**Disclaimer**
This syllabus is to be used as a guideline only. The information provided is a summary of topics to be covered in the class.
Information contained in this document such as assignments, grading scales, due dates, office hours, required books and materials may be from
a previous semester and are subject to change. Please refer to your instructor for the most recent version of the syllabus.

ASU – Spring 2018/CEL 494
CEL 494 - Leadership 404: Statesmanship and American Grand Strategy
(TTh 3:00pm-4:15pm; Social Sciences Rm. 109)
Professor Paul Carrese – Social Sciences 107; pcarrese@asu.edu; office hours T, TH 4:15 to
5:15 p.m. and by appointment

I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually
goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.
- Speech by Diodotus at Athens
in Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (5th century B.C.)
If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we
may defy material injury from external annoyance; . . . when we may choose peace or
war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
- George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
When societies conduct foreign policy in the midst of disorder and act without a coherent
grand strategy, they naturally will fall prey to anxieties. How could states, which face an
increasingly disordered world, and yet lack a strategy to guide their actions, feel or act
otherwise? Disorder without strategy is a recipe for disaster.
– Dr. William C. Martel, Tufts University, 2012
Inspiring Leadership and Statesmanship for the Common Good
- motto of the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership, ASU

Course Description and Learning Objectives
This seminar discusses great ideas and figures in political leadership and statesmanship, from
ancient Greece and early modern Europe to America’s founding and the current global
uncertainty, addressing major arguments about war, peace, and international affairs. Classic
ideas continue to shape foreign policy and grand strategy debates in the 21st century, and thus
provide crucial foundations for understanding leadership and statesmanship and preparation for
future leadership roles. Major thinkers and episodes discussed include Thucydides, the British
and European foundations of America’s strategic culture, George Washington, Truman and
Eisenhower in the Cold War, and recent debates on America’s post-Cold War strategies for its
leadership role in global affairs. As a seminar, we emphasize careful preparation of the readings
and class discussion. Students write three papers – two analytical papers during the course, and a
research paper due in the exam period – to build deeper understandings of politics, strategy, and
statesmanship. As part of the final paper students will present a “Marshall brief” (for George C.
Marshall, general and later Secretary of Defense and of State) – prepared as if delivered to an
experienced policy maker or strategist. Through this seminar students should acquire:
1. An understanding of grand strategic thinking and major debates in the Western tradition
about war, justice, and peace in international affairs, ranging from classic thinkers to
contemporary figures and debates about American strategy;

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2. An understanding of statesmanship (as distinct from leadership) and of several great
figures widely considered statesmen
3. Experience in collective discussion and presentation of political and ethical ideas about
grand strategy and American grand strategy more particularly, in a seminar setting;
4. Increased skills in writing well about political ideas, statesmanship, and grand strategy
Required Materials
Many of our readings, primary and secondary, will be drawn from the following four books:
• The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, edited by
Robert B. Strassler (Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1998, paperback)
• The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, ed. Williamson Murray, MacGregor
Knox, and Alvin Bernstein (Cambridge University Press, 1994; 1996, paperback)
• Charles Hill, Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order (Yale University
Press, 2010; paperback, 2011)
• Henry Kissinger, World Order (Penguin, 2014; paperback, 2015)
All of these are available for purchase at the ASU Bookstore. All other reading material,
primary and secondary, will be available via the Blackboard course site. A recommended
resource available at Hayden Library is The New Cambridge History of American Foreign
Relations (2013), in four volumes.
Assessment and Course Requirements
Students' performance in the course will be assessed according to a 1000-point scale:
1. Attendance and participation in classroom discussions: 200 points (100 by the mid-term
mark, 100 for second half of semester); guidelines will be distributed
2. Discussion leader presentation: 100 points; guidelines will be distributed
3. Two papers during the semester: 100 points, 200 points; writing guidelines will be
distributed, along with the particular paper assignments
4. Marshall Brief, based upon final research paper: 100 points; guidelines to be distributed
5. Final research paper 300 points
Attendance
Attendance at all class meetings is required. Late arrival and early departure are discouraged;
please notify your professors in advance, if it is necessary to miss all or part of a class meeting.
Academic Integrity
Students are responsible for knowing and adhering to the ASU Student Academic Integrity
Policy (http://provost.asu.edu/academicintegrity); violations - including, but not limited to
plagiarism in papers and writings - will be sanctioned in accordance with ASU guidelines.
Students with Disabilities
We are eager to make accommodations for instruction and testing for students with disabilities;
please consult the instructor and the ASU Disabilities Resource Services

