Structure, Strategy, and American Power: Insights from America’s Last Geopolitical Resurgence (Hal Brands, FPRI)

1979 was a bad year for U.S. foreign policy. At home, the country was being battered by stagflation and the second oil shock, developments that raised fundamental questions about the economic underpinnings of American power. Abroad, the United States was suffering a seemingly unending series of setbacks and humiliations. From the revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua, to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the collapse of détente, to the taking of dozens of American hostages in Tehran, signs of U.S. impotence and decline abounded. The United States was “entering the decade of the 1980s as a wounded, demoralized colossus,” Business Week noted—a country that no longer controlled events but was at the mercy of them.

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2016/02/structure-strategy-and-american-power-insights-americas-last-geopolitical-resurgence

Paradoxes of the Gray Zone (Hal Brands, FPRI)

Gray, it seems, is the new black. The concept of “gray zone” conflict has generated significant attention and controversy recently, within both the U.S. government and the broader strategic studies community. Some analysts have identified gray zone conflict as a new phenomenon that will increasingly characterize, and challenge, the international system in the years to come. Others have argued that the concept is overhyped, ahistorical, and perhaps even meaningless. “The ‘gray wars’ concept lacks even the most basic strategic sense,” writes Adam Elkus. “Beneath the hype is something rather ooh-la-lame rather than ooh-la-la.”

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2016/02/paradoxes-gray-zone