STRATEGIC STUDIES AND ITS ASSUMPTIONS

The Nature of Strategic Studies

'Strategy', as one of the contributors to this volume has remarked, 'is a deadly
business'.' It is concerned with the darker side of human nature, in that it examines
the way in which military power is used by governments in the pursuit of their
interests. Now because military power refers to the capacity to kill, to maim, to
coerce and destroy, it follows that it is a crude instrument. Its use determines not
who is right in any dispute, but whose will is going to prevail, and its utility arises,
fundamentally, out of the depressing fact that human beings, their property, and the
society in which they live are easily destroyed. It is this fragility of human beings and
their artefacts which is exploited by those who wield military power.

Inevitably pain, suffering, destruction and death are close to the surface of strategic
analysis, though they may not figure prominently in the literature of the subject.
Various writers have commented on the way in which the horrors and miseries of
war are submerged in the neutral, anodyne jargon of strategic terminology.
Strategists talk of 'taking out' cities, of making 'counterforce' strikes with 'collateral
damage, of crossing 'thresholds', and of engaging in tactical nuclear 'exchanges'. It is
easy to forget that what is being discussed in this clinical fashion is the
extermination of thousands - perhaps millions of human beings by the most dreadful
weapons ever invented. There is no need to labour the point, but no student should
forget the grim realities which lie behind the vocabulary of strategic studies.

For the man in the street, strategy is intimately connected with planning wars and
fighting them. It is a military activity par excellence in which high-ranking officers
plan the overall conduct of wars. This popular impression is reinforced by
Clausewitz's definition of strategy as 'the employment of battle as the means
towards the attainment of the object of war. But in a very important sense the man in
the street has got it wrong. To be sure, strategy is about war, and the conduct of
military compaigns, but it is about much more than that. Fundamentally, it is about
the ways in which military power may be used to achieve political objectives - and it
cannot be repeated too often that waging war is only one of the ways in which
military power can be used to implement political goals. It is for this reason that
strategy is much wider than the study of wars and military campaigns. The German
Von Moltke described strategy as "the practical adaptation of the means placed at a
general's disposal to the attainment of the object in view"," and the same thought
was reiterated by Liddell Hart who believed that strategy was 'the art of distributing
and applying military means to fulfil the ends of policy'. Both of these definitions
have the advantage of releasing strategy from its traditional strait jacket-war-by
acknowledging that military power can be equally purposeful in peacetime.
Indeed, in the nuclear age, when modern technology threatens to turn any war into
Armageddon, to concentrate on planning wars is little short of madness. Today there
is no alternative to peace, and this being so, as Liddell Hart put it, 'old concepts and
old definitions of strategy have become not only obsolete but non-sensical with the
development of nuclear weapons. To aim at winning a war, to take victory as your
object, is no more than a state of lunacy. Given the power of modern weapons it is
the prime task of strategic doctrine not to wage war but to create alternatives less
catastrophic than thermonuclear holocaust.

Today, purely military definitions of strategy have virtually disappeared because they
failed to convey either the flavour or the scope of a subject that straddles the
spectrum of war and peace, and is as much concerned with statesmanship as with
generalship. However, though strategy is more about peace than it is about war, it is
generally recognised that if we fail to manage the former, then some thought must
be given to surviving the latter.

Any satisfactory definition of strategy must take into account the peacetime
applications of strategic thinking, and must locate the use of military force in the
more general context of foreign policy-making. Robert Osgood has suggested that
"military 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 support foreign policy most
effectively by overt, covert, and tacit means." And André Beaufre has, on occasion,
spoken of the need for the West to devise an overall strategy which would
incorporate and co-ordinate the political, economic and military instruments of
policy." As Michael Howard has said, for Beaufre the whole field of international
relations constituted a battlefield in which the Communist powers, thwarted in the
use of force by the nuclear stalemate, were attacking the West by indirect, political
manoeuvres such as infiltration and subversion. It was only natural, therefore, for our
strategies to include a political component.

There is some danger that political interpretations such as these may make it
impossible to distinguish strategic studies either from the study of foreign
policy-making, or even the wider subject of international politics. Indeed, the
distinctions are not clear-cut. If anything they reflect differences of emphasis rather
than differences in subject matter.

Though he focuses his attention on the way in which military force is exploited, either
by its use or non-use, the strategist must acquaint himself with the political problems
which provide the context for strategic theorising. The connection between politics
and strategic studies has been well expressed by Raymond Aron. 'Strategic thought
draws its inspiration each century, or rather at each moment in history, from the
problems which events themselves pose." Without such background knowledge,
strategic analysis is almost meaningless. Today, strategic thought is so inextricably
entwined with international politics that it would be misleading and dangerous to try
to separate the two subjects.

Those without much understanding of politics often have too crude and simplistic a
picture of state behaviour either to understand the context in which strategic
problems arise, or to appreciate the analysis which deals with them. In strategic
studies the ability to argue logically and to follow a piece of strategic reasoning is
very important, but even more important is the elusive, almost indefinable quality of
political judgement which enables a man to evaluate a piece of analysis and locate it
in a wider political framework. If this intuitive feel can be taught at all, it can only be
done by familiarising a student with political behaviour. That is why, throughout this
book, and particularly in the chapters which describe the defence policy of the major
powers, a deliberate attempt has been made to relate military policy to political
events.

