Strategy in theory; strategy in practice

ABSTRACT

The practice of strategy is different from strategic theory. The latter was largely developed by professional soldiers from the experiences of the Napoleonic Wars, and compared the present with the past to establish general truths about war. It used history as its dominant discipline until 1945. The advent of nuclear weapons made history seem less relevant, and prompted the inclusion of other disciplines; deterrence theory also made strategic theory more abstract and distant from the practice of war. Since 9/11, the experience of war has forced strategy to become less theoretical and to do better in reconciling theory with practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategy
• military strategy
• grand strategy
• maritime strategy
• operations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), 1. Colin Gray has responded to the criticism which follows in The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010), 10. Similar assumptions underpin John Lewis Gaddis, On grand strategy (London: Allen Lane 2018).

² Michael Howard, The Causes of Wars and Other Essays (London: Temple Smith 1983), 195–197.

³ Napoléon, De la guerre, Presenté et annoté par Bruno Colson (Paris: Perrin 2011), 148.

⁴ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated and edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976), 128, 177.

⁵ Friedrich von Bernhardi, Vom Kriege der Zukunft. Nach der Erfahrungen des Weltkrieges (Berlin: E.S. Mittler & Sohn 1920), 136–137.

⁶ Basil Liddell Hart, The Decisive Wars of History: A Study in Strategy (London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd 1929), which became The Strategy of the Indirect Approach (London: Faber & Faber 1942).

⁷ Basil Liddell Hart, ‘Strategy re-framed’, in When Britain Goes to War: Adaptability and Mobility (London, Faber & Faber 1932).

⁸ Joint Doctrine Publication 01: Joint Operations (Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, March 2004), para 208, 2-3–2-4.

⁹ Steven Jermy, Strategy for Action: Using Force Wisely in the 21st Century (London: Knightstone Publishing 2011), 327.

¹⁰ John Stone, Military Strategy: The Politics and Technique of War (London: Continuum, 2011), 4.

¹¹ Hervé Coutau-Bégarie, Traité de stratégie (6th edition, Paris: Economica 2008), 88–90.

¹² Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. to the Third (1976) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1999); Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2009).

¹³ Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1998). This paragraph reflects a conference on ‘Strategy and its making in early modern Europe’, held at the University of St Andrews in honour of Geoffrey Parker, 29–30 April 2016.

¹⁴ Commandant Bugnet, Foch Talks, translated by Russell Green (London: V. Gollancz Ltd 1929), 191.

¹⁵ Raymond Recouly, Marshal Foch: His Own Words on Many Subjects, translated by Joyce Davis (London: Thornton Butterworth 1929), 100, 128.

¹⁶ Jean-Jacques Langendorf, Faire la guerre: Antoine-Henri Jomini (2 vols, Geneva: Georg 2001–2004).

¹⁷ Raymond Aron, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz (2 vols, Paris: Gallimard 1976).

¹⁸ Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940, translated by Gerard Hopkins (New York: Norton 1999), 117–118. Bloch’s portrayal of French military education in the inter-war period overplays the influence of Napoleon and underplays the real effort to engage with the lessons of the First World War, but his more general argument stands.

¹⁹ Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911), edited by Eric Grove (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1988), 167. Lukas Milevski, The Evolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016) sees the origins of its subject in maritime strategy.

²⁰ John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1981); Isabel Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Making and Breaking International Law during the Great War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2014); Bernard Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy: Ideology, Interest, and Sea Power during the Pax Britannica (Boston: Allen & Unwin 1986).

²¹ Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 97.

²² Thomas Hippler, Bombing the People: Giulio Douhet and the Foundations of Airpower Strategy, 1884–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013).

²³ F. H. Hinsley, et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (4 vols, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office 1979–1990), 3/2, 365; Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (London: Allen Lane 2014).

²⁴ William Burr, ‘National Security Council’, in John Whiteclay Chambers II (ed.), The Oxford Companion to American Military History (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), 470.

²⁵ Hal Brands, What Good is American Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2014). Ionut Popescu, Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2017) makes the case for responding to contingency in grand strategy.

²⁶ House of Commons Public Administration Committee, Who does UK National Strategy? First report of session 2010–11, HC435 (18 October 2010), 8–9; Williamson Murray, ‘Thoughts on Grand Strategy’, in Williamson Murray, Richard H. Sinnreich and James Lacey (eds.), The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Policy, Diplomacy, and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011), 1.

²⁷ Exceptions to this generalisation include Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the 21st Century (Abingdon: Routledge 2013), Chris Parry, Super Highway: Sea Power in the 21st Century (London: Elliott and Thompson 2014), and Daniel Moran and James Russell (eds.), Maritime Strategy and Global Order: Markets, Resources, Security (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press 2016).

²⁸ H. Norman Schwarzkopf, The Autobiography: It Doesn’t Take a Hero, written with Peter Petrie (London: Bantam Books 1992), 97, 145, 521–522, 526, 527.

²⁹ James Mattis, ‘USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance for Effects-Based Operations’, Parameters (Fall 2008), 18–25, 18.

³⁰ Two of the most forceful critics were Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), and Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn: America’s Deadly Embrace of Counter-Insurgency (New York: The New Press 2013).

³¹ Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 5.

³² Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 8.

³³ Everett Carl Dolman, Pure Strategy: Power and Principle in the Space and Information Age (London: Frank Cass 2003), 188–194, makes the case for strategy as an art.

³⁴ Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 9.

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Hew Strachan

Hew Strachan, FBA, FRSE, Hon. D. Univ (Paisley) has been Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews since 2015. He is a Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he taught from 1975 to 1992, before becoming Professor of Modern History at Glasgow University from 1992 to 2001. He was Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College 2002-15 (where he is now an Emeritus Fellow), and Director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War 2003–2012. In 2010 he chaired a task force on the implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant for the Prime Minister. In 2011 he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in War Studies at the University of Cambridge and became a specialist adviser to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the National Security Strategy. In 2016 he was awarded the Pritzker Prize for Lifetime Achievement for Military Writing. His recent publications include The Politics of the British Army (1997); The First World War: To Arms (2001); The First World War: a New Illustrated History (2003); and The Direction of War (2013).