ABSTRACT
How can we account for variations and shifts in U.S. grand strategy? Namely, why does the United States adopt a certain grand strategy in a certain period, and why does it switch from one strategy to another? In the past two decades we have witnessed two such transitions in u.s. grand strategy. The first transition took place from the Cold War period to the 1990s, and it was manifested in a greater u.s. willingness to undertake limited humanitarian interventions. The second transition took place a decade later, following 9/11. The new strategy included, notably, a willingness to promote democracy by the use of force, as reflected in the 2002 Bush Doctrine and carried out in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States intervened with a massive force in a sensitive region, in the absence of any immediate Iraqi threat to its security, with the explicit purpose of democracy promotion. This raises the question why democracy promotion by the use of force has become such a prominent objective of u.s. grand strategy under the George W. Bush administration.
