Partnerships and Power in American Grand Strategy

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates the relationship between American national security objectives and the use of partnerships as a tool for managing the international security environment. Partnerships emerged in American grand strategy during the 1990s as a way to signal reassurance to new friends and old adversaries about American power. This policy of restraint shifted, however, into one of expansion in which partnerships played an important role in an offensive orientation of American grand strategy. Partnerships were also utilized to manage coalitions for military engagements led by the US. These trends are demonstrated in this chapter through the use of partnerships developed by the US via the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The chapter concludes by demonstrating that, due to a dramatic decline in American power and significant overseas military burdens, a new phase of partnership is emerging, with serious implications for global and regional security in the twenty-first century.