grand strategy

The foreign policy of states determines the way they behave in the international arena. Accurate analysis of official foreign policy documents of a country is helpful in that it shows what the international priorities of a country are at specific periods. This article reviews the U.S. National Security Strategy documents published in 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2015 from the perspective of the perception of threats to the U.S. security and perception of the U.S. role in the world. It tries to study the differences and similarities between the Bush and Obama administrations in this regard using a Neoclassical Realist framework. The results show that the Obama administration identified a wider range of threat sources to U.S. national security while providing less detailed solutions to them. Also, as democracy promotion abroad ceased to be a priority in 2015, compared to 2002 and 2006, counterterrorism continues to be at the top of U.S. security agenda. In line with Neoclassical Realism, creation of an international order under U.S. leadership is an important priority mentioned in the NSS of 2015.

Henry Kissinger, a famous American politician and thinker, has played an effective and essential role in the foreign policy of the United States towards Iran after September 11th. He was a realist individual in the field of thought, who is from the political tradition of the United States' pragmatism and followed special methods in the field of international relations. In this research, with the aim of examining the American macro strategy towards Iran based on Kissinger's teachings, we are looking for an answer to the question, what is Kissinger's approach to the issue of Iran in American foreign policy? The hypothesis that was put forward is that Kissinger's approach or Kissingerism regarding Iran is to integrate Iran into the global and regional order by maintaining the distribution of power in the Middle East region, to deal with the growing threats and influence of Iran by creating a network of regional partners to maintain the supremacy and hegemony of America and Israel, to convince Iran to stop exporting the revolution and to behave according to the Westphalian principles and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of countries, to induce the consequences of a dangerous nuclear Iran and to adopt effective diplomacy instead of war. Finally, using the descrip-tive-analytical method, we came to the conclusion that there is an important and meaningful rela-tionship between the grand strategy and Kissinger's teachings, in such a way that containment of Iran, disarmament and prevention of a nuclear Iran, returning Iran to the regional and world order, Iranophobic strategy, alliance and coalition building and preventing Iran's regional hegemony are among the important things that can be seen both in Kissinger's approach and in America's macro strategy and in the doctrines of American presidents after September 11th.