OADI 2025 - Grand Strategy in Diplomacy Past and Present (Lecture)

***UPDATED for 2026/27***

This course is an introduction to grand strategy in diplomacy (statecraft). It will review the sources, processes, pressures and challenges of crafting and implementing a grand strategy, taken to be the calculated alignment of means to large foreign policy ends, taking the perspective of the practitioner and decision-maker. It will study memoranda that introduced new grand strategies for major powers, focusing on Otto von Bismarck and George F. Kennan, as well as analyze their respective successes, failures, and legacies. The course will then address several contemporary major crises and issues from the vantage point of grand strategy, providing students with the analytical tools to better frame and examine (through comparison or abstraction) diplomatic challenges and responses. These crises will include the United States invasion, occupation, and withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, the annexations and provocations by Russia in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, the reclamations by China in the South China Seas, the confrontations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East as well as India and Pakistan in South Asia, among others. The course will also address the question of whether grand strategy is attainable for small states and will look into a specific case, Costa Rica, a small country without an army that is in the (un)enviable position of not having the luxury of threatening to use “all options”. The second-to-last session will consist of presentations by students, while the last session will draw from the previous sessions in providing lessons and conclusions on grand strategy in diplomacy.

Learning Outcomes

• Familiarity with an array of strategic outlooks (doctrines)
• Familiarity with an ecosystem approach to grand strategy (linkages)
• Familiarity with ends-means tradeoffs
• Familiarity with major contemporary geopolitical crises and challenges

Professional Skills

• Capacity to think in policy-grade terms
• Capacity to acquire policy memo writing skills
• Capacity to acquire analytical tools to see the larger picture

There is no strict prerequisite for this course but students should preferably have some previous knowledge of international relations theory, diplomatic history and contemporary events.

Policy memos will have written comments, both specific and general, pointing to the strengths and weaknesses of the assignment. Feedback is provided by the second-to-last session when three best assignments are presented in class.

• 1,500-word policy memo 70%
• final exam 20%
• in-class participation 10%

• In Class Presence: 2 hours a week / 24 hours a semester
• Online learning activities: 1.5 hours a week / 18 hours a semester
• Reading and Preparation for Class: 5 hours a week / 60 hours a semester
• Research and Writing for Individual Assessments: 4 hours a week / 48 hours a semester