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Further Rationale and Context for the Seminar
The professor will propose – for discussion and critical assessment in the course – a definition of
grand-strategic thinking as the comprehensive understanding and judgment necessary for a
broadly capable national security leader, especially in an era of great uncertainty; to include
ability for dynamic assessment of connections between ends, ways, and means in political and
security affairs; marked by adaptive, critical, and literate thinking that is properly skeptical of
conventional wisdom and aware of the highest intellectual dimensions of political and national
security leadership. Further, if we define strategy as the effort to define ends in conjunction with
the appropriate ways and means to achieve them, then grand strategy includes the search by
states and leaders for international order, and its ends, ways, and means. On these bases,
statesmanship is ethical and prudent leadership of the highest order about national and
international affairs, as a category unto itself, and therefore exemplars of this successful blend of
principle and practical art deserve careful study.
The famous maxim by the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz that “war is
the continuation of politics by other means” is continually reaffirmed by recent American and
global events. This seminar offers citizens and potential leaders some insight into the central
debates of our times about foreign and security policy, and more broadly, grand strategy. One of
those central debates is what America’s grand strategy should be after the American-led victory,
in 1991, of the liberal-democratic alliance in the Cold War struggle that began shortly after
World War II. Several American presidents proposed a new strategy to replace containment and
American internationalism, but no solid and sustainable national consensus has developed
around any of them. President Trump seems to have been elected in part because a substantial
segment of the electorate had lost confidence in any of the major strategic theories or schools on
offer, nor did they wish to reconsider the proposed strategies of Presidents Clinton, G.W. Bush,
or Obama. We study the prospects for American grand strategy and grand-strategic debate at a
time of dissensus, and competing high theories of international relations – realism, liberalism,
and constructivism – and consider that we might do well to recover a more traditional and
balanced conception of grand strategy.
To meet all of these objectives, the course is organized into six blocks. The first
introduces us to grand-strategic thinking as a broader, more balanced way of thinking about
international affairs, national security, and foreign policy than is offered by any of the major
international relations theories of recent centuries (realism, liberalism, constructivism); this
includes our study of the first major work of strategic thinking, and assessment of grand strategy
and statesmanship, in the Western tradition: Thucydides’ account of the war between the
Athenian and Spartan alliances. The second block studies comparative grand strategy in the
European tradition; for its own importance, and as the context for American strategic thinking
from our founding through to the 21st century. Block III examines the American tradition of
grand strategy, the American response to power and conflict in the international system, and the
current uncertainty – in American and beyond – about America’s role in the international order
that it built and sustained during the 20th century. Block IV touches upon recent scholarship in
international relations theory as shaping – and perhaps distorting – strategic thinking and grand
strategy today, then addresses particular policy issues and strategic debates amid our current
strategic dissensus. Block V considers a recent resource for recovering American statesmanship
and grand-strategic consensus, Henry Kissinger’s World Order. The final block is your research
presentations – a Marshall brief – to include class discussion and critiques.

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Policy and Strategic Literacy
Each student should strive to maintain knowledge of current political events, especially news and
debates about American foreign and security policy. One excellent source is a subscription to a
leading English-language international journal, London’s The Economist (also available in the
library; some content is free at http://www.economist.com/). There are many fine on-line
sources to check regularly; some of these include:
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•

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The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/.
a website that serves as an aggregator for news and opinion is RealClearPolitics, a
daily digest of political news and opinion essays covering a range of political views
and topics, at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/; note also the RealClearWorld and
RealClearDefense sections of RCP. These sites will point you to credible and
important news sources or journals.
The Financial Times (London), http://news.ft.com/home/us -- another good
international perspective on world affairs and American policies.
Foreign Policy (http://foreignpolicy.com/) and the website of the Council on Foreign
Relations (http://www.cfr.org/); especially the “Elephants in the Room” blog at
http://foreignpolicy.com/category/elephants-in-the-room/ and “Shadow Government”
at http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/
Short and long essays regularly posted at The American Interest (https://www.theamerican-interest.com/) and The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org/)
Other important policy centers (online) and blogs to consult include: The American
Enterprise Institute (conservative); The Brookings Institution (liberal); The Heritage
Foundation (conservative); the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS);
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS); War on the Rocks; Lawfare.