It follows from this that strategy is not a discipline in its own right. It is a subject with
a sharp focus - the role of military power - but no clear perimeter, and it is parasitic
upon arts, science and social science subjects for the ideas and concepts which its
practitioners have developed. It is perhaps worth noting that Herman Kahn was
originally a physicist, Thomas Schelling an economist, Albert Wohlstetter a
mathematician, and Henry Kissinger a historian.

The definitions so far considered have all emphasised that strategy is fundamentally
about 'means' rather than 'ends'. It has been assumed that settling political goals is
the proper business of politicians, and that strategic planners are only interested in
how given military resources can usefully be applied to the achievement of those
goals. Their job, it has been argued, is to harness military power to the national
interest; but their mandate does not extend to determining what, in a particular
situation, the national interest is. The subordination of strategy to politics which is
implicit in this analysis is now generally accepted. If war is to be a functional thing
and not pointless violence, then the politician must be in control of it. Clausewitz's
famous recommendation that war ought to be a continuation of political intercourse
with an ad mixture of other means has rightly become the most famous of all
strategic aphorisms.

In democratic societies few would wish to challenge either the supremacy of political
direction or the view that strategic analysis should concentrate on identifying and
evaluating the various choices available to states in their use of military power for
ends clearly defined by political authorities; but there are certain dangers in
completely prohibiting strategists from participating in high-level political planning.
While it may be legitimately argued that politicians rather than their military and civil
servants should decide the goals of democratically controlled foreign policy, they
should not do so without consulting those, who by virtue of their specialist
knowledge, are best able to think through the implication of pursuing particular
policies and who, though unqualified to pass comment on their desirability, are well
able to advise as to their practicability and consequences. Strategists have become
government advisers as well as government executives.

To be sure, politicians must exercise ultimate control, but the decisions they arrive at
ought to be moderated by the advice they receive from specialists. If, as Clemenceau
is reputed to have claimed, war is much too serious to be left to the generals, it is
also too serious to be left to the politicians. What is required is a continuous
dialogue between political and military minds. Henry Kissinger has made a
convincing plea for this dialogue.

A separation of strategy and policy can only be achieved to the detriment of both. It
causes military power to become identified with the most absolute applications of
power and it tempts diplomacy into an over-concern with finesse. Since the difficult
problems of national policy are in the area where political, economic, psychological
and military factors overlap we should give up the fiction that there is such a thing as
'purely' military advice.

Kissinger looked forward to the day when, 'At every stage of formula- tion of strategy,
doctrine would be considered as a combination of political, economic and military
factors replacing the incongruity of the present system which seeks to compromise
two incommensurables, "purely" military and "purely" political considerations.

At this point it may be worth emphasizing that the influence of civilian and military
strategists at the highest levels of political planning is no more a threat to the
democratic process than the influence of any government advisers. In fact
canvassing specialist opinion is simply an indication that the government is
exploiting its advisory resources properly without losing its rightful monopoly of
decision-making power. However, some commentators have seen the movement of
military and academic strategists into and out of government departments as part of
an insidious plot to undermine the democratic process. A good deal of the literature
about the American 'industrial military complex' and the 'war-peace establishment'
which is part of it,
has a note of hysteria about it, but a number of serious writers have identified a
threat to democracy. Harold Lasswell, for example, has argued that the arena of
world politics is moving towards the domina- tion of 'specialists in violence"." His
famous 'garrison state hypothesis' predicts the growing and anti-democratic
influence of 'specialists in violence' in the decision-making process. A proper
discussion of the 'garrison state hypothesis' and the influence of the 'industrial
military complex' in American decision-making is beyond the scope of this book.
What must be said, however, is that in theory at least, the influence of civilian and
military specialists in strategy need not threaten democratic values.

Once the meaning of strategy was widened to incorporate a political as well as a

military component, and to include analysis of the peace- time uses of military
power, it was inevitable that the armed services' monopoly of the subject would be
broken. Since the Second World War most of the creative thinking in the field of
strategic studies has not been done by serving officers in war colleges, but by
civilians in research insitutes and universities. It was soon recognised that military
experience was a much less important qualification for studying strategy in its new,
wide sense than a trained analytical mind grounded in history or one of the social
sciences. The foundations of contempor- ary strategic thought were laid in a handful
of American universities and research institutes like the Rand Corporation. Scholars
like Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, Henry Kissinger, William Kaufmann, Herman
Kahn and Thomas Schelling, have made an indelible, profound, and widely
acknowledged imprint on the subject.

Around them has developed an enormous industry of specialists dealing with issues
of war and peace. This intellectual community is sometimes described as the
'war-peace establishment'. It is, as Herzog comments, not an establishment in the
usual sense of an institution, but 'one of ideas and theory, of scientists, seers and
strategists, who have worked out the form and rationale of present American
defence and foreign policy.13 Within this subculture are dozens of research
institutions preoccupied with military doctrines, technology and foreign policy, and
hundreds of academics and government officials concerned with national security.
Throughout the Western world more and more scholars are taking an interest in
questions of defence.

