JSIS 495 - Winter 2025: Task Force A: U.S. Grand Strategy in the 21st Century

The United States is the world’s most powerful nation, and its actions impact manifold countries in both the western and eastern hemispheres. Despite its enormous power, however, many critics in the United States and abroad have claimed that the nation often acts in an ad hoc manner without reference to a strategic blueprint. This Task Force seeks to answer these critiques by having students develop a “grand strategy”—a plan for the future of U.S. political, economic, and sociocultural relations with the world—that addresses manifold issues with which the nation will likely deal in the coming years. Students will join together to become a “Policy Planning Staff” composed of small groups dedicated to exploring given issues with the purpose of developing policy recommendations that relate U.S. behavior to the national interest (an interest that we will, in part, help define). By the course’s end, students will have produced a single strategic document intended to provide guidance to U.S. policymakers in the twenty-first century.