Does the Trump administration have a grand strategy? Many are sceptical, regarding the president’s brand of populism as incompatible with the very notion. Searching for coherence is certainly challenging given his mercurial style. Will he arm Taiwan and Ukraine, or abandon them in grand bargains with China and Russia? One moment he hails Europeans’ defence investment pledges; the next, he muses about annexing Greenland. Some suggest that such inconsistencies are part of a ‘deliberate strategy’ to keep allies and adversaries off balance. Others argue that, beneath the bluster, there is clear ‘prioritisation’, with the Indo-Pacific fully eclipsing Europe. The appointment of Elbridge Colby at the Department of War and the early berating of NATO allies suggest as much. Still, another view holds that Trump will focus on the Western Hemisphere, freeing China and Russia to carve out their own regional spheres of influence. The military build-up around Venezuela, the Golden Dome project, and Washington’s diplomatic overtures to Beijing and Moscow add ballast to this thesis.

There is clearly much debate but little consensus. Part of the challenge for those seeking to discern order in Trump’s actions is the sheer volume of competing statements and examples of contradictory behaviour. The bombing campaigns in Yemen and Iran, for example, hardly suggest a narrow focus on either East Asia or the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the recently announced drawdown of troops from Romania might imply broader retrenchment from Europe, but the rude health of the US-Poland alliance suggests otherwise.

Yet to dwell on Trump, or any single administration for that matter, is to miss the deeper question. Trump’s presidency is emblematic of a perennial puzzle: how to interpret coherence in statecraft amid the turbulence of domestic and international affairs. The more enduring question is: where do grand strategic ideas come from? Are they the work of one leader, or the product of the wider machinery of state and society that surrounds them?

Ideas vary in complexity and scope – from the philosophical and moral to the scientific and economic – but what, exactly, makes for a grand strategic idea? Grand strategy sits at ‘the highest level of national security decision-making, where judgements over a state’s overarching objectives and interests, as well as its security environment and resource base, are made’. Two kinds of judgement lie at its core. First, there are ideas about the character of the international system, including threats and opportunities on the horizon. Second, there are ideas about how to mobilise or extract resources from society to achieve national objectives.

I suggest that we need to focus on a new framework, one that can be summarised by the acronym IDEAS. Grand strategic ideas emerge from five main sources: the convictions of individuals, the interests of departments, the intellectual ecosystem that surrounds government, the prevailing spirit of the age, and a nation’s enduring strategic culture.

Emphasising the role of individual political leaders and their advisers runs against the grain of much academic thinking. Theories of international relations, such as realism and constructivism, tend to downplay individual agency, focusing instead on impersonal forces such as structure and culture. Yet leaders and their advisers have shaped their state’s grand strategic choices throughout history. It is hard, for example, to understand West Germany’s postwar trajectory without reference to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Through remarkable statesmanship, he ushered the country into the western alliance system and secured backing for rearmament – against domestic opposition and much international scepticism. On his watch, West Germany became a key member of the NATO alliance, something few would have predicted in the late 1940s.

Individuals clearly matter, but that fact alone explains little. Recent scholarship explores the conditions under which leaders and their ideas shape grand strategy. Rather than fixating on idiosyncrasies, such as Napoleon’s height or Wilhelm II’s withered arm, scholars examine how leaders think. Francis J. Gavin argues that effective statecraft requires an ‘historical sensibility’ – that is, an awareness of how the past unfolds into the present in complex, contingent ways. Philip Tetlock, adapting Isaiah Berlin’s metaphor, contrasts the hedgehog – who pursues a single grand idea – with the fox, who entertains many and adjusts to new evidence. Brian Rathbun offers another lens, distinguishing between realists and romantics, with Bismarck and Richelieu as the former, and Churchill and Reagan as the latter. Combining Tetlock’s insights with those of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Rathbun suggests that romantics trust their own agency, regardless of the structural odds pitted against them, while realists work within the system to shape it. In his penultimate book, Henry Kissinger contrasted prophets and statesmen.