In Britain, the number of individuals professionally engaged in the study of strategic

questions is still not very large, but it is growing, and there are a good many civil
servants, journalists, and students of political science who are sufficiently interested
in the subject to con- tribute to its development. In Britain there are no counterparts
to research institutions like the Rand Corporation or the Hudson Institute, but the
International Institute for Strategic Studies in particular, and to a lesser extent the
Royal United Services Institution, have both contributed to the development of the
subject and a growing public awareness of its importance. The research output, both
classified and unclassified, of this international group of scholars and students is
enormous, and in the English language there is now a formidable and impressive
body of contemporary strategic literature.
Although scholars in the strategic studies field tend to know each other, at least by
reputation, they do not always agree on how the subject should be taught, or even
where its central focus lies. Diver- gencies of opinion and different interests account
for the fact that different university departments put the emphasis in different
places. In Britain, for example, university departments differ significantly in the way
in which they approach the subject. At Aberdeen, particular attention is paid to
defence economics; at King's College, London, a more historical treatment is
favoured; at Lancaster there is an orientation towards defence planning. Here in
Aberystwyth the department has concentrated on strategic theory.

Not only are there differences of opinion about the content of the subject and how it
should be taught, but there are also differences of opinion as to whether 'strategic
studies' is the most appropriate descrip- tion of the subject matter taught in its
name. Some argue that the traditional narrow military usage of the word strategy has
given 'strate- gic studies' a military connotation which, if adopted, delimits the field of
strategy far too narrowly for an age which places emphasis of non-violent responses
to conflict situations. The title adopted for the subject should not preclude the
possibility of examining non-violent techniques of conflict. It is for this reason that
'war studies' is equally misleading as a description for a subject which devotes at
least as much time to thinking about the preservation of peace as it does to the
conduct of war.

Attempts have been made to avoid the ambiguities inherent in the term 'strategic
studies' by thinking up alternative titles, but some of the new titles also have their
disadvantages. 'Conflict resolution', borrowed from the journal of that name, is
sometimes suggested as a reasonable substitute, but this phrase is both too wide
and too narrow for its purpose. It is too wide in the sense that it does not accurately
specify the kind of conflict students of strategic studies are interested in, and it is
too narrow in the sense that it implies that they are exclusively concerned with the
problem of resolving conflicts. The word "resolution' has precriptive overtones which
are not entirely appropriate for an academic activity concerned primarily with
understanding the world rather than with improving it. "National security studies',
which is another of the titles sometimes considered, suffers from the dis- advantage
of implying an actor-orientated study which revolves around questions of national
defence. "Strategic studies' is not so ethnocentric as that. Perhaps, in view of the
difficulties involved in finding suitable alternative titles, there is something to be said
for sticking to 'strategic studies' and hoping that as this title becomes more widely
used, its meaning will become settled and the misleading connotations will
disappear.

Some Assumptions Underlying Contemporary Strategic Thought

But in spite of these differences of interpretation and emphasis, and in spite of
serious differences of opinion on particular strategic issues, it is fair to say that most
contemporary strategists in the Western world belong, in an important sense, to the
same intellectual tradition. Their minds are tuned to the same wavelength; they share
a common set of assumptions about the nature of international political life, and the
kind of reasoning which is appropriate to handling political military problems. That is
why, though strategists sometimes disagree with each other, they rarely
misunderstand each other.

The assumptions which underpin a good deal of contemporary strategic thought are
rarely articulated, and may not even be appreciated by those who actually engage in
strategic analysis. It takes real effort to identify and sort out the philosophical
underpinnings of any subject, and more often than not the only consequence of this
painful exercise is to undermine the intellectual confidence of those who do it.
Neverthe- less, just as an argument is only as strong as the premises upon which it is
founded, so a body of strategic analysis is only as sound as the assumptions on
which it is based. For the sake of his intellectual integrity and his peace of mind,
therefore, the serious student is bound to articulate, if not to question, some of the
major assumptions upon which the sophisticated edifice of post-war strategic
doctrine has been laboriously built.

Realism

Perhaps the most pervasive assumptions underlying contemporary strategy are

those which are associated with the theory of political behaviour known as 'realism'.
This philosophical tradition, which was largely a reaction on the idealism of the
1920s and 1930s, has domin- ated the literature of international relations since the
end of the Second World War, and it is now implicit in most writing on the subject.

It is impossible to summarise the body of ideas and attitudes normally associated

with 'realism' in international politics, because even among the self-professed
realists there are important differences. But the general flavour of the realist position
is unmistakable. Realists tend to be conservative in their views, that is to say, they
see virtue in evolutionary change which is sufficiently slow for that which is best in
international society to be preserved and they are cautious both in their estimate of
what can be done, and what ought to be done, to ameliorate international
relationships. Realists tend to accept a world subdivided into independent sovereign
states as being the normal, if not the permanent, condition of international society,
and they consider Realpolitik an inescapable feature of the international
environment. They are sceptical about the possibilities of permanent peace, and
suspicious of all grandiose schemes of revolutionary change. Ideas for world
government, general and comprehensive disarmament and collective security are
carefully scrutinized and rejected as impractical, perhaps even undesirable, solutions
to the world's ailments. As far as their contribution to peace and international
security is concerned, even the activities of the United Nations and its subsidiary
organs are regarded with some scepticism.

