Regarding Walter Russell Mead’s column “American Global Leadership Is in Retreat” (Global View, Sept. 14): The U.S. does not do “grand strategy.” Even the globalism of containment, early in the Cold War, was a mélange of improvised tactics. Indeed, the closest America may have come since 1945 to unifying long-term ends with the nation’s most broad-based means was Ronald Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 75 in 1983, which finally undercut the Soviet Union on all fronts.

In the American system, what passes for grand...

The White House, Nov. 4, 2019.

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News

Regarding Walter Russell Mead’s column “American Global Leadership Is in Retreat” (Global View, Sept. 14): The U.S. does not do “grand strategy.” Even the globalism of containment, early in the Cold War, was a mélange of improvised tactics. Indeed, the closest America may have come since 1945 to unifying long-term ends with the nation’s most broad-based means was Ronald Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 75 in 1983, which finally undercut the Soviet Union on all fronts.

In the American system, what passes for grand strategy is a twisting sequence of ad hoc decisions hammered out under the stresses of domestic politics. How could it be otherwise? This is an uncomfortable record to face, but failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq spotlight the limits of “American Global Leadership.”

Derek Leebaert

Washington

Mr. Leebaert is author of “Grand Improvisation.”