3
Man made War in his own image.
(Willmott 2002: 14)
The way in which a society makes war is a projection of that society
itself.
(Sidebottom 2004: 35)
Art of war or science of war, and technical
definitions of ‘strategy’
‘Thinking war’: this is how the French sociologist Raymond Aron
characterised Clausewitz’s work (Aron 1976). It is a conceptual
challenge to write about the evolution of Strategy, especially with
an emphasis on the social institutions, norms and patterns of
behaviour within which it operates, the policies that guide it and
the culture that influences it. For, as we shall see presently, the
use of the word ‘strategy’ has changed very considerably over time.
This book’s main purpose is not to provide a history of the word
‘strategy’ and all that it denoted over time. Instead, it will examine
how people thought about the link between political aims and the
use of force, or its threat, which we will refer to as Strategy with
a capital ‘S’. This definition will be applied retrospectively to find
out how strategists – writers on the conduct of war – thought about
this issue in the past, whether or not they employed the actual term
‘strategy’, which after classical antiquity only came into use again
around 1800.1
1 What is strategy?
1
To use the terminology of linguistics, I am using an onomasiological approach
to the evolution of the discourse on Strategy as defined above, not the
semasiological approach, which would be a history of the use of the word
‘strategy’ (Penth 2006: 5–18).
The Evolution of Strategy4
Nevertheless, the evolution of the term ‘strategy’ itself must be our
starting point, not least in order to understand why there is so little
agreement on the use of the term, and why it has changed so much over
time. The Greek word ‘strategy’ (either as strategía or strategiké) was
used in antiquity for the art or skills of the general (the strategós) – ‘the
general is the one who practises strategy’. By the sixth century at the
latest, however, at the time of Emperor Justinian, in Byzantine usage,
a difference was made between ‘strategy’ – ‘strategy is the means by
which the general may defend his own lands and defeat his enemy’s’ –
and, hierarchically subordinated to it, ‘tactics’ (taktiké), the ‘science
[epistéme] which enables one to organize and maneuver a body of
armed men in an orderly manner’ (Anon. 6th c./1985: 10–135). It is
possible that such definitions had already found their place in earlier
works, such as the lost parts of Aeneas Tacticus (c. 357 BCE) or
Frontinus (c. 35–103 or 104 CE). In either case, Frontinus in his Latin
work on stratagems or ruses used the Greek words both for stratagem
(strategémon) and for strategy (strategía), as neither word had a proper
Latin equivalent (Frontinus c. 1st c. CE: I). Nor did Greek texts of
the following centuries distinguish systematically between strategy
and tactics. Maurice (539–602), the East Roman (Byzantine) emperor
(from 582) wrote a work known a Strategikón, which dealt mainly
with technical aspects of the conduct of war. A similar subject matter
was discussed in a book in Greek called Taktiké Theoría dating from
the second century CE, written by Aelianus Tacticus.
Emperor Leo VI (‘the Wise’, 865–912, emperor from 886) drew extensively
on Aelianus in his own work, which later became known, not
entirely appropriately, as Taktiká (Leo c. 900/1917), as Leo used the
terms strategía and taktiké in the same hierarchical way as the sixthcentury
work referred to above. It would be Leo’s work that would
bring this greater meaning of ‘strategy’ to the West. Count John of
Nassau-Siegen (1561–1623) in his Book of War drew on Maurice’s
Stratégikon and on Leo’s Taktiká. John did not adopt the Greek term
‘strategy’, circumscribing it with the general’s (Feldher) tasks. The
word ‘tactic’ he actually used (John ‘the Middle’ 1610/1973: 17, 516,
642). John thus built on Leo’s analytical framework, which resonated
in the literature, even though the word strategía had not yet become
integrated into the Western languages.
The majority of authors before the French Revolution wrote neither
about ‘strategy’ nor ‘tactics’ but about military matters in the
What is strategy? 5
tradition of the Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus,
Vegetius for short, who lived in the late fourth century CE; or else
they wrote ‘military instructions’ (Puységur 1690), or about the ‘art
of war’ (Machiavelli 1521). In the Western world, the French Count
Jacques Antoine Hippolyte Guibert (1743–91) was probably the first,
in his General Essay on Tactics, to define higher and subordinate
levels of the conduct of war, speaking of ‘tactics’ and ‘grand tactics’
when talking about war aims, the configurations of armed forces in
relation to the political aims and several such dimensions which we
would today regard as Strategy. Without ever using the word ‘strategy’,
Guibert wrote about both what we would today call Strategy and
Tactics, dwelling primarily on the relationship between the nature of
a society, its internal values and foreign-policy objectives, with an
overall Strategy derived from these values and objectives, the armed
forces that match these and the way these should be employed, down
to battlefield Tactics (Guibert 1772/1781). Just as Monsieur Jourdain
had been speaking ‘in prose’ all his life without knowing the expression,
Guibert was what today we would call a Strategic Theorist without
thinking of himself in these terms.
Shortly after the publication of Guibert’s General Essay, the
Byzantine use of the terms which pertains even today was introduced
in the West. In 1771 Paul-Gédéon Joly de Maizeroy (1719–80)
translated Leo’s Taktiká into French. He still hesitated to translate
Leo’s term ‘strategía’ into French, and used ‘the art of the general’
in his translation itself, and ‘stratégique’ in his commentary (Leo c.
900/1771: 5–7). But here, for the first time in the West, the two terms
‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ were used in a hierarchical sense, strategy denoting
the higher level, tactical the lower, of warfare. In 1777 Johann
von Bourscheid in Vienna published a translation of Leo into German,
more appropriately under the title Emperor Leo the Wise’s Strategy
and Tactics [sic]. From then onwards, the use of both terms in the
Byzantine sense spread throughout the West.
Whether or not they used the term ‘strategy’, writers since antiquity
posited that Strategy should be formulated on the basis of
practical experience or theoretical reflections before being applied in
war. Authors on war were divided as to whether they were writing
about the art or the science of war, a debate that has not been settled
to this day, and which from 1800 largely overlapped with the question
whether ‘strategy’ concerned only theoretical reflection or also
The Evolution of Strategy6
practical applicability. This question can probably be found first in the
writing of Archduke Charles (1771–1847), the Habsburg commander
in the wars against Napoleon, who in 1806 defined ‘strategy’ as ‘the
science of war: it designs the plan, circumscribes and determines the
development of military operations; it is the particular science of
the supreme commander’. ‘Tactics’, by contrast, he defined as ‘the art
of war. It teaches the way in which strategic designs are to be executed;
it is the necessary skill of each leader of troops’ (Waldtstätten
1882: 57; Anon. 1814: vii, 3).
