In October 2023, Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri became one of the first elected officials to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Beyond any foreign policy objections, some critics claimed the congresswoman was taking an anti-jobs stance that would cost her constituents well-paid positions at some of her district’s largest employers: two Boeing manufacturing plants near St. Louis that produced weapons bound for Israel. The logic of the criticism was simple; American foreign policy supported the local economy and criticism of this policy would jeopardize the economic security of her constituents. Speaking with workers at those plants, however, reporter Taylor Barnes described a more nuanced outlook from those on the ground, with one labor leader stating, “When the product of our labor is misused, I think we have a special responsibility to speak out.”

This anecdote implicates some of the foundational questions of grand strategy. There is the substantive connection through the traditional subjects of war and statecraft — orienting the goals of the domestic economy with a strategy abroad. However, in the spirit of balancing ends and means, understanding the politics of decision-making, and aligning opportunities for change in the context of time, space and scale, this is similarly a story of grand strategy as a practice. How does the international or grand manifest itself in the local or simple? To what extent can, and should, decisions that implicate complex and large-scale agendas be determined collectively? In this case, what role can defense manufacturing workers play in shaping the economic trajectory of their own communities, and how can they be organized to articulate a coherent agenda if they object to an American foreign policy establishment?

With the support of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, I explored these questions this summer by speaking to seven people, from a range of occupations and hailing from different corners of the country. These included union leaders, policymakers, a worker at a non-unionized defense manufacturing plant, a historian, and a community labor educator.

While their names and individual backgrounds will be unidentified to ensure anonymity, their conversations provided important takeaways on my questions in two broad ways: first, how we understand the framework of grand strategy for social change and, second, how the concept of scale remains a continuously amorphous, yet integral part of envisioning a 21st-century American grand strategy.

In her 2021 piece “The Blob and the Mob: On Grand Strategy and Social Change,” Beverly Gage articulates a clear application of grand strategy for social movements in a world where “no effective activist can avoid the question of how to engage with and influence institutions of power.” In my discussions, this understanding of means to pursue their ends, whatever those ends may be, was abundantly clear in how union leaders described the mechanisms that labor has traditionally employed — namely, the bargaining process and political advocacy. Where many have historically diverged, however, was their approach to doing so. Balancing the immediate economic security with broader political goals, American labor unions have either pursued a narrow nationalism, one that ensured economic security by legitimizing itself with the U.S. foreign policy establishment, or an internationalist approach that was more inclined to “point the finger at Wall Street as the main enemy as opposed to some foreign country.” This distinction was important in its prescriptions for what their goals could be, given the political and material constraints they had to grapple with. For example, a union leader I spoke to described that while many members disagree and are broadly uninterested in war, there was a consensus understanding it was preferable to manufacture weapons as American industrial policy has protected the industry from outsourcing.

The “institutions of power,” in this instance, ranged from international trade agreements and congressional appropriators to local legislators vying for government contracts and union negotiators. In such a large-scale and high-stakes decision-making process, how do individuals — particularly those without structural power — go about effecting change? In answering this, my conversations with a labor educator and union leader were particularly helpful. For both of them, political education was a key mechanism. The union leader, leading an initiative to support rank-and-file workers in Mexico, stressed the importance of this education to mobilize and strengthen the political consciousness of their members to thereby adopt a more imaginative agenda, one that advocated for their issues beyond just wages and working conditions. At both the micro and macro levels, their analysis of power recognized the need for long-term strategy, one that centered on strengthening individuals. This was, ultimately, a question about scale. As John Gaddis writes, “the ‘grandness’ of strategy resides, not just in time and space, but also in the eye of the beholder… any situation in which small choices can have significant consequences falls within grandeur’s range.”

Overall, the project evolved into other threads and became increasingly multifaceted. What began as a project seeking to understand the strategic balancing act of a union’s political agenda and its economic priorities became one that implicated trade policy, great power competition, and the interconnectedness of the local and international. The summer funding provided more than just physical space; it also created the intellectual space to explore these questions while I worked at a related but separate internship. While my work and study has primarily been in the political science realm, the project allowed me to engage earnestly with other disciplines and practitioners in the U.S. — an integral part and deliberate decision in shaping the agenda of the project.

I would like to thank Taylor Barnes and Professor Michael Brenes for their initial consultation on the project, as well as the many thoughtful contributors who provided guidance along the project’s evolution.