Grand Strategies for Dealing with Other States in the New, New World Order

The art of statecraft has often involved efforts to improve the security of one state by taking advantage of the power and influence of other states. This is, for example, why a state typically seeks to forge military alliances with others. It is also why some states provide economic and military support to client or dependent states and why some advocate the formation of multistate trading blocs. The theory behind the trading-bloc strategy is that cooperation on security matters is more likely when there are strong economic and other mutually beneficial connections among the members of the bloc. Among the tools that have been and are being used to influence other states are trade preferences, loans, loan guarantees, concessionary pricing for military sales, export-import financing, technical assistance, foreign aid, and international disaster relief. While humanitarian altruism is a major factor in foreign aid and disaster relief, statesmen often see the reduction of suffering as a method of improving the stability of a recipient state or as an inducement for a recipient state to cooperate more fully on security matters. Many ideas for making American foreign policy more effective have been offered in recent years. Some of them involve ways of prioritizing all forms of official, state-to-state assistance on those states whose stability or cooperation will most benefit the national interests of the United States. Obviously, there are Dr. Miskel is the associate dean of academics at the Naval War College and a former professor in the College’s National Security Decision Making Department. Earning his doctorate at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1977, he served in the Department of Health and Human Services before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1984. He was the director for defense policy on the National Security Council staff in 1987–89, thereafter returning to FEMA as assistant associate director. He is the author of Buying Trouble? National Security and Reliance on Foreign Industry (1993) and of articles in numerous journals.