In contrast to all these, the Prussian philosopher-general Carl von
Clausewitz (1780–1831) in his masterpiece on war spoke out against
this categorisation of warfare as either an art or a science. Instead, he
wrote,
we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict
of human interests and activities, and it is still closer to politics, which in
turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale. Politics,
moreover, is the womb in which war develops.
This is where we encounter the idea about the relationship between
politics and war for which Clausewitz is most famous, namely that
‘war is an act of policy’ (Clausewitz 1832/1976, I: 1, 24).
Surprisingly, in view of his theoretical ideas on war expressed in
other parts of his work, Clausewitz used very narrow definitions. In
Book II of On War he defined ‘strategy’ merely as ‘the use of engagements
for the object of the war’ (Clausewitz 1832/1976, II: 1; III: 1). It
was not Clausewitz’s narrow definition of ‘strategy’, but his definition
of war that would impress future thinkers: war as ‘an act of force to
compel our enemy to do our will’ (Clausewitz 1832/1976, I: 1, 2).
This view would resonate through the strategic writing of the following
centuries, to the point where it became a commonplace to define
the aim in war, and thus victory, as the successful imposition of one’s
will upon the enemy, and to see all Strategy as a pursuit of that aim.
The narrow Clausewitzian and Jominian definition of ‘strategy’
would live on until the end of the nineteenth century. In 1845 French
Marshal Marmont defined ‘strategy’ as ‘the general movements
which are made beyond the enemy’s range of sight and before the
battle’, while ‘tactics is the science of the application of manoeuvres’
(Marmont 1845: 17–25). Writing in 1853, the French naval officer
What is strategy? 7
Louis-Édouard, Count Bouët-Willaumez defined ‘strategy’ as ‘the art
of determining the decisive points of the theatre of war and the general
lines and routes along which armies have to move to get there’
(Taillemite 1999: 50). Indeed, this unimaginative definition would be
echoed well into the twentieth century (Mordacq 1921: 15), albeit
mainly outside France, where the words ‘tactics’ and ‘strategy’ were
apparently rarely uttered until after France’s crushing defeat at the
hands of Prussia in 1870/1 (Mayer 1916: 7).
One of the echoes came from Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von
Moltke the Elder who saw the ‘essence’ [Wesen] of ‘strategy’ in the
preparations needed to get troops to the battlefield simultaneously
(q.i. Schlichting 1897: II: 11). Elsewhere he proclaimed more originally
that ‘strategy is a system of expediencies’ which defied general
principles that could be taught (Großer Generalstab 1911: 1). His
Russian contemporary, General Mikhail Ivanovich Dragomirov, dismissed
the concept of a ‘science’ of war out of hand, instead endorsing
the concept of a ‘theory of war’ (q.i. Foch 1900/1918: 8). Other very
technical definitions abounded, such as this by Clausewitz’s contemporary
Wilhelm von Willisen: ‘Strategy is the doctrine of making
connections … the doctrine of battling [Schlagen] is tactics’ (Willisen
1840: 26). Or take another, that of the Britons Sir Edward Hamley,
General J.F. Maurice (1891:7; 1929: 3) and G.F.R. Henderson
(1905: 39), who by ‘strategy’ understood ‘the art of rightly directing
the masses of troops towards the objects of the campaign’. ‘The theatre
of war is the province of strategy, the field of battle is the province
of tactics.’ French General Bonnal, lecturing at the Ecole de Guerre
in 1892–3, told his students that ‘[s]trategy is the art of conceiving;
tactics the science of execution’ (Castex 1937: 6). In the Cold War,
Marxist-Leninist definitions continued to follow narrow definitions
of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’, adding the intermediary level of operation
(Leebaert 1981: 14f.).
Clearly, these technical definitions did not make allowance for
the political directives under which Strategy operated. Wider concepts
were needed. The British military historian Henry Spenser
Wilkinson, in discussing naval operations in 1894, gave this definition:
‘A policy is national action directed to an end or purpose. The
object set up must be one that the nation values and appreciates, or
else the Government will have no support in its efforts to attain it.
And the means must be suitable to the end’ (Wilkinson 1894: 21). A
The Evolution of Strategy8
decade later, Lt.-Col. Walter James, while using narrow definitions
of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’, dwelt on the political aims of warfare:
Strategy is largely affected by moral considerations. Of two different
courses – one of which might give important political, the other more
purely military results – it will sometimes be more advantageous to choose
the former, because of the greater effect it will have on the course of the
war. (James 1904: 17f.)
We see how gradually, the line between policy and ‘strategy’, especially
‘grand strategy’, was becoming blurred. The emphasis of the
link between policy and military execution becomes particularly
strong in the writings of Captain (later Sir) Basil Henry Liddell Hart,
whose most important works stem from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
He dismissed earlier definitions as too narrow, instead developing the
concept further again. For Liddell Hart, ‘strategy’ was ‘the art of distributing
and applying military means to fulfil the ends of policy’
(Liddell Hart 1944: 229). This definition, which has great merits, is
so broad, however, that Richards Betts would be justified in criticising
it for making ‘strategy’ synonymous with foreign (or indeed any)
policy (Betts 2001/2: 23).
This had already been recognised by French General André Beaufre
(1902–75) and French sociologist Raymond Aron (1905–83). Aron
suggested fusing the terms ‘policy’ and ‘strategy’ in the neologism
‘praxeology’. Beaufre, however, decided to stick with ‘strategy’, using
‘total strategy’ as equivalent to the British term ‘grand strategy’. Hence
Beaufre argued that all warfare is ‘total’, by which he meant ‘carried
on in all fields of action’, political, economic, military, cultural, and
so forth (Beaufre 1966/1967: 19–23, 29). This, however, lends itself
to considerable terminological confusion in view of other usage of the
term ‘total war’ (as we shall see in chapter 7).
While Aron’s term ‘praxeology’ failed to catch on, agreement on
his insistence on the link between Strategy and practice spread. His
American contemporary Bernard Brodie wrote in the middle of the
Cold War that ‘Strategic thinking, or “theory” if one prefers, is nothing
if not pragmatic. Strategy is a “how to do it” … guide to accomplishing
something and doing it efficiently … Above all, strategic
theory is a theory for action’ (Brodie 1973: 452f.). From this, Colin
Gray developed the idea of ‘strategic theory’ which ‘helps educate the
What is strategy? 9
strategist so that he can conceive of, plan, and execute strategy by his
command performance’ (Gray 2010).
