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Introduction

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Hope, Change, Pragmatism

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Abstract

Barack Obama was not quite the president anyone expected. This chapter sets out the debates and methods for studying his grand strategy as well as how to assess that strategy’s performance. Is there an “Obama doctrine,” and has Obama been a success or failure on this front? This review is focused on three years: 2009, 2011, and 2014. These are periods of particular salience during which grand strategy was actively challenged and deliberated. The chapter then briefly guides readers through grand strategy as a concept before describing a framework to categorize grand strategies. This framework can be applied across theories and cases. It is not married to any one theoretical approach, and it offers to help clarify or standardize grand strategy studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of West Florida, Pensacola, Florida, USA

    Jacob Shively

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  1. Jacob Shively
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Shively, J. (2016). Introduction. In: Hope, Change, Pragmatism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57699-6_1

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