For over a decade now, a group of senior historians at Yale University has led a two-semester seminar called “Studies in Grand Strategy” in which they guide undergraduates through an intensive study of the great writers on international politics from Thucydides to Machiavelli to Churchill and Kissinger. The course was initially devised by Professors Donald Kagan, Paul Kennedy, and John Lewis Gaddis as a means of encouraging students to think broadly about the roles of strategy and statesmanship in international affairs and to help them to understand current controversies against the long historical backdrop of war, diplomacy, and the collapse of nations and empires. The course is controversial among some faculty and students on the Yale campus who think that the study of statesmanship and statecraft is “elitist” and thus in conflict with democratic ideals. It is, nevertheless, a highly popular course, as more than one hundred students apply each year for the twenty or so reserved seats in the class.

Professors Kagan, Kennedy, and Gaddis were soon joined in this enterprise by Charles Hill, a veteran of the U.S. diplomatic service who worked closely and successfully over the decades with prominent political figures, including especially Henry Kissinger and George Schultz during their respective tenures as Secretary of State. Professor Hill thus brought to the seminar a measure of practical experience to complement the scholarly understanding of his academic colleagues. In view of that experience, he has a great deal to tell Yale’s students about the various international