The realists, disillusioned with nineteenth-century ideas of inevitable progress in

international relations, are nonetheless incapable of pointing. with any degree of
confidence, in the direction in which progress lies. Many would sympathise with M.
Oakeshott when he says, in that justly celebrated inaugural of his,
in political activity then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither
harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed
destination. The enter- prise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend
and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional
manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.

Perhaps the main reasons why the realists entertain minimal expecta- tions of state
behaviour are to be found in their conceptions of human nature and international
society. Men are seen to be inherently destructive, selfish, competitive, and
aggressive, and the international system one that is torn by conflict and full of
uncertainty and disorder. R. Niebuhr, a founding father of the realist school and one
of its most brilliant exponents, speaks of man's 'stubbon pride', his 'egotism', 'will to
power', 'brute inheritance', and of course, his 'original sin'. For the realists there is an
element of tragedy in human relations. In the words of Herbert Butterfield, 'behind
the great conflicts of mankind is a terrible human predicament which lies at the heart
of the story.'16 George Kennan also regarded statesmen as 'actors in a tragedy
beyond their making or repair."

The realists are quick to point out the limitations of international law and to
emphasise the disintegrating, anarchic influences at work in an intractable
international system. It is not really surprising that Hobbes is one of the realists'
favourite philosophers, since his conception of the 'state of nature' resembles their
conception of international society, and they share similar views of human nature. It
was Hobbes who described the human condition as 'a restless struggle for power
which ceaseth only in death'.18 The realists also emphasise the ubiquity of the
power struggle, and their literature is dominated by the concepts of national power
and interest. Conflict is regarded as an inescapable condition of international life.
This simple assumption is the starting point of realism. World like 'harmony'and
'co-operation' do not come easily to realist lips and the realists are not much given to
moralising about international politics.
In short, the realists take exception to those who put too much faith in human
reason, to those idealists who refuse to recognise the world as it is, and who talk in
pious platitudes about the world as it ought to be. In the words of one writer, 'Realism
is a clear recognition of the limits of morality and reason in politics: the acceptance
of the fact that political realities are power realities and that power must be
countered with power; that self-interest is the primary datum in the action of all
groups and nations."

In defence of the realists it must be admitted that they do not approve of the hard,
ruthless world which they describe. They simply regard it as a given; something
which must be accepted before any progress can be made. In the words of one of
the founders of political realism, Hans Morgenthau, 'the world, imperfect as it is from
a rational point of view, is the result of forces inherent in human nature. To improve
the world one must work with these forces not against them."20 But a student may
be forgiven for seeing pessimism, even cynicism, in realist writing, and perhaps even
a detached observer would detect in it a note of quiet satisfaction at the
predicament of mankind.

Most of the realists' ideas have been absorbed, either consciously or unconsciously,
by contemporary strategic thinkers. Indeed, for those whose politically formative
years followed the Second World War, it was impossible to escape the all-pervasive
influence of this powerful school of thought. Undoubtedly one of the reasons for its
widespread influence was that it fitted the grim mood and temper of international
politics in the Cold War era. Those American strategists who laid the foundations of
contemporary strategic thought in the late 1950s and early 1960s operated in an
environment where realism was the ortho- doxy, and almost without exception they
swallowed its precepts. It is perfectly possible, for example, to connect the demise of
general and comprehensive disarmament as a practical goal for policy-makers and
the rise of arms control with the death of idealism and the rise of realism. Against a
realist background, the idealist view that peace and security could best be achieved
by reducing or abolishing the weapons with which men fight, had a curiously dated
and impractical ring about it. Arms control, that is to say, the successful
management of weapons policy, seemed to offer more practical though less
ambitious prospects for peace. It is fair to say that the concept of disarmament
which was developed in the inter-war years and is typified by the writings of Mr.
Philip Noel Baker,21 is now almost dead. Today we are all arms controllers, and the
realists who forced us to face up to hard facts and to settle for less than perfect
solutions undoubtedly had something to do with it.

It might be argued that some strategists absorbed only the most crude
power-political principles of what, after all, was a very sophisti cated and profound
intellectual position. The realists were rarely cynical; their ideas were always
tempered by a real concern for humanity and by a genuine intellectual humility. Both
Niebuhr and Morgenthau, for example, agonised about the human condition and their
writing was tempered by deeply-held ideas of Christian charity. But some of those
who absorbed the raw aspects of realism, rejected or failed to appreciate the
movement's emphasis on balance, on enlightened self-interest, and on sympathy and
vision. In an interview conducted in the 1960s Hans Morgenthau commented, "Yes,
realism helped lay down the basis for deterrence in making the use of force
acceptable to liberals who were squeamish about using it. But there is no doubt that
realist ideas have been taken over by the military. My own ideas have been made to
look harder than they are in this context."

Accepting a selective and simplistic version of a profound and humane intellectual

position led some strategic writers to extol not just the virtues of power but only the
virtues of military power, and to develop an almost paranoic interpretation of Soviet
intentions and capabilities. The influential writings of Cold War warriors like Mr.
Straus Hupé and his colleague W. A. Kinter typify this kind of distorted, cynical
realism, and to capture the flavour of the so-called 'Forward Strategy School',
students might care to examine 'A Forward Strategy for America" and "American
Strategy for the Nuclear Age 23 - both of which are predicated upon fairly hair-raising,
"hawkish' analysis of Soviet behaviour, and both of which recommend exceptionally
tough policies against the Russians.

