78 No. 78 JUSTICE to inform actions on that field or table. For Rostow, the stakes are high. Absent an intelligent, sophisticated grand strategy informed by international law, he argues, the United States “will lose its way, flailing rather than acting rationally.” Although Rostow’s book is relatively short (202 pages, including extensive and highly informative footnotes), he provides a magisterial recounting of the key events in U.S. and European history since the fall of Napolean to build his case for formulating grand strategy by incorporating international law. Rostow further supports his argument with a thorough analysis of U.S. foreign policy during the 20th and 21st centuries. His description of President Woodrow Wilson’s enduring importance for U.S. grand strategy is especially compelling. Notwithstanding Wilson’s critics, Rostow endorses the Wilsonian embrace of the balance of power – the “essential protection against exaggerated national ambition” — as a key linchpin for ensuring “minimum world public order,” which Rostow characterizes as the key goal of grand strategy. Informed by both the U.S. Constitution’s preambular focus on the “general welfare” and international law, the concept of minimum world public order, according to Rostow, envisions human dignity and the avoidance of a global, general war (and of course nuclear war) as foundational principles for U.S. grand strategy. Rostow notes that rogue attempts to ignore international law in derogation of minimum world public order have always failed. The international system, comprised of states with a shared interest in upholding minimum order, will not allow megalomaniacs to prevail, as Napolean, Hitler, and their ilk learned the hard way throughout history. Among Rostow’s great contributions in this book is his call to action. Rostow urges the U.S. Government to reimagine the Eisenhower Administration’s landmark “Project Solarium,” convened to develop America’s grand strategy toward the Soviet Union for the 1950s and beyond. Rostow argues for a similar whole-of government 21st century effort to address context, nuclear weapons, alliances and friendships, cyber and technology, and transnational issues such as climate change and pandemics. Both U.S. and international law would serve as guideposts underpinning this interagency, multistakeholder exercise. Rostow’s approach differs starkly from other recent proposals, such as Jonathan Blake’s and Nils Gilman’s Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (Stanford Univ. Press, 2024), which proposes an entirely new system of “multiscalar planetary subsidiarity” to manage global problems such as climate change, biodiversity and pandemics through separate planetary institutions to promote multispecies flourishing, rather than relying on existing state-oriented entities such as the United Nations. Blake and Gilman are to be commended for their imaginative approach, but their effort falls short on specific recommendations for implementation. Rostow, on the other hand, deserves our closest and most serious attention, both for his groundbreaking theoretical approach – infusing grand strategy with international law – and for his specific and pragmatic policy prescriptions. Rostow’s book will serve as a guidepost and blueprint for grand strategists in the U.S. and elsewhere for decades to come.n Steven E. Zippertein is Adjunct Professor, UCLA Department of Public Policy, and Faculty Director, UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.
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