The Challenge of Grand Strategy

Professor Jeffrey Taliaferro is the author of Balancing Risks: Great Power Intervention in the Periphery (2004), for which he received the American Political Science Association's Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Award for the Best Book in International History and Politics. His articles have appeared in the journals International Security, Security Studies and Political Psychology, and two edited volumes. He is co-editor (and a contributor), along with Steven E. Lobell and Norrin P. Ripsman, of Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2009). Norrin M. Ripsman is Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. Steven E. Lobell is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah.

• 1. Introduction: grand strategy between the World Wars Steven E. Lobell, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro and Norrin M. Ripsman; 2. Deterrence, coercion, and enmeshment: French grand strategy and the German problem after World War I Peter Jackson; 3. The legacy of coercive peace building: the Locarno treaty, Anglo-French grand strategy, and the 1936 Rhineland crisis Scott A. Silverstone; 4. The League of Nations and grand strategy: a contradiction in terms? Andrew Webster; 5. Economic interdependence and the grand strategies of Germany and Japan, 1925–41 Dale C. Copeland; 6. Britain's grand strategy during the 1930s: from balance of power to components of power Steven E. Lobell; 7. British grand strategy and the rise of Germany, 1933–6 Norrin M. Ripsman and Jack S. Levy; 8. Strategy of innocence or provocation? The Roosevelt administration's road to World War II Jeffrey W. Taliaferro; 9. The rising sun was no jackal: Japanese grand strategy, the Tripartite Pact, and alliance formation theory Tsuyoshi Kawasaki; 10. Powers of division: from the anti-Comintern to the Nazi-Soviet and Japanese-Soviet pacts, 1936–41 Timothy W. Crawford; 11. Soviet grand strategy in the interwar years: ideology as realpolitik Mark L. Haas; 12. Conclusions: rethinking interwar grand strategies David M. Edelstein.

'Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, the essays in The Challenge of Grand Strategy give us a much better picture of the 1930s than we have had before. The reasoning of the players, the complex domestic politics, and their difficult international interactions are marvellously brought to life.' Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics, Columbia University