With the introduction of the concept of ‘grand strategy’ in the
Second World War, something closely akin to overall state policy on
foreign and military affairs, new variations appear in our list of definitions.
The US Joint Chiefs of Staff in their Dictionary of the U.S.
Military Terms for Joint Usage of 1964 defined ‘strategy’ as the development
and use of
political, economic, psychological and military forces as necessary during
peace and war, to afford the maximum support to policies, in order to
increase the probabilities and favourable consequences of victory and to
lessen the chances of defeat. (q.i. Luttwak 1987: 239–41)
The British political scientist Robert Neild in 1990 defined ‘strategy’
in an even wider way, as the pursuit of
political aims by the use or possession of military means. In formulating
strategy, the first step is to decide on political aims. Without political
aims, war is mindless destruction and the possession of military means in
peacetime is mindless waste. Once political aims are specified, the military
means must be selected and tailored to fit those aims. (Neild 1990: 1)
Thus the link between policy at the highest level and the use of military
force as its tool, postulated by Clausewitz but not yet coupled
by him to the word ‘strategy’, gradually became a matter of universal
consensus. And yet there was scope for further refinement of the concept,
which, as we shall see, brought further essential dimensions of
strategy into focus.
The articulation of different dimensions of Strategy
War as an instrument of politics
The rediscovery of the great political philosophers of antiquity and
their ideas about the polis, the body politic, the state and its relation to
its armed forces, made thinkers of the modern age write about the link
between Strategy and politics. A crucial place in the translation of these
classical philosophical concepts into modern times is held by Niccolò
The Evolution of Strategy10
Machiavelli (1469–1527), who besides writing on the Art of War (structured
much like Vegetius’ classical handbook) also wrote about politics,
in his more famous work The Prince and in the Discourses. Other
philosophers on the state, politics, justice and law, such as Matthew
Sutcliffe (1546 or 1547–1629) in England, Justus Lipsius (1547–1606)
and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) in the Netherlands repeatedly touched
on war in their works. Just as Roman law had developed concepts of a
justifiable use of war, set in stone for the Christian world by Augustine
of Hippo and after him Thomas Aquinas, they were mainly concerned
with the legality and legitimacy of warfare.
A few exceptional writers in the tradition of Machiavelli brought
these strands of thought together. The most prominent are Sutcliffe,
dean of Exeter; the Spanish aristocrat, officer and diplomat Don Alvaro
of Navia Osorio and Vigil, Viscount of Puerto, Marquis of Santa Cruz
de Marcenado (1684–1732); and Guibert. Coming from the classical
RomanandthenCatholicjust-wartradition(seechapter2),theyassumed
that the end state of war should be peace, but a more just peace than that
preceding the war (e.g. Saillans 1589/1591: ch. 5). For Sutcliffe, Lipsius
and Grotius it was taken for granted that peace had to be the end state of
war. In the eighteenth century, the Swiss philosopher Emerich de Vattel
by contrast reflected on the consequences of the imposition of an unjust
peace which would lead to renewed war (Vattel 1758/1834: Book IV).
At the close of the eighteenth century, Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow in
Prussia had no such qualms: he defined the purpose of all operations in
war as bringing about ‘peace, which one tries to force upon the enemy
through the harm done to him, to be advantageous to oneself, and disadvantageous
to him’ (Bülow 1799: 12). Nevertheless, there was thus consensus
from Cicero to the French Revolution that the only sensible aim
of war could be a durable peace. Napoleon’s insatiable expansionism,
however, changed this perception.
The nexus between political war aims and the conduct of war was
commonplace by the time Clausewitz put his pen to paper – it was
so widely accepted that few saw the need to spell it out. One who
did spell it out was August Wagner, who opined that no commander
would be greatly successful unless he knew
what is generally true about all wars; why each war … has been started;
which means are to be applied, not alone to win, but to achieve the aims,
for the purpose of which one has taken up arms; in short, who has not
What is strategy? 11
reflected on his profession and is not able quickly to apply the fruits of his
reflections to actual cases. (Wagner 1809: viii)
Another was Clausewitz’s colleague at the War Academy in Berlin,
Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern (1780–1847), next to Clausewitz
the most outstandingly original German-speaking writer of that generation.
In his Handbook for Officers (published 1817–18), he argued
that every war had a cause and a purpose which would
determine the character and the direction of all activity … The individual
operations have military purposes; the war as a whole always has a final
political purpose, which means that war is undertaken … in order to realise
the political purpose upon which the State has decided.
According to Rühle, then, ‘Every war and every [military] operation is
based on a Wherefore? and Why?, a purpose and a cause, which will give
a specific character and a definite direction to each of its actions’ (Rühle
1818: 8). In the light of the Napoleonic Wars, and reflecting Vattel’s concerns
about the consequences of an unjust peace, Rühle concluded that
victory is not always the necessary condition of conquest or of peace, and
peace is not always the necessary result of victory and conquest … Each
war has … a main purpose, which, however, is not always … peace. Peace
can be seen merely as the termination of the state of war. The obstacle
which in war obstructs the attainment of the main purpose is the enemy,
and it has to be cleared out of the way. In the best case this may lead to victory,
but for this reason alone, victory is not the main purpose of the war,
but only a subordinate purpose within war. If somebody concludes a peace
without attaining the main purpose … he can be called the defeated party,
however many battles he may have won, even if he has won all of them.
Writing with the Napoleonic conquests in mind, he added:
To the contrary, victory and conquest are often causes of the continuation,
the renewal and the multiplication of war. Often, peace comes because
none of the warring parties was able to defeat the other, and often war is
not made in order to establish peace. (1818: 8f.)
Rühle pointed out the ambiguity of the term ‘peace’: is it merely the
absence of war or the ‘lasting friendly agreement of states among each
The Evolution of Strategy12
other’? He drew attention to instances in history when peace was concluded
so as better to prepare for the next war, and to instances where
war was continued and drawn out because at least one side sought to
achieve some gains other than victory. There were wars which were
fought to further the personal interests of individual ‘officers and state
officials, or the army; in short, of some subordinate interest, but not
for the sake of the common well-being of the state’ (Rühle 1818: 8f.).
Victory – if defined as the attainment of such particular interests –
cannot therefore be the main purpose, but must be subordinated to
much greater aims, such as the aim of turning one’s enemy into a
friendly power (Rühle 1818: 11).
