John Boyd’s Influence in the United States Foreign and Security Policy: cosmovision, theory and grand strategy

Abstract

The paper aims to discuss possible influences of John Boyd's thinking on the United States Foreign and Security Policy (FSP). The research problem is to investigate the relationship of Boyd's cosmovision – the promotion of chaos and the increase of entropy – with aspects of American FSP post-1991. The cosmovision, epistemology and method in Boyd’s thinking are briefly analyzed. Then the points of contact with the Idealism and Realism theories are sought, and finally discussed the reasons for the absence of a American grand strategy. The main argument is that the thought of Boyd allows us to draw several relations with theorists who influenced the US Foreign and Security Policy. As for idealistic tradition, this occurs through a world dominated by chaos, in Boyd's case, and without the nation-state, as Creveld proposes. With neorealists, the parallel is between the role of power projection and fear as an element of US foreign policy. Finally, with regards to US grand strategy, Boyd’s influence may lie in the inversion of the hierarchy of reality (from tactics to strategy, from combat to politics), in addition to his cosmovision and epistemology, that would have contributed to the predominance of simplifying solutions in the US FSP.

Keywords

• john boyd
• política externa e de segurança dos eua
• grande estratégia