Multilateral Maritime Exercises, Grand Strategy, and Strategic Change: The American Case and Beyond

Military exercises are largely overlooked by scholars of international security, despite the fact that exercise planning, execution, and analysis represent a huge investment of any military’s energy. Nonetheless, they offer the possibility of a rich research program about what states prioritize and how they adjudge their relationship to other state and non-state actors. We examine the role that multilateral maritime exercises (MMEs) play in the implementation of grand strategy in three regions—Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. Our central proposition is that as American policymakers and military leaders’ perception of a strategic threat increases, the purpose, numbers, and participants in MMEs will change. MMEs will move from a focus on peacetime operations to those designed for military crisis response or management, or for preparation for war.