This event was originally scheduled for April 2020 and rescheduled to a virtual format due to safety precautions surrounding the global coronavirus pandemic.
Conference Overview
The conference has three purposes. First, we will explore why Donald J. Trump became president of the United States. Why did Americans vote for Trump? What do they claim they were trying to achieve with their vote? Second, what is the current debate over U.S. grand strategy, and what should be America’s grand strategy moving forward? The simplest way to think of grand strategy is as a road map between means and ends. Grand strategies determine the state’s core interests, how it can best pursue its objectives, and what most threatens them. China’s rise to the status of a peer competitor puts it front-and-center in any discussion of American grand strategy. What is the current Trump strategy towards Beijing, and how should the U.S. deal with China in the future? More broadly, is grand strategy still possible? Finally, we will investigate public opinion and foreign-policy attitudes as they relate to American grand strategy. These discussions will include the normative foundations, perceptions of costs and fairness, and elite rhetoric that either buttress or undermine American grand strategy and associated foreign policies.
If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Kyle McCray, mccray.44@osu.edu. Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Program Schedule
9:30 AM - 9:45 AM
Opening Remarks. Randall Schweller, The Ohio State University and Director for the Program for the Study of Realist Foreign Policy
9:45 AM - 11:00 AM
Why Trump? Tim Luecke and Sonja Niemeier, Transatlantika.
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
The End of Engagement: Expertise, Domestic Politics, and U.S.-China Strategy Under Trump. David McCourt, Sociology, University of California, Davis
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Discussant: Haoming Xiong
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
BREAK
1:15 PM - 2:30 PM
Theory, Counterfactuals, and the U.S. Grand Strategy Debate. William Wohlforth, Government, Dartmouth College
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Discussant: Lauren Muscott
2:30 PM - 3:45 PM
One War Is Not Enough. Hal Brands, Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
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Discussant: Andrew Goodhart
3:45 PM - 4:00 PM
BREAK
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Grand Strategy in a Fractured Marketplace of Ideas. Daniel Drezner, International Politics, Tufts University
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Discussant: Caleb Pomeroy
9:00 AM- 10:15 AM
Making them Pay: Using the Norm of Honesty to Generate Costs for Political Lies. Sarah Croco, Government, University of Maryland
- Discussant: Minseon Ku
10:15 AM- 10:30 AM
BREAK
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
The Institutionalization of Foreign Policy Constraint: Cost Perception and Public Opinion. Lindsay Cohn, National Security Affairs, U.S. Naval War College
- Discussants: John Harden, Alan van Beek
11:45 AM - 12:45 PM
BREAK
12:45 PM - 2:00 PM
The Trump Taboo Test: Elite Rhetoric and the Normative Foundations of American Grand Strategy. Christopher Gelpi, Director of Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University
- Discussant: Kaitlin McClamrock
2:00 PM - 2:15 PM
BREAK
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
What's Fair in International Politics? Equity, Equality, and Foreign Policy Attitudes. Kathleen Powers, Government, Dartmouth College
- Discussant: Christopher Ray
3:30 PM - 3:45 PM
Closing remarks. Randall Schweller, The Ohio State University
Event Host
This event is cosponsored by the Program for the Study of Realist Foreign Policy at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and The Charles Koch Foundation.
