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What if America's most decisive wars were not accidents of history but the outcome of a long, evolving grand strategy?
In The Hidden Grand Strategy: How America Engineers Wars To Weaken Russia And China, James E. Isham dissects the ideas, doctrines, and power struggles that have shaped US statecraft from the end of the Cold War to today's return of great-power rivalry. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship in strategic studies and international relations, Isham reveals how Washington's public rhetoric about democracy, human rights, and a "rules-based order" is often only one layer of a far more complex strategic narrative. At the core of the book is a stark claim: behind shifting slogans and changing enemies lies a persistent logic of managing, containing, and gradually weakening rival centers of power-above all Russia and China-through economic pressure, technological competition, proxy conflicts, and information warfare. Isham traces how grand strategy is made-across agencies, think tanks, and military commands-and how abstract concepts are translated into real‑world policies, wars, and crises.
Isham distinguishes between America's officially stated objectives and its tacit geopolitical aims, showing how gaps between the two generate mistrust, fuel arms races, and destabilize entire regions. By unpacking the "strategic narratives" that justify intervention abroad and military build-up at home, he exposes the intellectual battles inside the US foreign policy establishment between partisans of continuity and advocates of radical change.
Accessible yet rigorous, this book is indispensable for:
The Hidden Grand Strategy offers a powerful framework for reading the next crisis before it erupts-and for seeing how today's conflicts fit into a much larger strategic design. ---
