Other Political Science Commons^™

Grand Strategy In U.S. Foreign Policy: The Carter, Bush, And Obama Doctrines, Sara M. Birkenthal

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to determine under what conditions a U.S. president can implement a grand strategy given the nature of domestic and international opportunities and constraints. It will examine three comparative case studies: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, with the goal of determining what conditions are necessary at the individual, domestic, and systemic levels of analysis for grand strategy implementation. At the individual level, it will apply operational code analysis, as well as an examination of personal characteristics for each case study. At the domestic level, it will apply a five-prong test for examining factors that are …