Moral Neutrality

Realist writing did not concern itself very much with moralising about the way states
ought to behave, though most of its proponents were sensitive to moral issues and
some were acutely so. Similarly, many contemporary strategists have failed to
allocate priority to the moral aspects of strategic policy, and as a result much
contemporary strategic writing has an air of moral neutrality about it. The clinical,
cool, unemotional way in which strategists analyse modern war, and contem- plate
highly destructive and dangerous policies which may result in the death of millions,
outrages ordinary men of good will who cannot help feeling that those who reflect so
objectively on military violence must be devoid of human sentiment and must
actually approve of the grim situations they envisage. This is an understandable
reaction, but it is worth stressing that research into a subject in no way implies
approval of it.

It is a curious fact that when doctors study malignant carcinomas, no one assumes
that they are in favour of cancer, but when political
scientists examine war it is assumed all too frequently that they approve of it. In fact
few of them do, and then only as a very last resort, in desperate circumstances.
Hedley Bull spoke for most writers in the field when he wrote, "war appears to me,
here, now, something evil, in which any kind of acquiescence is, in some measure,
morally degrading. Organised violence itself, and the habits and attitudes associated
with threatening it and preparing for it are ugly and alien. And yet the accusation of
moral insensitivity lingers on. Philip Green is only one of those who claim that for
years most of the deterrent theorists were and some still are "egregiously guilty of
avoiding the moral issue altogether, or misrepresenting it"

I believe that there is a sense in which those who criticise the strategists for paying
insufficient attention to moral questions are missing the point. To be sure,
contemporary strategic thought does not dwell on the moral issues raised by
strategic policies. However, this is not because strategists consider moral questions
unimportant; indeed it is difficult to disagree with Hedley Bull's assessment that
'strategists. as a class are neither any less nor any more sensitive to moral
considera- tions than are other intelligent and educated persons in the West. If they
relegate moral questions to the periphery of their subject it is either because their
attention is focused elsewhere or because they recognise that their intellectual
training may not have equipped them to deal with or consider the enormous moral
issues involved.

Most strategic writers readily admit that 'The Moral Aspects of Military Power' is a
vitally important subject, and they are delighted when theologians, philosophers, and
political scientists devote their attention to it. But it is a quite separate subject from
strategic studies in that it requires a quite different expertise, and it is therefore
unfair to blame specialists in the latter for their lack of competence in it. No one in
his right mind would blame a butcher for being unable to make bread. Nor would
anyone accuse him of wilfully underestimating the importance of bread just because
he did not bake it himself.

Klaus Knorr was absolutely right when, in introducing Herman Kahn's book On
Thermonuclear War, he wrote that it is not a book about the moral aspects of military
problems'. It was, therefore, somewhat unfair of J.R. Newman in Scientific American
to cast his criticisms in moral terms: "this is a moral tract on mass murder, how to
commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify it.25 The point that escaped Mr.
Newman is that strategic analysis, like philosophy. leaves the world as it is. To
describe the rules of the game known as 'strategic thinking' no more implies taking
sides in it or making moves within it than describing the rules of golf implies playing
a round of it.

Of course, to argue that strategic studies does not-and ought not- to focus on moral
questions, is not to argue that there are no ethical stances implicit in strategic
doctrine; there are. Philip Green has done much to expose the moral assumptions
which lie behind deterrence theory.29 The nuclear deterrers, he argues, consciously
or unconsciously adhere to the ethical values held by their employers and clients. To
be blunt, they assume that in certain circumstances it is justifiable to kill innocent
persons. That may or may not be a morally virtuous stance, but it is very obviously a
moral stance.

Behind most strategic policies lie moral positions on the question of whether, and in
what circumstances, it is right to hurt and kill both combatants and non-combatants.
And if, in certain circumstances, strategic analysts are prepared to risk war, it is not
because they are insensitive to moral considerations, but because their moral values
are so important to them that even war must be risked in their defence.

Peace and Security

The truth of the matter is that 'strategic studies' is riddled with "value" assumptions
of one kind or another. One has only to think for a moment of the way strategic
analysts either consciously or unconsciously assume the desirability of one kind of
world rather than another to see that 'value' preferences lie behind their reasoning.
Almost without exception, for example, strategists share the view that 'peace" and
'security' are desirable goals, and direct their thoughts towards promoting them.
Elsewhere the writer has developed the argument that many contemporary strategic
doctrines are, in effect, simply different theories about how a peaceful and secure
world is best pursued.

Deterrence is the theory that peace and security can be promoted by threatening
potential enemies with unacceptable retaliatory damage. Disarmament is the theory
that peace and security can be achieved by reducing or abolishing the weapons with
which men fight. Arms con- trol is the theory that peace and security can be brought
about by the skilful management of weaponry. Limited war is the theory that peace
and security can be realized by controlling and limiting the amount of military force
used in any conflict. Crisis management is the theory that peace and security can be
promoted by developing techniques for handling international crises.

