The historian Paul Kennedy has defined "grand strategy" as a commitment to a major result in international affairs, a commitment to be pursued flexibly but comprehensively and determinedly, until the end is realized. Grand strategy presumes that the ends are few; grand strategies address true strategic priorities. The grand strategies chosen by nations tend to define what those nations stand for in the world.

Should western nations have a grand strategy of promoting development in the poorer countries? Does the United States have such a strategy today, and is it pursuing it?

Writing in 1994, Kennedy and a fellow historian, Matthew Connelly, called attention to a key problem underlying the need for sustainable development—"unbalanced wealth and resources, unbalanced demographic trends, and the relationship between the two."¹ These authors portrayed a chilling vision of "a world of two camps, North and South, separate and unequal." As they wrote then:

We are heading into the twenty-first century in a world consisting for the most part of a relatively small number of rich, satiated, demographically stagnant societies and a large number of poverty-stricken, resource-depleted nations whose populations are doubling every twenty-five years or less. The demographic imbalances are exacerbated by grotesque disparities in wealth between rich and poor countries.²