Moreover, in view of the political links and networks which all civilised
[kultivierte] states entertain with one another, in all wars it is almost as important
what impression the conduct and the results of the war have on the
public opinion and the interest of the other temporarily neutral states, as
what relationship the two warring parties have on account of the war [between
them]. A temporary advantage, the early humiliation of the enemy,
a conquest – however brilliant – are of little value for the state whose existence
has to be calculated and secured for hundreds of years, if there is
not the hope of keeping this advantage and the conquests for a long time,
or if it creates the fear of a new, greater danger … These concerns about
public opinion and the political community of states are so important in
determining the legal basis of war, and its essential usefulness, and explain
why even very powerful states try at least to package their feuds in an acceptable
way and accept limitations on their behaviour even in victory.
(Rühle 1818: 12)
While many wars are fought for gains (Nutzen) or honour, as Rühle
conceded, war ought to be only the means of states to obtain justice;
‘according to the principles of morality, war should never be waged
for any other purpose’. Unfortunately, who is in the right is not always
clear, and
war is thus the way in which states settle their legal quarrels, in one
word: their [clashing] political aims, against each other with the use of
force. It is the attainment of these political aims, which are the true final
war aims, not victory, peace or conquest, if these are not perchance in line
with the political intention. The army is merely the acting organ, the executive
of the higher will. The army’s and its leaders’ entire mental activity
What is strategy? 13
should aim to tailor the individual operations, to combine and execute
them in a way that their success may deflect any danger from their state, or
give it political advantages. (Rühle 1818: 13)
In view of Rühle’s far-sighted observations quoted above, which
Clausewitz, as his colleague, must have been familiar with, it is ironic
that it is usually Clausewitz who gets all the credit for articulating this
link between politics and warfare, especially as in On War he deliberately
desisted from spelling out the implications. It was Clausewitz’s
posthumous rival, Jomini, who devoted a considerable part of his
Summary of the Art of War of 1837 to what he calls the ‘politics of
war’, which he uses in a way that comes very close to my definition of
Strategy. Jomini compares favourably with Clausewitz in that Jomini
reflected explicitly on the relationship between politics and war, especially
on the political motives that would lead to war. ‘A government
goes to war’, he wrote,
To reclaim certain rights or to defend them; to protect and maintain the
great interests of the state, [such] as commerce, manufactures, or agriculture;
to uphold neighbouring states whose existence is necessary either for
the safety of the government or the balance of power; to fulfil the obligations
of offensive and defensive alliances; to propagate political or religious
theories, to crush them … or to defend them; to increase the influence and
power of the state by acquisitions of territory; to defend the threatened
independence of the state; to avenge insulted honor; or, from a mania of
conquest. (Jomini 1837/1868: 14)
Jomini divided wars into several categories, explaining that these
different types of war required different ways of waging them. The
categories were:
‘Offensive wars to reclaim rights’, which he regarded as ‘the most•	
just war[s]’, even though they would normally be waged on territory
at that stage held by the enemy (hence ‘offensive’, involving the
invasion of somebody else’s territory).
Wars that were politically defensive, but ‘offensive in a military•	
point of view’. This would include pre-emptive wars, wars in which
one attacked an enemy anticipating an attack by him. Jomini was
convinced, however, that a defensive war carried out on one’s own
territories held great advantages, as it would have the support of the
The Evolution of Strategy14
population, a well-known theatre of operations and help from all
the local authorities (Jomini 1837/1868: 17).
‘Wars of expediency’, to snatch something from an adversary who•	
happened to be going through a time of weakness or disarray. What
he had in mind was Frederick the Great’s seizure of Silesia (Jomini
1837/1868: 18).
‘Wars with or without allies’.•	
‘Wars of intervention’ in the ‘internal affairs of a neighbouring•	
state’.
‘Aggressive war for Conquest and other Reasons’ à la Genghis•	
Khan, which could be ‘a crime against humanity’ [sic], even though
Jomini thought that ‘it is better to attack than to be invaded’ (Jomini
1837/1868: 23).
‘Wars of opinion’ or what we would call ideological wars (such•	
as the war between Revolutionary France and its adversaries, and,
looking beyond Jomini’s own times, Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union, or many conflicts of the Cold War pitting communists
against non-communists).
‘National wars’, by which he meant wars of resistance against•	
foreign invasion involving the mobilisation of the entire people,
with the wars of resistance and liberation against Napoleon’s
forces in mind. He had personal experience of the Spanish War
of Liberation of 1808–12, which he had experienced as particularly
dreadful, using the expression ‘wars of extermination’ to
describe them, when Spanish insurgents wiped out – exterminated
– whole French units in ambushes and night attacks (Jomini
1837/1868: 29–35).
‘Civil Wars, and Wars of Religion’.•	
He stressed that each of these wars had to be waged differently – in
‘wars of opinion’, ‘national wars’ and ‘civil wars/wars of religion’ the
rabble was involved in a way in which it was not in ‘wars of expediency’.
His categories overlap in places; a defensive war might not be
distinguishable from what he called ‘national wars’ as he saw these
as defensive. Nevertheless, Jomini’s categorisation goes a long way
to take political aims into account as chief variable determining the
character of any Strategy.
That one’s conduct of war should be governed by politics was a disputed
concept, however. Lossau in his handbook stated apodictically
What is strategy? 15
that where politics ‘ceases to have its effects, war starts’. Politics only
decides the moment when peace yields to war. At least he conceded
that the politics – he should have said ideology – of a state determined
its defensive or offensive disposition (Lossau 1815: 7). With this he
founded the Prussian tradition of those who opposed the interference
of political decision-makers in the conduct of war, and in the
words of Colonel (later Field Marshal) von Manteuffel to Prussian
Prince Frederic Charles in 1857, warning him to keep his nose out of
what was the military’s business: ‘when the sword has been drawn,
war … steps into the foreground, becomes fully independent, and
politics becomes its servant’ (quoted by Hahlweg in Clausewitz
1832/1976: 67). Moltke would famously go even further in his resistance
to Bismarck in the context of the Wars of German Unification
(Carr 1991).
The political role of Strategy, even as applied within war, gradually
won out against this attempt to cut politicians out of the conduct of
war. This did not wipe out the tensions between political leaders
and the executing military which this division of labour necessarily
entailed. The technical approach which we sketched in the previous
section still reverberates in the 1989 definitions of ‘strategy’ by the
US military, but it simultaneously acknowledges the political aims
of warfare (Handel 1996: 36). But by the late twentieth century,
John Garnett’s definition of ‘strategy’ as ‘the way in which military
power’ is or might be ‘used by governments in pursuit of their
interests’ would have found universal recognition (Garnett 1975: 3).
The late Michael Handel (1942–2001), venerated teacher of generations
of US officers, put it more simply and trenchantly: ‘strategy is
the development and use of all resources in peace and war in support
of national policies to secure victory’ (Handel 1996: 36). We
see in both American definitions a much wider understanding of
Strategy, which takes on board the nexus between policy and war
as its instrument.