Precisely what is meant by the terms 'peace' and 'security' is, of course, open to
debate, as also are questions of their compatibility and relative importance. But that
some notion of these values underpins Western strategic thought is probably
indisputable.

In an international society where war is a powerful instrument of change, the overall

effect of attempting to preserve peace and promote security is to support the status
quo. For that reason Western strategic thought has a very conservative flavour about
it. Now the preservation of things as they are is an understandable goal for those
who are satisfied with the status quo- and, of course, to use Lord Annan's phrase, 'the
fat cats of the West" have every reason to be satisfied with it. But for millions of
underprivileged in Africa and Asia, to support

the status quo is to prop up an unjust system. Those who are desperately poor
naturally accuse Western states of caring everything for peace and nothing for
justice. For them, 'peace' and 'security' are undoubtedly important, but even more
important perhaps is 'social justice' - and contemporary strategic thought is not
much concerned with that. If for no other reason than this, Western strategic thought
may not carry much weight in large areas of the world.

It is perhaps worth stressing that there is nothing wrong with norma- tive studies. As
one political scientist put it, "there is no logical reason why a social philosopher
should not postulate any value he chooses provided only that he avows what he is
doing." In exposing the values implicit in strategic thought, students might care to
consider the logical status of all values. In particular, they should ask themselves
whether values reflect anything more than the personal prejudices and preferences
of those who hold them, and in what sense it is possible to describe some values as
"better" than others.

The Cold War

In much the same way that political realism forms the philosophic backdrop for
contemporary strategic throught, so does the Cold War pattern of international
politics provide the essential model for much strategic speculation. Ideas of
deterrence, arms control, limited war, flexible response, and crisis management were
all elaborated by scholars and practitioners whose ideas and thoughts were
decisively shaped and moulded by the intellectual climate of their time.

Fundamentally, strategic ideas and policies were designed to deal with a bi-polar
world dominated by the hostile relationship of the two superpowers. The United
States recognised only one enemy, the Soviet Union, and strategic policy was almost
entirely orientated towards containing the Soviet threat. Deterrence theory
concentrated on the strategic balance between the United States and the Soviet
Union. The central questions of the day related to the problem of acquiring and
maintaining effective retaliatory capability, and of perpetuating a stable balance in
the face of dramatic innovation in weapon technology. Arms control negotiations
were mainly American Soviet negotiations designed to control the arms race without
destabilis- ing deterrence. Whatever successes were recorded happened largely
because decision-makers in Washington and Moscow were able to agree. Whatever
failures occurred happened because the superpowers failed to agree. The doctrine
of limited war' wrestled with the problem of reconciling the possibility of
American-Soviet conflict with the near certainity of nuclear oblivion if neither side
practiced restraint. Techniques of 'crisis management' were largely developed to deal
with an American-Soviet crisis on the model of the Cuban missile crisis. Strategies of
'massive retaliation', 'pause', 'trip-wire', and 'flexible response', were similarly
designed to meet the requirements of East-West confrontation. Thus, behind almost
all Western military thought and giving point to it, lay the assumptions of Cold War -
Soviet intransigence, and a bi-polar world permanently divided into two armed camps
led by two superpowers whose leaders were the only significant decision-makers.

In retrospect at least, the Cold War was a remarkably stable period of international
politics, and it is easy to sympathise with those who came to regard it as a
permanent feature of the international landscape. But in international politics nothing
lasts for ever, and through the 1960s con- frontation gave way to détente and to a
softer climate of East-West relations. As the language and terminology of Cold War
passed into history, the talk was of 'peaceful coexistence', of 'force reductions" and
of 'security conferences'. The United States and the Soviet Union have now become,
in the words of Marshal Shulman, 'limited adver- saries'. They enjoy an 'adverse
partnership', and no longer confront each other across the Iron Curtain. Furthermore,
as the forces of 'poly- centrism' undermine the unity of both NATO and the Warsaw
Pact, and as other new powers rise to great and even superpower status, new and
powerful centres of strategic decision-making may emerge to destroy the old bi-polar
world so confidently assumed by much traditional strategic literature.

It remains to be seen how well the strategic ideas of the 1950s and 1960s translate
into the very different world conditions of the late 1970s and 1980s. There are signs
that the basic intellectual apparatus is standing up well to the tests of time. We may
agree with Hedley Bull that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that even though
the civilian strategists have sometimes committed errors they have served us well.
But it would be surprising if no modifications were required to ideas borne in
radically different international and technological circumstances. It will be interesting
to see, for example, how well the idea of deterrence stands up in a world of many
nuclear powers, and how far NATO strategy will have to be modified to
accommodate the new international circumstances implicit in mutual force
reductions and the settlement of outstanding European security problems.

Conceivably it will not be the older generation of strategic writers who will modify or
rewrite the theories. Their minds may be too set in traditional patterns of thought.
Some may be so used to thinking in Cold War terms that they are incapable of
acquiring a new set of assumptions more relevant to changed conditions. They are
suffering. not from hardening of the arteries, but from a more common and equally
serious disease once aptly described by Professor Charles Manning as 'hardening of
the categories'.

