Strategy is the art of utilizing military power or its threat to achieve political objectives. War can be analyzed at four different levels. At the political level, sometimes called grand strategy, a state’s political goals—which ultimately aims at guaranteeing its survival—are defined as well as the means—which extend beyond the military dimension—for pursuing them. The strategic level then translates the political ends into military objectives. The operational level attains the military goals by the conduct of military campaigns and operations. Finally, the tactical level describes how battles and engagements are to be conducted.
First Generation: Classics
Strategy does not evolve in a vacuum. It is influenced by political, social, economic, and technological context. Throughout history different generations of strategic thinking can be delineated. The first generation is the classics. Sun Tzu’s The
Art of War is one of the most influential texts on strategy and was written around 500 BCE. Its main argument is that the purpose of the art of war is not to win victories but to achieve military objectives by the least costly means. This must be done by targeting the adversary’s will and morale. For Niccolò Machiavelli, war is inevitable because the major goal of policy makers (as stated in 1532’s The Prince) is to conquer and to maintain power. Strategy must therefore aim at defeating the adversary as quickly as possible through decisive battles. Carl von Clausewitz is probably the most often quoted strategic thinker, not the least because he famously acknowledged that war is the continuation of politics by other means. He also made the distinction between absolute and limited wars and often was misinterpreted—not the least by the German general staff prior and during World War I (1914–1918)—for arguing for the former. He thus became known as the apostle of total war. For Clausewitz, the use of force should be aimed at destroying the enemy’s center of gravity. The Swiss general Antoine-Henri de Jomini defined much of the vocabulary of contemporary strategic through principles such as decisive points or interior lines. Jomini’s focus on the importance of the logistics has had a strong influence on American strategic culture.
Second Generation: By Sea And By Air
The second generation covers the nonterrestrial dimension of strategy: maritime and air power strategies. Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that state’s power depended on its ability to coercively control sea lanes and maritime commerce (command of the sea). Sir Julian Corbett saw the merits of naval power in its ability to project forces ashore via amphibious operations and to keep war limited. Giulio Douhet and William Billy Mitchel extrapolated from the experience of the First World War and argued that strategic bombing in the future was likely to be so effective that the need for armies and navies would strongly be reduced. For Douhet, air power would have the most important impact by targeting civilian populations in cities, while Hugh Trenchard, Alexander de Seversky, and the Air Corps Tactical School argued for destroying the industrial centers of the enemy.
Third Generation: Dislocation
The third generation, called the indirect school of thought, revived the ideas of Sun Tzu that aimed at the dislocation of the adversary rather than its physical destruction. Basil Liddell Hart and John Fuller focused on the technology developed in the First World War for restoring mobility and achieving decisive effects on the battlefield. Liddell Hart’s indirect approach argued for using deception and maneuvers supported by tanks with close air support to induce a state of strategic paralysis. The German blitzkrieg and the Russian concept of deep battle built on these assumptions. A second group of strategists theorized peoples’ wars and irregular warfare. Mao Zedong’s On Guerrilla Warfare (1937) argued for avoiding costly pitched battles by securing the support of the people through a sustained campaign to win hearts and minds. Che Guevara developed ideas for guerrilla actions by an insurgent vanguard to foster revolutions while Carlos Marighella suggested urban guerrilla could achieve the same goal. As a reaction to these revolutionary thinkers, counterinsurgency theorists such as Robert Thompson or David Galula argued for securing the support of the population and undermining the legitimacy of the insurgents. These approaches have recently impacted American strategic thinking.
Fourth Generation: Nuclear
The fourth generation, developed during the cold war, addressed the problem of nuclear strategy. Unlike previous generations, these strategists did not come from the military but from academia, and include Thomas Schelling, an economist, Albert Wohlstetter, a mathematician, and Herman Kahn, a physicist. They used game theory and developed models to prevent and deter the use of nuclear weapons. Their key contribution was to emphasize the use of threats rather than actual violence to achieve political objectives. It follows that deterrence relied on the idea of securing a second strike capability so as to guarantee the threat of retaliations.
Fifth Generation: Globalization
The fifth generation, developed after the cold war, addresses the challenges of globalization. The 1991 Gulf War ushered for some a “revolution in military affairs.” Developments in technology, notably the fusion of standoff firepower and networked information technologies, made it possible to overcome Clausewitzian fog and friction thereby increasing operational effectiveness by striking at an adversary’s center of gravity. John Warden III’s depiction of the enemy as a system of concentric rings, together with John Boyd’s recommendations of getting inside the enemy’s decision cycle (OODA loop), provided a renewed interest in the strategic use of air power through the conduct of effects-based operations. In reaction to this technological and U.S.-centered approach, asymmetric strategies were developed. They sought to avoid direct military confrontations through economic or network warfare, the exploitation of international law or morale, and even terrorism. Terrorism since 9/11 has been at the center of strategic thought.
Though some strategists have tried to impose enduring rules and principles, the character of strategy remains fluid and reflects the dimension of the time, while the nature of strategy is fixed. Strategy is about the use of military power or its threat to deny the adversary’s strategic goals. Thus strategy can affect the opponent’s capability and will—and hence convince it to accept a political outcome that is acceptable to both parties.
Bibliography:
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- Beaufre, André. An Introduction to Strategy. London: Faber and Faber, 1965.
- Betts, Richard K. “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security 25 (Fall 2002): 5–50.
- Brodie, Bernard. “Strategy as a Science.” World Politics 1 (July 1949): 467–488.
- Clausewitz, Carl von. On War, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Parett. London: David Campbell, 1993.
- Collins, John. Military Strategy: Principles, Practices, and Historical Perspectives Washington, D.C.: Potomac, 2002.
- Gray, Colin S. Modern Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Handel, Michael. Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought. London: Frank Cass, 1996.
- Jordan, David, James D. Kiras, David J. Lonsdale, Ian Speller, Christopher Tuck, and C. Dale Walton, eds. Understanding Modern Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
- Liddell Hart, Basil H. Strategy: The Indirect Approach. London: Faber and Faber, 1967.
- Luttwak, Edward. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1987.
- Paret, Peter, ed. Makers of Modern Strategy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
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- Strachan, Hew. “The Lost Meaning of Strategy.” Survival, 47 (Autumn 2005): 33–54.
- Sun Tzu. The Art of War, translated by Samuel B. Griffith. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.
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