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The United States faces many foreign and domestic challenges, including the rise of a near-peer challenger and the relative decline of its closest allies. Its central policy dilemma is how to structure its foreign and national security policies toward its stated objective to maintain a leading role in international affairs under continuing fiscal constraints. This dissertation studies the strategic behavior of leading historical powers that faced rising challengers abroad and fiscal constraints at home. It accomplishes this through two case studies, one of Habsburg Spain and the other of Imperial Britain. In these case studies, the dissertation asks what these historical leading powers facing a similar policy problem tend to do, what drives them to take those actions, and how those choices affect their influence in international affairs. Each case study examines the respective power's rise to leadership, sources of power they primarily relied upon, where challenges came from, how they responded, how those policies worked out, and what constraints they faced in their decision-making. The dissertation concludes with significant takeaways from the case studies and discusses potential implications for American public policy.
Disclaimer: Research for the dissertation was completed as of April 2014 with selective updates through December 2022.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Background and Motivation
Chapter Two
Research Design and Methodology
Chapter Three
Habsburg Spain
Chapter Four
Imperial Britain
Chapter Five
Analytical Findings and Policy Recommendations
Chapter Six
Works Cited and Consulted
Research conducted by
This document was submitted as a dissertation in January 2023 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in public policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. The faculty committee that supervised and approved the dissertation consisted of Thomas McNaugher (Chair), Karl Mueller, Howard Shatz, and Francis Fukuyama (external reader).
This publication is part of the RAND Corporation Dissertation series. Pardee RAND dissertations are produced by graduate fellows of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the world's leading producer of Ph.D.'s in policy analysis. The dissertations are supervised, reviewed, and approved by a Pardee RAND faculty committee overseeing each dissertation.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.