Rationality
On the one hand there are those who attack strategic studies because it assumes a
pessimistic view of human nature and diminishes the role of
reason in the affairs of mankind, and on the other hand there are those who accuse
the strategists of excessive reliance on human rationality. The latter group of critics
are supported by the fact that a casual glance through the literature of strategic
studies does seem to suggest that many strategic arguments are underpinned by an
assumption of 'ration- ality'. The works of Herman Kahn, Thomas Schelling, Glenn
Snyder, Albert Wohlstetter, and others, all have a scientific, reasonable, flavour about
them, and they make constant and explicit references to the concept of rationality, to
'rational choice', to 'rational opponents', to 'rational decision-making', to 'rational
behaviour'. In the words of Hedley Bull 'a great deal of argument about military
strategy postulates rational action of a kind of strategic man, a man who, on further
acquaintance reveals himself as a university professor of unusual intellectual
subtlety.

Now the most usual concept of rationality is that it is a process of means-ends

analysis. By that is meant that a man is behaving rationally when his actions are
calculated to bring about the ends which he desires. Thus, according to Snyder,
'rationality may be defined as choosing to act in the manner which gives best
promise of maximising one's value position on the basis of a sober calculation of
potential gains and losses, and probabilities of enemy actions.34 Of course,
theoretically
rational behaviour involves more than that. It involves the selection, from among
alternative possible actions, of that which, from the point of view of an omniscient
and objective observer, is most likely to promote the value pursued. It is to be noted
that, strictly speaking, rationality cannot be subjectively assessed. Even a lunatic
may think his behaviour is rational in the sense of being calmly calculated to
promote his interest, but because he has a distorted image of reality, because, to put
it mildly, he is not in possession of all the relevant facts, actions conceived in the
light of his image have little relevance to the real world and produce totally
unforeseen consequences therein.

The international crisis which a balanced and sane statesman may find himself
dealing with, and in the context of which his behaviour seems rational, may not be
the real crisis, but simply the statesman's mental distortion of it, and for this reason
his behaviour will, to an objective, omniscient observer, seem inappropriate and
irrational, if not entirely inexplicable. However, in the context of strategic analysis,
rational behaviour refers to behaviour in which the actors try to maximise their value
positions, as well as to behaviour in which they do maximise their value positions.
It follows from the above definition that the term rational is most appropriately
applied to the process of achieving a goal or value, rather than to the goal itself. One
cannot, for example, comment on the rationality of 'suicide' or 'survival' or 'security'
as human goals. One can only comment on the rationality of the means chosen to
pursue those values. Perhaps the only sense in which it is possible to talk about the
rationality or irrationality of particular human goals is in the context of a total value
system. It is irrational, for example, though by no means uncommon, to hold a value
system which is internally inconsistent in the sense that it implies the simultaneous
pursuit of incompatible objectives.

At the time of the Abyssinian crisis, Churchill put his finger on one such
inconsistency in British foreign policy. Speaking of Baldwin, he said, 'First the Prime
Minister had declared that sanctions meant war; secondly, he was resolved that
there must be no war; and thirdly, he decided upon sanctions.' What Churchill was
pointing out was that a policy of peace at almost any price and a policy of collective
security are logically incompatible, and hence that any value system which
incorporated those incompatible individual values was irrational even though it might
be shared by many people. And today there must be a good many voters who favour
increased national security and reduced taxation without realising the dilemma
inherent in trying to have one's cake and eat it. Not all men, not even all statesmen,
are sufficiently clear-minded to think through the logical implications of their values
in order to iron out any inconsistencies, and to arrange goals in a compatible and
hierarchical order.

Not only are men incapable of neatly ordering their priorities, they are, for some of
the time, incapable of making rational choices of the kind hinted at in Snyder's
definition. After all, men are creatures of passion as well as reason. They are
capricious; they have impulses of rage, indignation, revenge, pity and altruism - all
emotions which may actually undermine their ability to choose those policies which
would maximise their values. In other words, strategic decision-makers are fallible
human beings, and under conditions of stress, even perhaps under normal
circumstances, they may not behave in a rational, value- maximising, way. As Hedley
Bull has commented:

the decisions of governments on matters of peace and war.... do not always reflect a
careful weighing of long-range considerations, or a mastery of the course of events:...
governments appear to... stumble about, groping and half-blind, too preoccupied with
surviving from day to day even to perceive the direction in which they are heading, let
alone steer away from it.

If strategic man is a fiction, then surely an analysis which. assumes rational

behaviour in all circumstances is likely to be at best mistaken and at worst downright
dangerous. However, this conclusion can only be reached by fudging the vital
distinction between strategic policy- making and strategic analysis. No strategic
policy-maker ever assumes that decision-makers are wholly rational all of the time;
only that they are not totally irrational some of the time. Strategic policies are
certainly not predicated on an assumption that statesmen are one hundred per cent
rational. In deterrence, for example, the 'assured destruction' threatened by American
deterrent capability is deliberately massive because the aim is to deter not just sane,
reasonable men who could perhaps be deterred by the threat of minor retaliatory
damage, but half-crazy, unreasonable men, who are likely to heed nothing short of
massive threats. As Herman Kahn puts it, 'we should want a safety factor in
deterrence systems so large as to impress even the irrational and irresponsible with
the degree of their irrationality and therefore the need for caution.