Dialectics of will
All the definitions of ‘strategy’ we have encountered so far fall short
of taking into account that war has two sides: how can a definition of
Strategy take into consideration the interaction of one’s own side with
the enemy? Clausewitz had been a trailblazer here – his comparison
The Evolution of Strategy16
of war with wrestling incited later strategic thinkers to build this dimension
into the relationship between power and the use of force, so
as to take account of the dialectics of the use of force. The supreme
commander of the Prussian forces in the wars of Wars of German
Unification, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800–91), was one of
them. Like others before him, he described ‘strategy’ as positioned on
a level between the higher sphere of politics and the lower plane of
military operations.
Politics uses war to reach its purposes, it influences decisively the beginning
and the end [of war], and retains the right to increase its demands during
its course or to settle for lesser aims. Given this uncertainty, strategy can
only try to obtain the highest possible aims which could conceivably lie
within its reach in view of the available means. It is thus that [strategy] best
serves politics, by working for the purpose of politics, but quite independently
from [politics] in its actions.
He went on to explain that the next task of Strategy, after that of serving
politics, is to prepare the means of waging war. This task had to
be fulfilled as a function of given resources, geography, logistics and
so forth.
Matters are different concerning the subsequent task of strategy: the military
use of available resources, that is, in operations. This is where our
will soon encounters the independent will of our adversary. Although we
can impose limits on it, we can only break it by the means of tactics, [i.e.]
through battle. (Moltke 1960: 316)
More importantly, however, Moltke produced the famous dictum that
a battle plan does not survive the actual encounter with the enemy:
It is a … delusion if to believe that one can determine a campaign plan far
in advance and carry it out until the end. The first clash with the enemy’s
main forces creates a new situation, depending on its outcome. Much of
what one had intended to do becomes impossible to carry out, some things
become possible which could not have been expected earlier. The only
thing the army command can do is correctly appreciate the changed circumstances,
and then to give instructions to do what is appropriate for the
foreseeable next phase. (q.i. Rohrschneider 1999: 157)
What is strategy? 17
After the First World War, Johannes Kromayer developed this strategy
further. In the middle of the great German ‘Strategy debate’ surrounding
Delbrück (see chapters 4 and 7), he – rightly – argued that
Clausewitz’s idea that policy determines a firm set of war aims at the
outset of war was deficient, as one’s war aims, and policy itself, and
with it Strategy, must surely change throughout any war as a function
of the success or failure of one’s operations (Kromayer 1925a: 401f.).
In the middle of the Cold War, André Beaufre developed this idea
further. In Clausewitzian terms he saw ‘strategy’ as ‘the art of the dialectic
of force, or more precisely, the dialectic of opposing wills, which
use force for the settlement of their disputes’ (Beaufre 1963/1965: 22).
The American military historians Williamson Murray and Mark
Grimsley came to similar conclusions: ‘strategy is a process, a constant
adaptation to shifting conditions and circumstances in a world
where chance, uncertainty, and ambiguity dominate’ (Murray and
Grimsley 1994: 1; Murray 1999a: 33). This in turn was echoed by
their British colleague Hew Strachan, who argues that ‘strategy in
war is a process’ that requires continuous adjustment in the light of
enemy action and a continuous reconsideration of policy and new
policy-making, involving political leaders, military leaders and other
experts (Strachan 2006: 59–82).
The realisation that any given Strategy must not be static (if it is to
be successful), but must react to and be re-formed according to the
interaction with an enemy, is another huge step forward in our understanding.
It has not, however, penetrated Strategy-making sufficiently
in practice, nor has the concession that should logically flow from it,
namely, that the achievement of a stable peace will require concessions
and a commitment to it from both sides (Heuser 2007a). Instead, the
century and a half from the French Revolutionary Wars to the Second
World War was dominated by the quest for the enemy’s unconditional
surrender, and thus de facto a replacement of the enemy regime. This
would prove fatal if the ‘hearts and minds’ of the populations of the
adversarial country(ies) could not be won by persuasion to embrace
the post-war settlement.
Another crucial realisation is that Strategy is a function of variables
– such as one’s own political aims and the enemy’s political
aims – but of partly interconnected variables, which makes the whole
equation even more complicated.
The Evolution of Strategy18
War as a function of multiple interdependent variables
The first step on this intellectual exploration of Strategy was Jomini’s
categorisation of wars, which implicitly shows that one’s own war aims
vary, and are thus variables. But further variables could be identified.
It was a discovery of Clausewitz’s, in my view his most original
and insightful one, that war is a function of variables some of which
in turn are interconnected, that is they are functions of each other.
Particularly famous is Clausewitz’s ‘remarkable trinity’ of variables:
‘Primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded•	
as a blind natural force’, and these he correlated to the passions of
the people as a whole: the more the people were involved in a war,
the more they identified with it, the more violent the war would be.
‘The play of chance and probability’, together with ‘the interplay of•	
courage and talent’ that depended on the peculiarities of the military
commander and the army, the commander’s coup d’oeil, the
morale of the troops and so on.
Policy, using war as its instrument, subjecting war ‘to reason alone’.•	
This he identified with the intentions of the government (in other
words, its political war aims).
Clausewitz surmised that any war is a function of all three sets of
variables and, crucially, recognised that they affect each other: for
example, an upwards trend of violence, hatred and enmity might force
governments to extend formerly modest war aims. Or a population’s
lack of emotional engagement in a war might undermine the morale of
the armed forces committed. The Clausewitzian notion of war as a function
of interdependent variables was taken up by Marshal Ferdinand
Foch (1851–1929) and others who studied him assiduously in the late
nineteenth century in order to find out why the Prussians had defeated
France so thoroughly in 1870/1 (Derrécagaix 1885; Foch 1900).
Clausewitz had identified further variables, strewn here and there
in his text: in a particularly poignant chapter in Book VIII, he noted
that every age has its own way of warfare, thus identifying what today
we would call ‘culture’ as one crucial variable. Material variables,
especially the terrain of the battlefield, the ability or inability to communicate
fast and gather intelligence during battle (the ‘fog of war’),
and a number of other technical and circumstantial factors were also
emphasised by him.
What is strategy? 19
Clausewitz was not the first to have identified the cultural variable.
