The "Soft" Side of Grand Strategy: Economics and Democratic Values
Session 4
March 20, 2003
Meeting Notes (pdf 59 KB)—Summarized by Michael Kraig, Ph.D.
Ellen Frost, Visiting Fellow, Institute for International Economics
Peter Dombrowski, Associate Professor, Naval War College
What is the Bush economic grand strategy, and how does it support or undermine military methods? Is the current economic strategy sustainable? Can the United States actually afford a policy of indefinite global primacy and, if so, how?
Is it in the US interest to expand the zone of liberal (capitalist) democracy on a global basis as a means of transforming the international system, increasing regional stability, and raising the level of economic development? What does it mean to expand the zone of liberal democracy? What are the preferred methods for supporting democratic transitions in such regions?
What are the roles of the individual, the group network, or the cartel in mounting threats toward the United States? Should the United States be focusing almost exclusively on the threat of WMD terrorism as compared to other transnational threats? What does it mean to "fight" a war against transnational actors, and with what implications for US strategy? How does one "prevent" these threats from emerging?
How should the US government calculate the "opportunity costs" of spending on counterforce weaponry and military methods versus money spent on aid programs, democratization, and other "soft" security items to prevent a threat from emerging in the first place? How are these related, if at all? Should the government construct a coherent way of comparing and contrasting the costs of each?