Series Editors’ Preface

The purpose of this series, “The Oxford Studies in Grand Strategy,” is to challenge some of the shibboleths that dominate the field of grand strategy. Succinctly, the field of grand strategy is notable for four characteristics. First, there is an overwhelming propensity to focus exclusively on historic and contemporary great powers,1 justified by the assumption that only they have the centralized bureaucracy able to formulate a grand strategy and the military capacity to implement one. This inevitably excludes the overwhelming percentage of states and credible actors that aspire to some form of sovereignty from study. It also encourages scholars to focus exclusively on militarized threats,2 despite those truly existential threats posed by climate change and pandemics on the grounds that this represents “conceptual overstretch.” Second, by extension, it limits the pool of candidates for any comparative analysis, tending instead to encourage a temporal comparative analysis rather than across space. Historians may therefore compare the grand strategies of empires,3 but not, for example, the comparative grand strategies of small and medium-sized states, even those of strategic importance such as Japan. Third, relatedly, in practice, the empirical focus of the literature is now overwhelmingly American-centric, with an additional limited study of China and Russia. The occasional study of other states is considered marginal to the field and, at least for those employing realist assumptions, it is inconceivable that the study of organizations such as the EU would have any utility. Finally, largely as a product of these three factors, the study of grand strategy is dominated by American-based scholars, even when they examine other countries. This risks a narrowing of perspective, and of “strategic narcissism” as domestically oriented debates take root.