bq. "The net assessment of national security requirements and its translation into grand strategy is a highly specialized field of academic study who best practitioners are currently working on or are consultants for the National Security Council and the Department of Defense." This is a simple statement of fact. You need either an advanced degree in international relations, a specialized military/foreign affairs history background, or a extremely specialized career in Pentagon Net Assessment to be fully qualified to participate in creating grand strategy, whether directly or through the influence of your professional writing. Let's take three examples, the first being Walter Russell Mead, the author of Special Providence and the populizer of the meme of the Jeffersonian/Hamiltonian/Wilsonian/Jacksonian schools of American foreign policy. This is Mead's C.V. from THE ATLANTIC: bq. Walter Russell Mead is the senior fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mead is also the author of Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition. His internationally syndicated articles on economic policy and foreign affairs appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times and have appeared in major newspapers around the world, including The International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. He has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's, and Rolling Stone, and is a senior contributing editor at Worth magazine. Anyone spending time reading our current Grand Strategy can see Mead's influence there. Example number two is historian John Lewis Gaddis who wrote the book "Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security" excerpts of which can be found here. Please spend some time reading them and particularly what it says about George Keenan's opinion of the United Nations and the impediment it would represent to the pursuit of American interests. Gaddis’ professional history credentials are here. The last example is Andrew Marshall from the Pentagon Office of Net Assessment. The Washington Post has a profile on him here. Wired has an interview with him here. The Nation has a profile on him here, and the American Prospect has another profile here. This is what the Post said of Marshall: bq. Although he is little known to the public, Marshall is a controversial figure in defense circles for his outspoken criticism of some of the traditional pillars of U.S. strategy and procurement policy. He has questioned the usefulness of the new F-22 fighter, the crown jewel of the Air Force's acquisition program, and has called the Army's heavy tanks and the Navy's aircraft carriers possible deathtraps that ought to be phased out before they prove to be the horse cavalry of the 21st century. and bq. All but unknown outside national security circles, the publicity-shy Marshall is something of a legend within that world, both for his longevity and for his far-reaching network of acolytes across the government, academia and the defense industry. At 79, he is said to be the only current Pentagon official who participated in the entire Cold War, beginning in 1949 as a nuclear strategist for the Rand Corp., then moving to the Pentagon as a civilian official in 1973. He has been kept in his current job by every president since Richard M. Nixon. At this point A.L. is probably going "Ah Ha! Trent just made my point!" Nope. I am merely pointing out how specialized the appropriate 'expert badge' for Military Net Assessment and Grand Strategy are and how small and specialized a field those who hold it are in. There have been one minor and three major grand strategic changes for American foreign policy since 1940. The FDR Administration formulated the first major change without public debate in 30 months (from 1943 through 1945) to create the post WW2 world. It resulted in, among other things, the founding of the UN and the Bretton-Woods agreement on world finances. The next major American strategic realignment was adopting "Containment." The planning for which started in May 1947 with Secretary of State George Marshall's creation of a Policy and Planning Staff in the State Department, through the debate started by George Keenan's "Mr. X" article published in FOREIGN AFFAIRS, to the issuance of National Security Council Document No. 68, approved by President Harry S Truman on April 14, 1950. Again, the development of this Grand Strategy was the realm of experts, not public debate. That came later when the strategy was sold to the American public. The one minor change in American Grand strategy was when in 1982 Ronald Reagan modified NSC-68 strategy from "Containment" to "Roll-Back." This is chronicled in the book "Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union," by Peter Schweizer. Academic liberals are disputing the results of this change, but however they quibble; the Soviet Union's death was not from natural causes. Ronald Reagan murdered it economically with the help of the Saudis and his national security people under Bush41 made sure the final passing was quiet and boring. Again, this Grand Strategy was developed in secret without public debate. It's sale to the public went well, as Reagan's 1984 reelection proved out. The Post-Vietnam Democrats never reconciled themselves to the strategy, and with the Collapse of the Soviet Union plus the election of Bill Clinton as President, they didn't have to trouble themselves over it. The last and most recent major realignment of American Grand Strategy was published by the Bush Administration in May 2002 here. It took from September 2001 to May 2002 for it to be written, rewritten and vetted through the multi-agency approval process. The first three months of that period were devoted to the Afghan campaign, so in essence, the Bush Administration turned on a Grand Strategy dime in six months. It is a monument to their professionalism and skill that they pulled it off. Here is the real difference between Armed Liberal and myself. A.L. keeps claiming that either there is no Grand Strategy, or if there is one, that it hasn't been sold well enough for his tastes. He is wrong on both counts. There is a strategy and like Reagan in 1984, Bush43 has already sold his Grand Strategy to the general public. They bought it with the results of the 2002 mid-term election. Today, like with Ronald Reagan's Administration, Democrats are in denial and they are doing a anti-war immitation of George Wallace in the school house doors screaming "Stop the world, I want to get off," as change in the world streams right by them. What Armed Liberal wants from the Bush Administration isn't to sell _the public_ on Bush's Grand Strategy. It is to sell the _Democratic Party_ on it so his pro-war liberal faction can run it for their mutual benefit. This is too French for words.