The grand strategy of the United States: debate, policies and implications for Brazil

Abstract

This project is part of the program of the National Institute of Science and Technology for Studies on the United States (INCT-Ineu) and fits under the item of "Consensus and dissent on the strategic debate on the role of the United States in the international system". The outline of this debate is described in the ongoing research plan of the approved proposal in the edict. It is a development of a body of work that the author has been carrying out since the beginning of the last decade, which culminated in a paper titled "Evolução geopolítica: cenários e perspectivas" ("Geopolitical evolution: scenarios and perspectives"). 1 The essential aim of this project is to attentively observe the debate on the broader lines of US international strategy happening in the "US foreign policy community". The purport is to examine how the relevant actors in this field - in government bodies, Congress commissions and specialized institutions for the formulation and advocacy of policies (think tanks) - conceive the role of the United States in the world in the long term; what they perceive as the more serious threats to national interests (as defined by them) and which policies are recommended to face those threats and promote these interests. In a complementary fashion, the research will invert the focus to observe how the United States' main interlocutors - France, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia and India - conceive their relations with the superpower, which scenarios of the future international system they work with, and which courses of action they adopt so as to make their preferred scenarios more likely to happen. Focusing on the policy orientations of the United States - but also considering the responses they rouse in relevant actors of the international landscape -, the research will then be directed to an analysis of the implications of the processes observed for Brazil's development policy and foreign policy. (AU)