A Different Approach on Analyzing Countries’ Grand Strategies: China and the United States

This article aims to examine the grand strategies of two leaders more rigorously by using a comprehensive and well-established role theoretic framework. It is argued that role theory offers a theoretical foundation for comprehending the structure of grand strategy through the lens of roles, enabling the measurement of changes in its composition over time. This framework provides a comprehensive response to the persistent problems and challenges highlighted by scholars in the field of grand strategy, as well as the enduring issues present within the existing literature. The absence of role contestation within the inner circle of government lends grand strategies their characteristic longevity. This article contends that this framework can also serve as a robust metric for understanding grand strategies in the most rigorous manner possible. Consequently, roles facilitate the differentiation of long-term policies from short-term policies by deciphering the horizontal role contestation process. This approach thus resolves outstanding theoretical and measurement issues within the field of grand strategy analysis. This study will employ a sample of two countries—China, and the United States—chosen for their distinct regime types and extensive scholarly attention in the field of grand strategy.