Stacie E. Goddard and Joshua D. Kertzer
American Strategists Should Think More Like Social Scientists
American flags on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., October 2025 Kylie Cooper / Reuters
STACIE E. GODDARD is Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of Political Science and Associate Provost for Wellesley in the World.
JOSHUA D. KERTZER is John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Government at Harvard University.More by Joshua D. Kertzer
America’s grand strategy is in turmoil. Over the past decade, power shifts, territorial disputes, and the faltering of international institutions have fueled an increasingly heated debate about what geopolitical position the United States finds itself in and the necessary trajectory of U.S. foreign policy. Some Washington analysts and policymakers (such as former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy Nadia Schadlow and Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby) believe that after several decades of U.S. hegemony, great-power competition has returned, and Washington must embrace a foreign policy designed to counter threats from Beijing and Moscow. Others, including former members of the Biden administration such as Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper, counsel that although the liberal multilateralism that defined the post–World War II order is under threat, it will persist; U.S. leaders should hold firm to a grand strategy that promotes strong institutions, democracy, and free trade. Still others—such as the former U.S. diplomat Michael McFaul and the writer Anne Applebaum—believe that the current moment is defined by a new degree of contestation of norms, in which revisionist states in particular feel increasingly empowered to flout rules that once hemmed in conflict, promoted human rights, and even protected sovereignty. These analysts advise that the United States must defend critical norms explicitly by promoting them abroad.
As different as these arguments may seem, they have a common foundation. They are each built on one of three paradigms that has dominated international relations theory since World War II: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Realists see politics as rooted in anarchy, driving countries to compete for power and security. Liberals assume that individuals all strive for universally desired public goods, which are best delivered by democracy, open economies, and multilateral institutions. Constructivists believe that the adoption of political ideas and norms by large powers drives the trajectory of global affairs just as much as any state’s will to power.
Practitioners sometimes dismiss international relations theory as immaterial to real-world policymaking. In 2010, for instance, the longtime U.S. diplomat David Newsom complained that it was “either irrelevant or inaccessible to policymakers” and remained “locked in a circle of esoteric scholarly discussion.” The divide between theory and practice is problematic in normal times, and downright dangerous in turbulent ones. For many of the voices leading Washington’s foreign policy debate, international relations paradigms lurk in the background, generating an array of strategic recommendations that cannot easily be debated or reconciled because they are built on fundamentally different assumptions about how international politics works. If realist assumptions about power and security are right, then the United States needs to prepare for decades of great-power competition. But if liberal beliefs about the universality of individual desires are correct, U.S. policymakers should in fact be striving to rebuild and reinforce a liberal order. And if constructivist assumptions are correct, then any U.S. grand strategy must remain rooted in legitimate norms and values.
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