Classical writers had commented on the very different ‘ways of war’ of
individual culturally very different groups (Scythians, Persians, Huns,
Saracens, Turks, etc). In modern times, the central theme in Guibert’s
Essai général de tactique was the nexus that he saw between a society’s
values (and thus, culture) and internal political system and its way of
war (Guibert 1772/1781). Henry Humphrey Evans Lloyd (1718–83),
a Welsh mercenary who in his life fought for Louis XV of France, for
Empress Maria Theresia of Austria and Empress Elizabeth of Russia,
identified political culture as a variable in the waging of war: drawing
on the usual examples from classical antiquity but also from his own
experiences, he differentiated between the ways despotic, monarchical
and republican governments used force in interstate affairs. To him,
a democracy (republic) was clearly predestined to have a defensive
overall Strategy, and was ill equipped to wage long wars or wars far
from home; Lloyd also assumed that democracies would have neither
a standing army nor mercenaries, but that its population would rise up
as militia to defend its own state (Lloyd 1781/2005: 458–78).
Guibert and Clausewitz noted, and the Clausewitz pupil (and critic)
Martin van Creveld brought to our attention again in the late twentieth
century, that different cultures perceive war differently. As we
have seen, Rühle noted that not all pursue peace. There are cultures
(and sub-cultures, thinking of sections of the military even of fairly
peaceful civilisations) where the warrior is admired, and there are
age-groups (particularly adolescents and young men) in which the
excitement of the adventure of ‘war’ outweighs other cultural counterbalances.
As van Creveld put it, there are people who like to make war,
and political factors may simply be an excuse for doing so (Creveld
1991, ch. 6). One is well advised to take these factors into account
before espousing any theory which sees any violent conflict as guided
by realistic political aims from its beginning to its end. Clausewitz
underlined the many forms a war can take by likening it to a chameleon:
he described war as infinitely variable, depending on a multitude
of contextual factors, the many variables alluded to above. In some
conflicts between large groups of people (such as tribes, warring factions)
or states (with or without the use of force), political aims can
be fairly well established. They may show a conscious use of force or
the threat of its use in support of these political aims, to change the
will of the adversary and to settle the dispute to one’s own advantage.
The Evolution of Strategy20
In other wars such aims are less easily discernible, if at all, which can
be for a host of reasons: the lack of a strong, co-ordinated leadership
and the resulting multitude of unconcerted, divergent interests, but
also the previously invoked cultural factors.
This particular wheel has been reinvented by anthropologists
towards the end of the twentieth century, albeit in a more systematic
way, and with an emphasis on different variables. Employing case
studies from different cultures, they have identified three sets of variables
that dominate war, apart from situational constraints that are
special for each case:
1. material variables, such as the natural environment (geographic
features, climate …), technology, the economy;
2. social institutions (anything from clan loyalty or kingship to statehood),
including patterns of behaviour that are largely taken for
granted and seen as norm;2
3. culture (mainly collectively shared belief clusters, images, symbols
and myths), defined sometimes to include norms and patterns of
behaviour (Snyder 2002: 14f.).
While some, like the anthropologist Raymond Kelly, have looked at
these variables as independent from one another, the anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski, pioneer in this area, but also the philosopher
Emile Durkheim, the historian Ernest Gellner and the anthropologist
Brian Ferguson postulated a hierarchy of factors (‘a nested
hierarchy’) in which material factors were the most important, influencing
institutions, which in turn influenced or even determined culture.
Others, like the anthropologist Simon Harrison, reversed the
order of nesting, insisting that it is culture that determines patterns
of social behaviour and institutions, and even determines how people
deal with their environment. In the light of the historical evidence of
the evolution of warfare, especially in the Western world, one cannot
but agree with the anthropologist Jack Snyder, who postulates
reciprocal influences and causality among all three sets of variables.
Snyder underlined the effects of their interaction and ‘complex feedback
relationships’ in distinct circumstances (Snyder 2002: 12, 32f.).
To sum up, then, anthropologists like some of the early strategists
2
According to certain definitions I prefer, social institutions, and especially
norms and patterns of behaviour, are subsumed under ‘culture’.
What is strategy? 21
before them analyse war as a function of material factors, social
institutions and culture.
‘Social institutions’ and ‘culture’ overlap, according to many definitions.
For this reason and for the purposes of this book, it is more useful
to redefine these second and third levels of variables. Subsuming
both categories into a single category of ‘culture’, we shall examine
the conduct of war as a function of passive and active aspects of culture.
Passive aspects are mindsets or beliefs about the world: for example
with hostile groups confronting us, with lessons of past wars
to guide us, with rules and conventions of behaviour which would
be dangerous or immoral (or both) to ignore or challenge. As John
Hattendorf put it, ‘strategists think in the context of the prevailing
cultural and national attitudes that surround them’ (Hattendorf
2000: 1, 21, 127).
Here we should include existing social structures and institutions,
and also beliefs and myths about oneself, one’s own group,
and one’s enemies, beliefs about the working of the world, beliefs
about moral obligations, existing customs or traditions that have
to be upheld. Active aspects of culture are those where freedom
of choice is more pronounced: these include the prioritisation of
certain values and principles over others, the definition of political
aims, the changes that may be brought about through the agency of
war (or the threat of the use of armed force), the institutions, norms
of behaviour yet to be created and prescribed as desirable. Active
aspects of culture tend to be subordinate to its passive aspects: few
people can escape, even in their imagination, the world in which
they live and which many assume to be immutable. Yet the ‘complex
feedback relationship’ which Jack Snyder postulates exists here
too, as all innovation, once realised, in turn affects culture as it is
passively perceived.
To return to Jomini, he named further variables, which included
the degree of the passions aroused by either side in a war (which correctly
implies that what for one side is a ‘war of opinion’ – fought
out over ideological differences worth dying for – might merely be
a war for a limited political aim for the other side, mobilising much
less public support). Additional variables for Jomini were the military
systems of both sides, that is how and whom they recruited as
soldiers, with what reserves, financial resources and weapons, and
the degree of their loyalty to their military and political commanders.
The Evolution of Strategy22
The ‘character’ of the head of state or government, the talents of the
military leaders, the relationship of political decision-makers and
military leadership and of course enduring physical factors such as
geography and a state’s wealth in human beings, in natural resources,
industry and social structure, all were identified by Jomini as variables
that would influence the conduct and outcome of a war (Jomini
1837/1868: 38–65). In the following chapters, this very useful list of
variables will be applied to war in different ages.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Mahan produced
another list of variables which he thought influenced Strategy. He
listed geography, with its sub-aspects of sea lanes, harbours and territory
(Hinterland), the size of the population, the character of the
people and the character of the government, the political system and
within it the ideology and political orientation of the political party/
parties in government (Mahan 1890: 25, 57). The ‘character of the
people’ was a topos going back to antiquity, of course, had often been
invoked throughout history, but acquired a new appeal in the era
of Social Darwinism. Writing a little later than Mahan, Sir Herbert
Richmond (1871–1946), a Royal Navy admiral turned Cambridge
don, wrote a study of Britain’s war of 1739–48 by identifying the following
factors that came into play: geography, and the requirements
that different parts of the British Empire had, the ships available to
the belligerents, the manpower, greater political and diplomatic aims,
parliamentary politics and pressures and the wrangling among the
main decision-makers and players on either side of the war within the
opposing governments (Schurman 1965: 140f.).
