Connecting the Dots of America’s Grand Strategy, as Defined by Lloyd Austin, the American Secretary of War

I beg your pardon, it slipped my mind for a moment that the Defense Department was, for its first 158 years from August 7, 1789 until September 18, 1947, called the War Department and Austin’s predecessors more accurately called Secretaries of War. But the weakening of language is an American tradition and war—another much loved American tradition—seemed far less threatening to both the outside world and American citizens when renamed the United States Department of Defense in 1949.

Defense against whom, one might ask? But the name-change made the transition to a coming Cold War against Russia (a WWII ally) far more palatable. Dots were created. Dots are always the embarrassing aftermath of subversion. 5-star Allied Supreme Commander and two-term American president, Dwight Eisenhower, neatly connected those dots when he warned of subversions-yet-to-come; a growing Military-Industrial Complex.

A momentary pause, while we run-down more dots

Grand strategies are for nations with a taste for…