Carl Ungerer outlines the debate over US grand strategy occurring in Washington, where a common theme is that American grand strategy will increasingly need to rely on allies to share the burden of international security.

Walter Russell Mead once described US grand strategy as America’s ‘project for the world’. And, at various times over the past century, that project has been defined with a high degree of clarity and purpose—perhaps never more so than during the Cold War when George Kennan’s strategy of containment was used to confront Soviet expansionism. Since the end of the Cold War, however, Washington’s choice of grand strategy has defied such neat characterisation.