Schedule and Reading Assignments
(Subject to change; readings are to be completed before class meetings)
Block I: Foundations of Strategic Thinking and Grand Strategy
Tues 9 Jan – Course Overview; introduction to Grand Strategy
• Discussion/review of Syllabus and course rationale
• Peter Feaver, two essays on American grand strategy from Foreign Policy, 2009 & 2011
• Walter Russell Mead, “The Return of Geopolitics,” Foreign Affairs, May 2014
• G. John Ikenberry, “The Illusion of Geopolitics” Foreign Affairs, May 2014
• Peter Feaver and James Stavridis essays on Trump National Security Strategy, Dec. 2017
Thur 11 Jan – Introduction to Thucydides
• Robert D. Kaplan, “A Historian For Our Time,” The Atlantic Monthly, Jan/Feb 2007 (on
Herodotus and Thucydides)
• Victor Davis Hanson, Introduction to The Landmark Thucydides, ix-xxiii (see also the
Editor’s Note by Strassler and p. xxxii on key to map symbols; and the appendices -particularly A, C, F, and G – if interested)

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Tues 16 Jan – Thucydides: And So It Begins
• The Landmark Thucydides, Book 1: I.1-2 (pp.3-4); I.7-9 (pp. 7-8); I.13-23 (pp. 11-16);
I.31-37 (pp. 21-25); I.43-44 (pp. 27-28); I.66-71 (37-41); I.75-85 (43-47); I.88 (49); I.97
(53); I.118 (65) I.120-127 (66-70); I.139-I.146 (79-85); see also I.115 (63)
• Book 2: II.1 (89); II.11 (96-97); II.21-22 (103-4); II.34-66 (110-28)
Thur 18 Jan – Thucydides
• Book 3: III.36-50 (175-84); III.81-84 (198-201)
• Book 4: IV.17-22 (232-34); IV.70-74 (261-63); IV.78-88 (266-72); IV.102-117 (279-86)
Tues 23 Jan – Thucydides
• Book 5: V.6-11 (304-309; see also map 5.3 on 302); V.14 (309); V.25-6 (316-17); V.84116 (pp. 350-57); paired with Melian Dialogue, Chios at VIII.24 (494-95)
• Book 6: VI.1 (361); VI.6-20 (365-73); VI. 24-31 (375-78); VI.38-41 (383-85); VI.60-61
(394-95); VI.76-90 (403-13); VI.93 (416)
•
Thur 25 Jan – Thucydides, and modern interpretations
• Book 7: VII.47-50 (455-58); VII.55 (459); VII.75-77 (471-73); VII.82-87 (476-8)
• Book 8: 8.1 (481); 8.5-6 (484-85); review VIII. 24 (494-95); VIII. 46 (508); VIII.53-54
(511-12); VIII.63-76 (517- 25); VIII.86-90 (529-33); VIII.96-97 (538-40)
• Epilogue: sections 1-3 (549-50); sec. 5 (551-52); sec. 10 (553)
• “Book 6” in W. Robert Connor, Thucydides (1984)
Tues 30 Jan – Modern Interpretations of Thucydides
• “Book 7” in Connor, Thucydides (1984)
• Monoson and Loriaux, “The Illusion of Power and the Disruption of Moral Norms:
Thucydides’ Critique of Periclean Policy,” American Political Science Review (1998)
Thur 1 Feb – A possession for all time, and transition to modern grand strategy
• Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?,” The
Atlantic Monthly, September 24, 2015
• Kori Schake, “The Summer of Misreading Thucydides,” The Atlantic, July 2017
• William Martel, “American Grand Strategy Disaster,” The National Interest, 2014
**MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY – ** FIRST PAPER DUE, via email – by 5 pm**
Block II: Grand Strategy in the European Tradition – and the Context for America
Tues 6 Feb – Strategic Thinking, and the European Tradition of Strategy
• Murray and Grimsely, “Introduction: on Strategy,” in Murray et. al., Making of Strategy
• Parker, “Habsburg Spain, Philip II,” ch. 5 in Making of Strategy

