, what does a successful ends to a war look like? Yeah, that successful ended well, what do you want, you know, what are you there to work to get. You know, there are a lot of people say, well, a better piece is defined it. I was lucky that when I working for the new war college one of the colleagues that, you know, I only worked with him a little walk as he was in Newport and I was in California. But he developed this methodology for examining how to think about ending the war is a guy named Bradley, he's a super smart guy and good great lecturer. And he says, and I stole it whole, whole cloth from him and I put the footnote in there to say that so, because it's just it's the best thing I've ever seen developed for it says what do you want politically, how far do you go militarily or how do you use your military power. And who's going to enforce the peace and how. And so, in my book on why America loses wars, my book on limited war theory, the last chapter of the book addresses that subject. And I take those three points and just try to go through the complexity and the difficulty and the sheer awfulness of all these problems and how it's very, very difficult. I've read a lot of all this, all the literature I could find that talked about the difficulties and the problems of ending wars and it's, it's something that is one of the weakest areas in strategic studies. Well, weakest is not the right, the right word, but it's one of the least studied areas, because we like you mentioned and we talk about why countries go to war and how they fight wars and how they resource the wars. But then what are the complications with ending it because everyone is everywhere's different. No, the ending is going to be different if you're completely conquering the place and imposing your will on it well that's one way to end it but what if you've got the Korean war you have to negotiate a settlement because you're interested or you don't desire to use sufficient power to do what you really want to do, you want to get out is also you want to make a deal but the other side doesn't want to make a deal well they sort of do it not really. So how do you convince I mean so it's it's extremely complex subject, but it's one that you know we teach a lesson on it and because it's so important I mean it's so important and it's something that people aren't, aren't taught. So I was never taught never taught that in all my many years of graduate school. So it is critical, you know, hopefully more people will write on it because we need some people that really look at it to write some good stuff on it. Well I have one final question to ask about your your work here. You know after reviewing in 700 800 pages, the long history of American grand strategy. I think one of the questions that your synthesis sort of begs is, well what should American grand strategy be, but in your conclusion you say, that's the wrong question to ask. So why is it the wrong question and what question should we be asking the question is what do you want what do you want to achieve what are the aims that the administrations are going to seek you know it's not. One of the problems that they want to people want to have this blanket grand strategy to deal with every problem but the problem is every problem is different. And you've got different aims. If you have different aims and you will a country like the United States will have different aims will have aims toward Europe what we want will have aims toward China will have aims toward Russia will have aims toward Latin America using your power in the same way for all of these is not going to give your aims. Because these are completely different situations and sometimes you'll be at war sometimes you'll be at peace sometimes you'll be at war someplace and peace and others. And so you you've got to figure out what you want and then adjust the strategy toward it now sometimes containment is taken as oh well this is grand strategy and everything was containment well even containment was addressed initially just at the Soviet Union. It was a strategy used to in Kenan's words well if we do this Soviet Union leader mellow or come apart it just take a while. So, but that wasn't something that was supposed to be applied in his view to the whole world versions of it become applied to other places but having this one size fits all is very, very difficult because every situation has its own nuances and own problems and own challenges. Yeah so the one lesson that I think I took from this book is that purpose comes before power. Right, and that's yeah that's the the order of your book there so which I think is a great note to end on we've taken up too much of your time but thanks so much for being on the show and doing the interview. If you don't mind my asking what what are you working on now or next. No big project because the last one almost killed me but I've been working on a number of articles on different subjects that'll pop up I did a little thing recently about the myth of American hegemony. And I did the article article you mentioned about the problems of trying to end the Ukraine war and that's basically all I've been doing lately is just a few articles here and there so I'm afraid to take on a big project again. If you get my courage up in another year. So you need some time away from all the publishing and all the writing 800 pages. Well thanks again for being on the show it was a pleasure to have you. Thank you it was great fun. Bye bye.
