On Grand Strategy

One of Isaiah’s most priceless attributes is that he evokes genius in others . . . , giving them the impression that they are really more coruscating and witty than they would otherwise believe themselves to be.

His country emerged from them with half the world’s manufacturing capability, two-thirds of its gold reserves, three-fourths of its invested capital, its largest navy and air force, and its first atomic bombs.107 There were, to be sure, pacts with devils in all of these: strategies, like politics, are never pure. But as historians Hal Brands and Pa

Roosevelt had “countervailing qualities of a rare and inspiring order.” [H]e was large-hearted and possessed wide political horizons, imaginative sweep, understanding of the time in which he lived and of the direction of the great new forces at work in the twentieth century—technological, racial, imperialist, anti-imperialist; he was in favour of l

Clausewitz would have seen coups d’oeil—“inward eyes” grasping truths ordinarily requiring long reflection.

“So we had won after all!” Churchill remembered exulting on getting the news from Hawaii. “[T]he United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death.” “[S]illy people” had thought Americans too soft, too talkative, too paralyzed by their politics to be anything more than “a vague blur on the horizon to friend or foe.” But I had studied

on a five-year plan if he’d asked them for one.93 Instead he improvised, edging forward where possible, falling back when necessary, always appearing to do something, never giving in to despair, and in everything remembering what Wilson forgot—that nothing would succeed without widespread continuing public support. “It is a terrible thing,” Rooseve

“Any complex activity,” Clausewitz writes, “if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a ‘genius.’”39 I take this to mean continuing adjustments of “intellect”—which sets course

Roosevelt didn’t so much distrust experts as lament their limited horizons. It irked him that his own agents—the diplomats and military attachés in the Moscow embassy, the Washington officials who read their reports, even his beloved navy—were close to considering Stalin worse than Hitler: they failed to see the larger possibilities that came with

Roosevelt, in striking contrast, was one of those politicians equipped with “antennae of the greatest possible delicacy, which convey to them . . . the perpetually changing contours of events and feelings and human activities.” Gifted with the capacity “to take in minute impressions,” they absorb and extract purpose from—as do artists—vast multitud

The argument is absurd, but only because it rejects any coexistence of contradictions in time or space: it thereby confirms Berlin’s claim that not all praiseworthy things are simultaneously possible. And that learning to live within that condition—let’s call it history—requires adaptation to incompatibles. That’s where grand strategy helps. For “i