Yale Bulletin and Calendar

January 28, 2000

Volume 28, Number 18

Yale luminaries combine talents to teach
students the benefits of 'strategic thinking'

"You cannot teach at Yale for long without realizing that some of your students are likely to wind up running significant parts of this country or others -- maybe even the countries themselves," observes John Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History.

Preparing future leaders to take over the reins of power is one of the goals Gaddis and his colleagues at the International Securities Studies (ISS) program had in mind when creating the innovative new course "Studies in Grand Strategy," which debuted this semester.

The seminar, however, is not just a "Future Leaders 101" course. It is also the major component of a broader ISS initiative to re-introduce the subject of grand strategy into the academic agenda and to restore strategic thinking to the realm of international policy, corporate planning and public affairs.

Defined as "the calculated relation of means to large ends," grand strategy has been largely abandoned as a mode of thought or action in the post-Cold War era, say the framers of the course. Paradoxically, as globalization increasingly governs world affairs, specialization and compartmentalization rather than attention to "the big picture" -- the "grand" view -- have characterized decision-making, they say.

"In this year-long course, we would like its participants to understand strategy in the largest possible sense, to see the whole forest and not just the individual trees, to understand the broader picture," said Paul Kennedy, the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, who is co-teaching the course with Gaddis; Professor Paul Bracken of the Yale School of Management (Yale SOM); and Charles Hill, a distinguished fellow at ISS.

The seminar, which is primarily geared to graduate students, combines an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of grand strategy; an eclectic, transcultural curriculum; and a structure that includes seminars and lecture series in the classroom and a relevant summer project (with full report due in the fall). The 24 students accepted into the course (out of 62 applicants) represent a cross-section of academic and professional backgrounds -- from the history, political science and international relations departments to the Law School and Yale SOM. One graduate student from the African Studies Program and seven undergraduates are also enrolled. Kennedy, Gaddis, Hill and Bracken will each participate in the weekly sessions.

The first semester puts grand strategy in historical perspective, with a syllabus that covers such classical primary sources as Thucydides' "The Peloponnesian War," Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and Machiavelli's "The Prince" as well as case studies of the strategic policies of statesmen like Metternich, Bismark and Kissinger.

Students will also have the opportunity to hear visiting scholars and leaders from different sectors of the economy and government, who will discuss the concept of grand strategy from their unique perspectives as part of a lecture series that is open to the public. Featured speakers will include Michael Sherman, chief strategist of the Marsh and McLennan Companies, who will talk about "grand strategy in theory and practice" from a business point of view; Brigadier General Carl W. Reddel, president of the Eisenhower World Affairs Institute, who will address grand strategy from the military vantage point; and Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute, New York University, who will speak about a major component of strategic decision-making -- strategic dilemmas and "competing values" (order vs. justice, for instance). Other scholars will touch on such topics as the social and philosophical underpinnings of strategy. (Watch the Yale Bulletin & Calendar for further information about these talks.)

During the summer, students must undertake an internship or research project concentrating on a particular strategic problem and must submit a report of 10,000 to 15,000 words describing what they did.

The focus in the fall semester will be on the present and future of grand strategy; factors that might affect it, such as globalization, culture and advancing technology; and ways it might be applied in such disparate realms as the environment, politics and finance. Strategy and education, ethics and leadership will also be considered during the second half of the course.

One week into "Studies in Grand Strategy," Yale College senior Isaiah Wilner expressed enthusiasm about the course, seeing it as a fusion of many of the things he has studied at Yale so far. "It's a privilege to take this course," he says. He is as ardent about the readings of primary material as he is about the instructors, their diverse expertise and actual experience as masters of grand strategy.

"You're reading almost biblical text," he says, noting that studying writers from different cultures and times makes him aware that great thinkers are "on a par with one another" and that throughout history the same patterns of human behavior recur.

Unlike many of the other students in the course, Wilner has no ambitions to become either a captain of industry or a policy maker. A former editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News, he plans to become a journalist and sees the course as helping enormously in his chosen profession.

As a journalist, he says, "It's my job to be able to explain strategies to my readers." He describes reporters as essential players in a free society. "In a democracy, it's important to be able to criticize leaders," he notes. "Studies in Grand Strategy," Wilner claims, is giving him the wherewithal to figure out why leaders act as they do so he can, in turn, arm his readers with this knowledge.

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