Amerikan Grand Stratejisi: Obama'nin Ortadogu Mirasi [American Grand Strategy: Obama's Middle East Legacy].

• Author: Yurteri, Hamza
• Position: Book review

Amerikan Grand Stratejisi: Obama'nin Ortadogu Mirasi [American Grand Strategy: Obama's Middle East Legacy]

By Cagatay Ozdemir

Istanbul: SETA Yayinlari, 2018, 280 pages, 20.28 TL, ISBN: 9789752459953

Although many actors, from regional powers to global powers, engage in grand strategy practices, the concept of 'grand strategy' is most closely identified with the United States. U.S. Presidents have put forward various grand strategies by taking into consideration regional conjectures, threats, aims, and domestic political developments. In this regard, Cagatay Ozdemir's American Grand Strategy: Obama's Middle East Legacy addresses the reasons behind the preference for retrenchment as a grand strategy in Obama's era. Ozdemir provides a framework of reflections on American domestic politics, and investigates how Obama's grand strategy was put into practice along the brittle fault line of the Middle East. One of the main arguments of the book is its explanation of the fact that while Obama came under criticism for following a "do nothing strategy," he actually pursued a grand strategy based upon a conjectural reality; in this context the diplomatic and economic instruments of the U.S. were integrated with a retrenchment-oriented grand strategy. According to the author, the main aim of Obama's grand strategy was to protect the global role of the U.S., just as the previous grand strategies preferred by Presidents of the U.S. in the post-Cold War era had done.

The book is composed of three chapters. In the first part, Ozdemir examines the concept of grand strategy in depth and frames the concept, which has been marked by some ambiguity in the literature. Ozdemir states that the concept of strategy can be found in Ancient Greece; because of the shortcomings of the concept of strategy, the literature needs a concept such as grand strategy. The fact that the concept of strategy is very intertwined with military activities and war has revealed the necessity of defining non-military activities, such as the economic, socio-psycholog-ical, and diplomatic tools used against the enemy. This situation stems from the fact that the only source of power of the states until the nineteenth century was military power; in the following period, states needed diplomatic, economic and social power. Such a change in the international conjuncture necessitated a new perspective. Hence, at the present time, the concept of grand strategy has been trying to satisfy such a...