ENGAGING THE WORLD: ANTHONY LAKE AND AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY, 1993–1997

Abstract

ABSTRACTUsing recently available archival material, this article examines Lake's key beliefs and the part they had in shaping US grand strategy in the first Clinton administration. Lake operated as one of the major architects of the administration's foreign policy. His intellectual influence commenced in the 1992 presidential campaign, when he served as candidate Bill Clinton's principal foreign policy adviser, and continued through the first presidential term, reaching its most concrete manifestation in the Clinton administration's 1994 National security strategy. The article analyses Lake's ideas and his overarching concerns about national purpose, his strategic vision, and his definition of national security policy objectives using the analytical framework known as a mental map. Likewise, it considers his role in articulating a new grand strategy during a period of strategic adjustment, one in which the cold war doctrine of containment no longer applied.