Alternative U.S. Grand Strategies: Past, Present, Future

11 snips

Feb 14, 2026

Robert Blackwill, former deputy national security advisor and U.S. ambassador to India, offers a concise strategic roadmap. He reviews five rival U.S. grand strategy schools and argues for a new blend of military strength and alliance-driven leadership. He also weighs China-Taiwan deterrence, rebuilding allied trust, institutional reform, and how politics will shape America’s global role.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Unifying Germany As A Daily Task

Condi Rice recounts working under Blackwill during the Soviet collapse and his daily focus on unifying Germany.
That experience highlighted Blackwill's skill linking American values to practical policy.

INSIGHT

Liberal Internationalism Has Weakened

Blackwill critiques recent liberal internationalism as weakened and failing to confront rising threats like China and Russia.
He says past administrations eroded deterrence, allowed militarization, and undercut trade and alliances.

INSIGHT

What Trumpism Represents

Blackwill defines Trumpism as counter-revolutionary, rule-less, transactional, and dismissive of alliances and global values.
He contrasts it with American nationalism and sees Trumpism as a unique, personalized strain of policy.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

The Hoover Institution’s Global Policy and Strategy Initiative hosted a webinar to discuss Alternative U.S. Grand Strategies: Past, Present, Future on Tuesday, February 10, 2026.

In a new report for the Council on Foreign Relations, America Revived, Ambassador Blackwill argues that the United States faces the most dangerous international environment since World War II. He defines U.S. vital national interests, summarizes the history of American grand strategy, outlines and critiques five grand strategy schools (primacy, liberal internationalism, restraint, American nationalism, and Trumpism), and advances a new grand strategy—resolute global leadership. This approach merges the military power and global presence of primacy with the alliance networks, institutional engagement, and focus on legitimacy emphasized by liberal internationalism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ambassador Robert Blackwill is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He served as deputy national security advisor, presidential envoy to Iraq, and ambassador to India under President George W. Bush. Blackwill’s latest book, coauthored with Richard Fontaine, is Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Admiral James O. Ellis Jr. is Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he oversees both the Global Policy and Strategy Initiative and the George P. Shultz Energy Policy Working Group. He retired from a 39-year career with the US Navy in 2004. He has also served in the private and nonprofit sectors in areas of energy and nuclear security.

Philip Zelikow is the Botha-Chan Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. For 25 years he held a chaired professorship in history at the University of Virginia, where he also directed the nation's leading research center on the American presidency. For seven years before that, he was an associate professor at Harvard University.