Almost a century later, another naval specialist, the Briton Geoffrey
Till, established a new list of (arguably interconnected) variables influencing
Strategy, very much in the tradition of Mahan:
a. a maritime community;
b. resources (and the economic basis for a big navy);
c. styles of government;
d. geography and geopolitics;
e. shipping;
f. naval bases;
g. the fighting instrument (Till 1982: 75–90).
The Belgian teacher of Strategy Henri Bernard argued that military
history had as its proper subject of study the evolution of the art of
What is strategy? 23
war over the centuries, as a function of the multiple variables he
discussed, applying a Clausewitzian template, in his three volumes
called Total War and Revolutionary War (essentially a course on
military history up to 1945). His variables included demographic,
social, political, economic, ideological, technological and institutional
factors such as command structures within the armed forces
(Bernard 1965: 5).
Again we see that this list is interconnected – no strong economy
without the demographic basis to keep it going, no free society
without a related economic structure, no totalitarian ideology without
attempts to centralise control over all economic activities within the
state. Large, standing armies evolved with the creation of centralised
states with the infrastructure required to raise the taxes to maintain
such an army. Nationalism arose first out of the rhetoric of the
‘nation’ which began to be used during the French Revolution, underpinned
by the use of the levée en masse, which linked citizenship
with the obligation to defend the nation. Subsequently, the growth
of national printing presses and literacy helped further the growth of
nationalism.
A refreshingly original categorisation was produced by
T.E. Lawrence (1888–1935) on the basis of his reading of the eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century texts. Lawrence defined three ‘elements,
one algebraical, one biological, and one psychological’. The first
he liked to call hecastics, and it was
pure science, subject to the laws of mathematics, without humanity. It dealt
with known invariables, fixed conditions, space and time, inorganic things
like hills and climates and railways, with mankind in type-masses too great
for individual variety … It was essentially formulable … The second factor
was biological, the breaking-point, life and death, or better, wear and tear.
Bionomics seemed a good name for it. The war-philosophers had properly
made it an art, and had elevated one item in it, ‘effusion of blood’, to the
height of a principle. It became humanity in battle, an art touching every
side of our corporal being, and very war. There was a line of variability
(man) running through all its estimates. Its components were sensitive and
illogical.
The third factor Lawrence described as psychological, ‘of which propaganda
is a stained and ignoble part’, but linked it to what Xenophon
called ‘diathetic’, from a Greek word for ‘order’.
The Evolution of Strategy24
Some of it concerns the crowd, and adjustment of spirit to the point where
it becomes fit to exploit in action, the prearrangement of a changing opinion
to a certain end … It considers the capacity of mood of our men, their
complexities and mutability, and the cultivation of what in them profits
the intention. We had to arrange their minds in order for battle … and
through [our own men] … the minds of the enemy … and thirdly, the mind
of the nation supporting us behind the firing line, and the mind of the hostile
nation [a]waiting the verdict, and the neutrals looking on. (Lawrence
1920, 266f.)
We see echoes here of Clausewitz’s trinity and a very trenchant and
helpful perception of what in the evolution of warfare is variable,
what are immutable constants.
New technical developments spawn ideologically driven fantasies
and speculations about how to use armies, and about political consequences.
Historical experiences of wars, especially traumatic ones,
determine the subsequent preoccupations of survivors. Decisions
made about war are a function of the structures of the societies that
wage the wars, and decision-makers’ ideas and views are conditioned
by the mindset particular to their culture. War aims are dictated by
the concepts of the world, of society, of friend and foe, and of notions
of what one can achieve through military manpower and technology.
And Strategy is a function of all these variables and many more. This
analytical approach will be used to formulate a series of guiding questions
to examine the evolution of Strategy in the following chapters.
Strategy in peace and war
But does force always have to be used in order to settle disputes?
Can one not change the enemy’s will by the threat of the use of force
alone? Is Strategy not something that is part of peace as well as war?
These questions were particularly acute when in the twentieth century
authors realised that the absence of war did not amount to the
absence of interstate strife, with the threat of another world war overshadowing
peace.
As we have seen, some writers of the nineteenth century included
the preparation for war in peacetime among the tasks of Strategy.
In the age of total war, the realisation dawned on several writers on
the subject that this was not the only role of Strategy outside periods
of declared war. The political extremes of communism and fascism
What is strategy? 25
met not least in their common perception of peace as the continuation
of war by other means. Western liberal thinkers, by contrast,
developed a different perception. They began to see the use of force
as only one instrument of state policy, alongside many others, like
diplomacy, trade policies and so on. In turn, the latent threat of the
use of force could be an instrument of state policy in times of peace.
Western liberal thinkers like Norman Angell (1872–1967) did not
doubt that conflicts of interest occurred in times of peace, but they
tended to think more of these conflicts as resolvable without actual
fighting. Even among them, few would doubt that politics, including
of course the relations between states, would always include conflict
and strife and a struggle of wills. But if military force could be a latent
instrument of policy, Strategy needed to be redefined. In the interwar
period, Admiral Castex noted:
[S]trategy is … the general conduct of operations … Strategy prepares combat,
makes the effort to carry it out in the best conditions, and to produce
the best results … [Strategy] contains [détient] the general idea to which
the campaign is dedicated … It guides tactics, leaving it room for action
when its hour has arrived. Strategy is on each side of combat, tactics during
combat. (Castex 1937: 9)
But Castex also adopted the contemporary idea that Strategy was
operational in times of war and also in times of peace, and the view
that naval conferences and diplomacy were just as much tools of
Strategy as the use of force in war (Castex 1937: 17f.).
In 1943, while the Second World War was being waged and the public
did not know the secrets of the Manhattan Project, the American
scholar Edward Mead Earle edited his famous volume The Makers
of Modern Strategy. Here he wrote, much as Moltke the Elder had
done: ‘Strategy deals with war, preparation for war, and the waging
of war. Narrowly defined, it is the art of military command, of projecting
and directing a campaign.’