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Thur 8 Feb – European Global Strategy – and the Contexts for America’s Strategic Culture
• Maltby, “The Origins of Global Strategy: England from 1558 to 1773,” ch. 6 in Making
of Strategy
• Gooch, “The Weary Titan: Great Britain,” ch. 10 in Making of Strategy
Tues 13 Feb – Britain, Germany, and the Immediate Context for America’s Global Rise
• Deist, “Road to Ideological War: Germany,” ch. 12 in Making of Strategy
• Murray, “Collapse of Empire: British Strategy,” ch. 13 in Making of Strategy
Block III: Shaping American Grand Strategy: American Character, Global Challenges
Thur 15 Feb – interlude on American policy-making in the post-Cold War era
• Dr. Allison Stanger on making U.S. grand strategy in the Obama administration –the
view from the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. State Department
• Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic Monthly, April 2016
• other reading TBD
Tues 20 Feb – Grand Strategy from the Classics, to Europe, to America
• Charles Hill on strategic thinking and statecraft: “Prologue” in Grand Strategies
• Hill, “Classical Orders,” passages on Thucydides and America in chap. 1 of Grand
Strategies, p. 20 (top) to p. 24 (middle)
Thur 22 Feb – America and Her First Grand Strategy
• Maslowski, “To the Edge of Greatness: The United States, 1783-1865,” Chapter 8 in The
Making of Strategy
• Hill, “America: A New Idea,” ch. 6 in Grand Strategies
Tues 27 Feb – Foundational Texts, and Statesmen, of American Strategy
• The Federalist, Hamilton, no. 11
• The Anti-Federalist concerns: “Letters from a Federal Farmer,” selections
• Washington’s Farewell Address, selections
Thur 1 Mar – The American Balance: Enlightened Self-Interest in the 19th century
• President Monroe and Secretary of State J.Q. Adams: The Monroe Doctrine (from
Monroe’s Seventh Annual Address, 1823)
• Tocqueville, Democracy in America, selections
March 6 and March 8 – No class - Spring Break
Tues 13 Mar – The American Balance: Enlightened Self-Interest in the 20th century
• excerpts from “NSC 68,” Truman administration (1950)
• excerpts from President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)

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Thur 15 Mar – American Strategy and Moral Responsibility for Liberal Order
• Cohen, “The Strategy of Innocence: The United States, 1920-1945,” ch. 14 in The
Making of Strategy
• Huntington, “American Ideals versus American Institutions,” Political Science Quarterly,
Spring 1982
Tues 20 Mar – The Complexity of American Strategic Thinking: Mead’s Four Schools
• Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It
Changed the World (2001/2002), excerpts
Thur 22 Mar – Nau’s Middle Ground
• Henry Nau, Conservative Internationalism (2013, 2015), excerpts
**MONDAY 26 MARCH – ** SECOND ESSAY DUE via email – by 5 pm**
Block IV: Political Science, Policy, and Recent Grand Strategy Debates
Tues 27 Mar – International Relations Theory vs. Grand Strategy, and American Policy
• Walt, Stephen, Foreign Policy; Spring 1998, Issue 110, p29
• William Martel, “America’s Grand Strategy Disaster,” The National Interest, 2014
Thur 29 Mar – Post-Cold War American Debates on Realism, Liberalism, Neo-conservatism,
Nationalism, and America’s Role in International Order – Part 1, GW Bush
• Joseph Nye, “Soft Power and American Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly
(Summer 2004)
• Jonathan Monten, “The Roots of the Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and
Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy,” International Security, 2005
Tues 3 Apr – America’s Post-Cold War Debates, Part 2: The Obama Reaction and Its Critics
• Michael Doran, “Is Obama Like Eisenhower?” Brookings/Commentary, 2013
• Robert Kagan, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” The New Republic, 2014
Thur 5 Apr – America’s Post-Cold War Debates, Part 2, The Obama Doctrine, continued
• Barry Posen, “Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs,
2013; and, Preface to Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (2014/2015)
• Secretaries of State Kissinger & Shultz on Iran deal, Wall Street Journal, 2013
** Monday 9 APRIL: 2-page outline of research paper, w/ biblio., due by 5 pm**
Tues 10 Apr –Debates, Part 3: The Trump Revolt . . . and Search for an American Consensus
• W.R. Mead, “The Jacksonian Revolt” (on Trump), Foreign Affairs, Jan 2017
• Gen. McMaster Gary Cohn, “The Trump Vision for America Abroad,” The New York
Times, July 2017
• Dueck, “The Key to Successful Trump Foreign Policy,” The National Interest, May 2017

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Paul Miller, “Can Trump Reconcile Nationalism with Liberalism?” Foreign Policy, July
2017 (Elephants in the Room blog)

Block V: Recovering American Statesmanship and Grand Strategy?
Thur 12 Apr – Sources and Exemplars of American Statesmanship: Classical & Modern Balance
• Montesquieu – from Spirit of Laws, root of the American balance
Tues 17 Apr – Kissinger on World Order and Grand Strategy, and his Critics
• Kissinger, World Order, Introduction, Chapter 1 (Europe), Chapter 3 (Islamism)
• Responses by Heilbrunn (realist), Slaughter (liberal), Ferguson (historian/biographer)
Thur 19 Apr – Kissinger’s Search for a Balanced Grand Strategy in the Hyper-Modern World
• Kissinger, World Order, Chapter 7 and 8 (America), Conclusion
Block VI: Final Research Presentations/Marshall Briefs
Tues 24 Apr – Marshall Briefs (based upon your final research paper)
Thur 26 Apr – Marshall Briefs (based upon your final research paper)

Wed 2 May: Final Research Paper due by noon

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