Some individuals defy easy categorisation. Lee Kuan Yew, for example, was both prophet and statesman. When Singapore became independent in 1965 after its bitter split from Malaysia, it faced daunting odds. Facing a hostile Indonesia to the south, dependent on Malaysia to the north for its water, and reliant on a fading British security guarantee, the new city-state had no strong national identity and little reason for optimism. Lee Kuan Yew forged a nation, recasting multiracialism as a strength rather than a liability. To address its vulnerabilities, he introduced national service to build both defence and cohesion, transformed Singapore into a manufacturing hub, and later positioned it as a global centre of trade and finance. Abroad, he reconciled with Malaysia and Indonesia while maintaining a careful balance between the United States and China. Despite periodic coercion from Malaysia, Lee Kuan Yew’s strategic vision ensured its success as an independent city-state.

The departments charged with grand strategy – chiefly defence, foreign affairs, and finance – often generate ideas that serve their own institutional interests as much as the national one. Bureaucratic politics has long fascinated political scientists and historians. In his classic study of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Graham Allison captured the logic perfectly: ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’. In that case, the US Air Force pressed to bomb Cuba – an option that would have underscored its strategic importance but also risked catastrophic escalation.

During the Second World War, the US Navy prioritised the Pacific theatre, despite the ‘Germany First’ directive. Given the Royal Navy’s dominance in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and the likelihood of an air-land campaign on the European mainland, they focused on Japan. Over two thirds of American naval power went to the Pacific, contravening the principles of Anglo-American grand strategy agreed by Churchill and President Roosevelt. A similar dynamic is evident today: the US Navy is the prime beneficiary of the pivot to Asia – an air-sea domain – while the US Army resists retrenchment from Europe, where it plays a central role in deterring Russia.

Ideas rarely emerge in a governmental vacuum. Think tanks, academics, and corporations with a stake in national strategy form an ecosystem that fuels debate over a state’s grand strategic direction. Think tanks not only shape public opinion, but also serve as incubators for policymakers whose party happens to be out of power. In the United States, there is a well-worn revolving door between certain think tanks and government. The same applies, to a lesser extent, in academia. Consider, for example, Vipin Narang of MIT and Rebecca Lissner of the Naval War College, both of whom assumed senior roles in the Biden administration. The British government is typically more cautious about recruiting outsiders, notwithstanding prominent exceptions, such as John Bew of King’s College London, who served as foreign policy adviser to four prime ministers, and Oxford’s Rob Johnson, who led the Ministry of Defence’s net assessment team.

Academics and writers sometimes shape grand strategic debates from the beyond the walls of government – for good and ill. During the interwar period, Basil Liddell Hart’s hyperbolic writings on air power found a receptive audience in Neville Chamberlain, possibly distorting the then-chancellor’s views on rearmament priorities. Given that air power could render a vulnerable state’s ‘nerve system… paralysed… within a few hours’, Liddell Hart boldly predicted in 1925 that there was ‘no doubt’ that it would ultimately become ‘the sole medium of warfare’. Years later, the two men exchanged notes, with Chamberlain finding his ideas ‘extremely useful and suggestive’.

As chancellor, Chamberlain gave undue priority to the Royal Air Force in his rearmament programmes – beyond what the Defence Requirements Committee originally requested. This diversion of funding came at the army’s expense, neutering the UK’s ability to offer a credible continental commitment and reassure France. In 1938, while flying over London after one of his diplomatic missions to avert war over the Sudetenland, Chamberlain, now prime minister, gazed down at the city’s sprawl. He later invoked the image of the Luftwaffe devastating those suburbs to justify appeasement to his Cabinet colleagues. To be clear, Liddell Hart was not alone in exaggerating the air threat, but his ideas clearly fed into the process – and into the distortion of British grand strategy.

Businesses, too, shape grand strategic ideas. Through their resources, interests, and networks, they exert influence both openly and obliquely. Under Trump’s second administration, that relationship has become unusually explicit, with figures such as David Sacks, Steve Witkoff, and Elon Musk moving from the boardroom to the corridors of power. The mutual courting between the president and America’s tech titans underscores the degree of reciprocity between commercial world and the state.