He noted that the word was used more narrowly for the ‘art of
military command’ which the general had mastered in order to ‘win
victory’ in battle until the end of the eighteenth century.
But as war and society have become more complicated – and war … is
an inherent part of society – strategy has of necessity required increasing
consideration of nonmilitary factors, economic, psychological, moral,
The Evolution of Strategy26
political, and technological. Strategy, therefore, is not merely a concept
of wartime, but is an inherent element of statecraft at all times … In the
present-day world, then, strategy is the art of controlling and utilizing
the resources of a nation – or a coalition of nations – including its armed
forces, to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and
secured against enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed. The highest
type of strategy – sometimes called grand strategy – is that which so
integrates the policies and armaments of the nation that the resort to war
is either rendered unnecessary or is undertaken with the maximum chance
of victory.
And it is in this broader sense that Earle used the term in his pathbreaking
volume (Earle 1943: viii).
After the Second World War, well into the Cold War, the study not
only of international relations (really, interstate relations) but also of
Strategy took off, with many new definitions being added, some coming
from new disciplines. Thomas Schelling (1921–) came to strategic
studies from economics and, specifically, games theory, introducing
his own term, the ‘strategy of conflict’, in which various contestants
(who might be state regimes) might try to reach outcomes to their
conflicts that were mutually advantageous. In the nuclear age, neither
side could find much comfort in the notion that Strategy was all about
imposing one’s will upon an enemy who could make the price for such
a success exorbitant. With ‘strategy of conflict’, Schelling emphasised
the ‘interdependence of the adversaries’ decisions’, in conflicts which
were equalled to ‘variable-sum games’, in which ‘the sum of the gains
of the participants involved is not fixed’. While victory seen as the
imposition of one protagonist’s will upon the other is a fixed-sum
game in which one’s gain is the other’s loss, Schelling introduced the
idea that – especially in the nuclear age – this is only one of many
possible outcomes. Crucially, the avoidance of nuclear war might be
a mutually advantageous outcome that would persuade warring parties
to settle for less than an all-out imposition of their will upon the
enemy (Schelling 1960: 3–5).
Robert Osgood, another leading American expert on security
issues, drew similar consequences for the meaning of Strategy:
[M]ilitary strategy must now be understood as nothing less than the overall
plan for utilizing the capacity for armed coercion – in conjunction with
the economic, diplomatic, and psychological instruments of power – to
What is strategy? 27
support foreign policy most effectively by overt, covert, and tacit means.
(Osgood 1962: 5)
The definition proposed by John Hattendorf implies a similar
approach:
Strategy reaches for an overarching idea, reflecting an understanding of
an entire war. While strategy involves this conceptual dimension, it is, at
the same time, the comprehensive and actual direction of national power,
including armed force, to achieve some measure of control over an opponent,
and, by that control, to achieve specific practical and political ends.
(Hattendorf 2000: 122)
Sir Lawrence Freedman, with his political science background, put it
perhaps most elegantly: ‘Strategy is about the relationship between
(political) ends and (military, economic, political etc.) means. It is the
art of creating power’ (Freedman 2008: 32).
Oxford historian Hew Strachan rightly concluded that the term
‘strategy’ has thus undergone a considerable shift in meaning and
usage since Clausewitz was writing. Until the First World War, ‘strategy’
was used by most writers to mean something below politics in
a hierarchy of determinants. Since then, terms like ‘grand strategy’
or ‘major strategy’ (as opposed to ‘pure strategy’ or ‘minor strategy’)
have been coined, embracing the pursuit of political ends (primarily
in international relations) not only with military tools, but also with
diplomatic, economic or even cultural instruments. The Cold War
with its blurred distinction between war and peace finally pushed
‘strategy’ over the fence up to the level of politics, leading to a ‘conflation
of strategy and politics’ (Strachan 2003). One attempt to bring
clarity to this area is the introduction particularly in Britain of the
term ‘grand strategy’, referring to the way political aims are translated
into the use of different available tools of state politics (Cabinet
Office, Historical Section 1956–76). But the expansion of the word
‘strategy’ in contemporary usage continues.
All in all, the word ‘Strategy’ is hard to press into one universally
accepted definition valid through the ages. Nevertheless, important
insights that have been gained by successive strategists building on
previous generations include the following. Strategy is a comprehensive
way to try to pursue political ends, including the threat or actual
The Evolution of Strategy28
use of force, in a dialectic of wills – there have to be at least two sides
to a conflict. These sides interact, and thus a Strategy will rarely be
successful if it shows no adaptability. Before the French Revolution, it
was not spelled out but tacitly assumed that the antagonists – mainly
princes – had common aims and that Strategy was not a ‘zero-sum
game’, as no side wanted the total destruction of the social order of
the other; in most contexts, both sides assumed each other’s survival.
From the time of the French Revolution until 1945, by contrast, the
assumption that Strategy was a ‘zero-sum game’ prevailed (although
these words were introduced by Schelling only in the subsequent
period). To win, one side had to impose its will upon the enemy; or at
least this is what the vast majority of strategists assumed. The nuclear
age made strategists aware again that conflicting sides might have
common interests – especially, the avoidance of nuclear apocalypse.
Strategy once again was opened up to the highly political dimensions
of bargaining and the quest for ‘win-win’ solutions that might satisfy
– at least to some extent – both sides and avoid worst outcomes
(especially major or nuclear war).
In today’s popular usage, the term ‘strategy’ is applied to many
realms of life outside politics proper. Its merger with the jargon of economics
and management is particularly prominent (Strachan 2003).
Today, the advertisement of a vacant ‘chair in strategy’ is as likely to
refer to a branch of business management as to anything military.
Meanwhile, governments try to develop ‘strategies’ for dealing with
unemployment, housing shortages, education and so on, and every
business has a business plan or ‘strategy’. In business-speak, ‘strategy’
is defined as ‘the direction and scope of an organisation over the long
term, which achieves advantages in a changing environment through
its configuration of resources and competences with the aim of fulfilling
stakeholder expectations’ (Johnson et al. 2005: 9). The conflation
of ‘strategy’ and ‘politics’ or even ‘long-term economic aims and
planning’ and the vaguely synonymous use of the term ‘strategy’ with
that of ‘policy’ (and thus the inflation of the term ‘strategy’) can be
deplored or criticised as unhelpful, or taken as a matter of fact and
worked around (Strachan 2003). In this book, however, I shall try not
to use the terms as synonyms, but to keep them apart as far as possible.
I shall be using the terminology of my sources where at all reasonable,
unless this leads to excessive confusion, and given the nature
and concerns of these sources, problems will not arise too often.
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