Gaddis on Grand Strategy

December 24th, 2009 by zen

Hat tip to Ian!

Posted in academia, cold war, defense, deterrence, DIME, diplomacy, diplomatic history, historians, ideas, intellectuals, military, national security, state department, strategist, strategy, Strategy and War, teaching, theory, war, youtube | 7 comments

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  1. Joseph Fouche:

    December 24th, 2009 at 4:36 am

    The dead tree version (if dead trees can be pulped into PDFs) is here:

    http://www.duke.edu/web/agsp/grandstrategypaper.pdf

  2. Lexington Green:

    December 24th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

    Excellent.  I listened to it all.  Good stuff.  Gaddis says grand strategy "these days, [is] an endangered discipline, for in the absence of sufficiently grave threats to concentrate our minds, there are insufficient incentives to think in these terms."  Halford Mackinder said somewhere that democracies only undertake to do strategy when they are in mortal peril.  (Does anyone have the exact quote?)

  3. J. Scott:

    December 24th, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    "Democracy refuses to think strategically unless and until compelled to do so for purposes of defense.’ Page 17 of Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals and Reality

  4. zen:

    December 25th, 2009 at 4:50 am

    I’m glad that Yale is doing something like this – it’s a superficial shadow of the classical education that first tier schools used to provide with an undergraduate canon but perhaps it will serve as a catalyst for continuing self-education (and for diplomats, policy makers and military officers, professional reading).

  5. Seerov:

    December 26th, 2009 at 2:45 am

    I’d love the opportunity to do a class/project like that. 

  6. don:

    December 26th, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    cool post

    don
    fromnowtozen.com

  7. Seerov:

    December 27th, 2009 at 7:23 am

    Around 52:30 the speaker admits that "there was more freedom to test theory back when universities were less diverse."  He called this time "the bad old days" despite having more academic freedom than we do today.
    .
    This supports my own theory that as America becomes more diverse, it will become less free.  This is especially important as it relates to speech or opinion. When a society is built on words or ideas (instead of ethnicity or common culture) its impossible for free speech to thrive.  What if people stop believing in the words?  This could be disastrous. 
    .
    Therefore, people must be forced to believe in the words.