Foundations of Grand Strategy
Assess grand strategic theory and practice in Thucydides and Plutarch.
July 12 – July 25, 2020
Online Seminar
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to the concept of grand strategy—the components of such strategies and the processes to develop them. The seminar will specifically examine American grand strategy. In looking at examples of US strategy—from the Founding to the present day—we will seek to understand why the leaders took the decisions they did, what the benefits and costs of these decisions were, what alternatives they may have had, and how they harnessed the tools at their disposal to achieve the objectives they set.
Jakub Grygiel interviews Kiron Skinner on the Trump Doctrine
Jakub Grygiel is an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America. From 2017–18, he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. His most recent book is Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present.
Jakub Grygiel is an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America. From 2017–2018, he was a senior advisor to the Secretary of State in the Office of Policy Planning working on European affairs.
Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and on the faculty of SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. He has previously worked as a consultant for the OECD in Paris and the World Bank in Washington.
His most recent book is Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present. He is coauthor of The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power (with A. Wess Mitchell) and also the author of Great Powers and Geopolitical Change. His writings on international relations and security studies have appeared in The American Interest, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Commentary, Joint Forces Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, as well as U.S., Swiss, Polish and Italian newspapers. He earned a Ph.D., M.A. and an MPA from Princeton University, and a BSFS Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University.
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Hugh Liebert
Jakub J. Grygiel
Jakub Grygiel is an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America. From 2017–18, he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. His most recent book is Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present.
Mick Ryan
Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian Army. He is now an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, and a non-resident fellow of the Lowy Institute in Sydney. In January 2023 Mick was also appointed as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
Daniel Blumenthal
Daniel Blumenthal is the Director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade.
Vance Serchuk
Vance Serchuk is Executive Director of the KKR Global Institute and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Serchuk served for six years as the senior national security advisor to Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut).
Lewis Libby
Lewis “Scooter” Libby is a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has held several high level positions in the federal government related to his current work on national security and homeland security affairs. This included roughly a dozen years working in the White House, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of State.
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Wolfowitz is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He spent more than three decades in public service and higher education. Most recently, he served as president of the World Bank and deputy secretary of defense.