Grand strategy from Truman to Trump

Abstract

How can we account for variations and shifts in US grand strategy?1 Namely, why does the United States adopt a certain grand strategy in a certain pe- riod, and why does it switch from one strategy to another? During the Cold War, the US changed its grand strategy several times, notably a few years after WWII and then after the invasion of South Korea by the North, after the Cuban missile crisis, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and then again, fi nally, following the change of Soviet policy under Gorbachev.