Toward a Catholic Grand Strategy
There’s a peculiar absence at the heart of American strategic discourse. On the one hand, we have the familiar schools of grand strategy, each with its own logic, goals, and costs. These include those insistent on American primacy, liberal internationalists emphasizing strategic alliances, and those tending toward varying degrees of restraint or isolationism. On the other hand, we have a nation where tens of millions of citizens, including many in positions of influence, still orient their moral and political compasses according to some variant of Christianity—Catholicism being the most prevalent denomination. And yet, rarely—if ever—does anyone ask: What would an American grand strategy grounded in Catholic social teaching (CST) look like?
In this moment of geopolitical reordering, when neither unipolarity nor liberal hegemony offers moral or strategic coherence, the question deserves more than passing consideration. Especially now, with a new pope who appears more inclined to reassert the Church’s role as a strategic conscience, there is a renewed opening. Of course, Pope Francis didn’t shy away from geopolitics, but in practice, his pontificate frequently leaned into the institutional frameworks of global governance, sometimes blurring the Church’s prophetic voice with the language and posture of multilateral diplomacy. In contrast, Leo XIV seems poised to recover a more classically Augustinian view—one more alert to the tragic dimensions of power and more willing to speak moral truths that transcend the policy scripts of secular elites. This is a moment not for theologizing about strategy, but for recovering its moral bearings—rooted in Catholic social thought and capable of cutting through the drift and incoherence that now define so much of American statecraft.
Let’s start with what such a strategy is not. It is not “Christian nationalism,” a crass, politicized version of which has gained traction on the right. It is not a retreat into a premodern Christendom, nor is it a clerical foreign policy. It would not mean subordinating U.S. strategic interests to Vatican diplomacy. Rather, it would mean allowing the principles of Catholic social doctrine—principles developed over centuries in response to the brutal realities of human power, dignity, and fallibility—to shape how we define the national interest in the first place.
What are these principles? First, the dignity of the human person. Any strategy worthy of the name must reckon with the fundamental truth that every human being bears the imago Dei. Commitment to this truth does not necessarily imply pacifism. Catholic tradition, from Augustine to Aquinas to John Paul II, recognizes the necessity of using force in a fallen world. It does, however, mean that war must always be a last resort, not a first impulse. It means that just-war theory—long dismissed in Washington as either too naïve or too rigid—must be recovered as a living framework, one that can discipline American power, not simply rationalize it after the fact.
Second, the common good. Grand strategy is always about ordering political means to political ends. CST insists that the proper end of political life is the common good—including justice, order, and the conditions for authentic human flourishing. Other ends, like the maximization of power for its own sake, the extraction of resources for national enrichment, or even the universalization of democratic capitalism, cannot justify violent means. Grand strategy based on CST would therefore require serious reckoning with the failures of recent interventions—from Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan—and not simply because they were imprudent, though they were. They should be indicted because they unleashed forces contrary to the common good—death, chaos, sectarianism, economic ruin, and the erosion of the moral principles invoked as justification for them.
Third, subsidiarity. In strategic terms, subsidiarity means that power should be exercised at the lowest possible level capable of effectively addressing a given challenge. It counsels against the arrogance of centralized global technocracy. It favors regional security arrangements over universalist projects. That said, CST is not absolutist on this point. When regional orders collapse or perpetuate grave injustice, broader forms of intervention—whether by global institutions or alliances—may become not only permissible but necessary. In such cases, the aim would still be to restore order and protect the vulnerable, not to impose a hegemonic vision of peace from above. CST would encourage the United States to support local balances of power rather than impose global order from Washington or Silicon Valley. It aligns, incidentally, with many of the instincts behind a grand strategy of restraint—but gives that strategy a moral and anthropological foundation rather than merely a realist or fiscal one.
Fourth, solidarity. This is where things get difficult. Solidarity does not mean open borders, nor does it mean unlimited aid transfers. But it does mean that Americans should see themselves as bound, morally and politically, to the fates of those beyond their borders—not as clients or instruments of soft power, but as neighbors. A Catholic grand strategy would not ignore Ukraine, Taiwan, or Gaza—but it would ask different questions than the ones dominating our policy debates. Not “how do we project dominance?” but “how do we protect the vulnerable?” Not “how do we punish our enemies?” but “how do we contain evil without becoming complicit in it?”
None of this means abandoning the hard-nosed logic of power politics. Catholic realism is still realism. Augustine and Aquinas understood the realities of war and empire. John Paul II faced down communism. CST is not naïve about the world as it exists. But it does offer a vision of what the world might become—and how one might act justly in the space between the two.
What, exactly, would this look like in practice? It might mean recalibrating U.S. military posture toward true defense and away from preemption, permanent occupation, and indefinite deterrence missions masquerading as stability. It might mean reshoring industrial capacity—not out of economic nationalism, but to protect families and workers from the depredations of a deracinated globalism. It might mean reorienting—without abandoning—our alliances toward the goal of regional peace and away from global leverage and hegemony. It would certainly mean a reassessment of our weapons exports, drone campaigns, and endless wars.
It would also mean standing firm in some places and stepping back in others. It might mean more help for Ukraine—if that help contributes to a just peace. It might mean less involvement in Taiwan—if deterrence can be achieved without sleepwalking into war. It would mean resisting both the imperial temptations of liberal hegemony and the callous isolationism of America First.
And what of the new pope? If early signs are accurate, Leo XIV may be less inclined to frame the Church’s public witness primarily in terms of multilateral environmental diplomacy—however well-intentioned—and more inclined to restore its traditional role as a moral counterweight to both empire and nihilism. Pope Francis often couched his geopolitical interventions in the idiom of global governance and institutional consensus. Documents like Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti, while rich in theological substance, were at times received less as prophetic critiques than as endorsements of a secular, managerial ethos. The Church’s voice risked being conflated with the same technocratic elite that CST—and Francis himself—long resisted. Leo XIV, by contrast, has an opportunity to recover a more strategic posture: one that speaks clearly to the violent temptations of great powers, the moral void at the heart of Western liberalism, and the need to ground justice not in slogans or summits but in a thick account of human dignity, order, and peace. He could remind the West—left and right alike—that power must be tethered to truth and that peace requires more than process.
Of course, the Church cannot dictate American strategy. But it can illuminate the moral terrain on which strategic decisions must be made. And in an age where realism without restraint drifts toward brutality, and liberalism without metaphysics drifts toward incoherence, perhaps that light is exactly what we need. We are entering a new world—more multipolar, more dangerous, more disordered. The old scripts will not suffice. America needs a new grand strategy, and if it wishes to be not just powerful but good, then Catholic social thought might be the place to start.
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