More broadly, corporations have long had a stake in America’s global posture. Energy companies and firms dependent on international trade tend to favour an American posture of primacy and deep engagement, from which they profit through the stability of an open, rules-based order. The sector with the most industry-specific interests to grand strategy is defence. By lowering the political cost of certain choices – as drone manufacturers do by reducing risks to personnel – such firms can subtly expand the range of what is politically possible. Corporate influence is often indirect, exercised through campaign funding or concentrated investment in key constituencies that acquire strategic weight of their own.

Beyond individuals, institutions and industry, the broader climate of ideas also shapes grand strategy. Each age has its prevailing currents – conceptions of order that gather momentum within and across societies for a time. Many now argue that the era of globalisation is giving way to one of regionalism, or even nationalism. Within states, political mood swings between progressive and conservative moments influence how threats are perceived and resources assigned. Iran’s willingness to engage in diplomacy with the West often relates to the fortunes of its reformist factions. Similarly, conservative South Korean governments are typically less interested in negotiations with North Korea and more likely to tighten their embrace with the United States.

If the mood of an age is fleeting, some ideas endure across generations. A state’s strategic culture – that is, inherited ideas about a state’s place in the world – shape both threat assessments and the means employed. The UK offers a vivid example. For centuries, it tried to uphold a continental balance of power. Churchill described this as an ‘unconscious tradition’ of backing Europe’s weaker states ‘to oppose the strongest, most aggressive’ on the mainland. A critic put it less kindly, calling it ‘a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain’. Deep-rooted notions of Britain’s island identity and seafaring heritage persist today. As the then-chief of defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, declared in 2022: ‘Britain is an expeditionary rather than a continental power.’ Such ingrained assumptions about a state’s role provide intellectual reference points in grand strategic debates.

These five sources – individuals, departments, the wider ecosystem, the spirit of the age, and strategic culture – often overlap. Margaret Thatcher’s thinking, for example, cannot be separated from the London-based Centre for Policy Studies, which exemplifies the interplay between a leader’s conviction and the intellectual milieu. Likewise, leaders often both embody and amplify the ideas of their age. Donald Trump rode a populist wave to power, but he provided much of the tidal momentum for that ascendant idea himself.

The five sources also run on different time horizons. Departmental interests, for example, outlast a particular government. As such, some of these factors are better at explaining grand strategic change than others. Strategic culture exerts a background influence over the long term and struggles to account for moments when a state deviates from ingrained ideas. It cannot, for example, explain why the UK embarked on three continental commitments during the 20th century, despite its long tradition as a maritime power. In contrast, individual leaders and advisers reshape grand strategic priorities in the short term.

Grand strategy works best when competing ideas collide. Without contestation, groupthink takes hold, leading to flawed judgements and strategic missteps. Borrowing Rathbun’s framework, British grand strategy worked so well during the Second World War because of the debates between Churchill, the romantic visionary, and General Alan Brooke, the pragmatic realist. A crucial prerequisite for such success is a forum in which key figures can debate ideas. As the lawyer and historian Julian Corbett observed, ‘conference is always necessary’.

Yet the mere existence of a forum is not enough. Its value depends on the independence of mind within it – on its members’ willingness to challenge assumptions, consider diverse perspectives, and engage in constructive disagreement. Returning to the opening question, the issue is not whether the Trump administration possesses a grand strategy, but whether such big-picture thinking is being examined with sufficient rigour. Eleven months into his second term, the overreliance on loyalists is particularly concerning. Will figures such as Pete Hegseth, Steve Witkoff, and JD Vance question the president when necessary or allow deference to silence debate?

Understanding the origins of grand strategic ideas – whether from individual leaders, departmental interests, the broader intellectual ecosystem, the dominant mood of the age, or a nation’s enduring strategic culture – is essential for fostering healthy debate. Recognising the biases and limitations inherent in each source enables policymakers to think more critically about the challenges and opportunities before them. Ultimately, the quality of any grand strategy rests not only on the brilliance of its ideas but also on the rigour of the process through which they are debated, refined, and put into practice.