In essence, rationality may boil down to two common-sense proposi tions. First, that
it is sensible to assume that a statesman involved in a conflict will prefer strategic
postures which seem to minimise damage to his country, and second, that it is
sensible to believe that this preference will be shared by his opponent. The strategies
of "limited war' and 'deterrence' are certainly predicated on such assumptions, as
also are the doctrines of "controlled escalation', and 'counterforce targetting'.

Now strategic analysts - who are engaged in a very different activity from strategic
decision-makers - do sometimes assume rationality. They do this, not because they
believe decision-makers will always act rationally, but because, for the purposes of
analysis it is very difficult to make any other assumption. In short, the value of the
rationality assumption is in its explanatory rather than its predictive power. It
demonstrates the logic in strategic postures, but it offers no guarantees that
statesmen will abide by that logic. Failure to distinguish between the perfectly
sensible assumption of rationality in strategic analysis and the quite foolish
assumption of rationality in strategic policy- making has led to much confusion
amongst students of strategy. What this means is that strategy is pursued at two
levels. First it is pursued at the purely rational level at which attention is focused on
reasonable, conscious, artful behaviour motivated by the cold calculation of
interests, and second, it is pursued at a level which examines the participants in a
conflict in all their complexity, that is to say, with regard to conscious and
unconscious behaviour, and with regard to psychological motivations as well as
logical calculations.
For the first kind of analysis it is sometimes convenient to assume a 'strategic man'
who evaluates every conceivable action in terms of cost-gain analysis. 'If I do this, he
will do that, and if he does that, then I must do this. That is typical of a kind of
strategic reasoning which assumes both rationality and complete knowledge of the
value systems of all parties to a conflict. It is a useful exercise because it reduces a
complicated world to intellectually manageable proportions, and because it
highlights the logic of situations and policies. But when it comes to deciding policy,
the intellectual constraint of 'strategic man' is forced to make way for a more human
individual, and policies have to be designed to take account of his
unreasonableness.

Notwithstanding the assumptions which underlie it, strategy is an important subject

if only because the successful management of military power is a prerequisite for
survival in the nuclear age. Of course, there are some who are sceptical about the
prospects for regulating the use of military power and who would prefer to see it
abolished. It is, perhaps, debatable which group is the most optimistic - those who
believe that, with luck and good judgement, military power can be effectively
managed, or those who believe that, by sustained effort, the capacity for organized
violence can be abolished. The following pages should make it clear that the authors
belong to the former group: they believe that military power is an intrinsic part of the
international system, and though they do not believe that contemporary strategists
have produced any foolproof formulae for survival, they do believe that their ideas
may help us to cope with a dangerous and uncertain world.

2 THE EVOLUTION OF STRATEGIC THINKING

Ken Booth
It goes without saying that there have always been wars and that men, with a curious
mixture of horror and fascination, have always been interested in them. "It is a good
thing war is so terrible, or we should become too fond of it" was General Robert E.
Lee's first-hand observa- tion, while Thomas Hardy was expressing a common
attitude when he wrote that "War makes rattling good history but Peace is poor
reading." In view of this fascination with war it is in some ways surprising that the
comprehensive study of strategy (as opposed to the study of individual battles,
campaigns, wars, leaders, or weapons) is such a relatively recent activity, in terms of
the significance accorded to it, and the quantity of professional expertise invested in
it. With proliferating shelves of books and journals on the subject it is sometimes
difficult to realise that it is only since the mid-1950s that the subject has been
thoroughly studied on a wide scale.

Before discussing the chief milestones in the evolution of strategic thinking several
explanations are required. Firstly, strategy is used in this chapter in the sense in
which it was used by Liddell Hart: "The art of distributing and applying military
means to fulfil the ends of policy." Secondly, thinking is the focus of this chapter, but
it is necessary for understanding and appraisal to set this within the wider context of
such phenomena as changing technology, the history of war and war plans, and the
developing foreign policies of different countries. Thirdly, evolution does not imply
qualitative improvement, in the sense of "better" strategic thinking. It simply refers to
an unfolding of strategic happenings. The presence in strategic thinking over the last
thirty years of more "sophisticated" thinking, and the absence of massive chaos does
not prove that we have been qualitatively wiser strategic thinkers than our
forefathers. In the short run, Man the Military Animal may have been rescued from
disaster simply by the unprecedented enormity of the technological threat. Perhaps
we have not been worse than our forefathers, but it is far too soon to pro- claim that
we have become markedly "better".

Pre-Napoleonic writings

There is some profit to be gained, and certainly some interest to be had, from an
examination of some of the very early contributors to thinking about war and
strategy. Several names are outstanding, in particular
Sun Tzu, Thucydides, and Machiavelli. Sun Tzu's Art of War, written in China about
500 BC has been said by Liddell Hart, Britain's most prolific writer on strategy in
recent times, to outshine Clausewitz's On War in terms of its style and quality.
Equally important it is said to have been "the source" of Mao Tse-tung's strategic
theories and of the tactical doctrine of the Chinese armies. Thucydides (ca. 460-404
BC) who is often thought to have been the first important writer on war. can also be
recommended. The writings of Machiavelli (1469-1527), although limited in terms of
strategy, were informed by a long interest in military affairs, were full of military
imagery, and were an exhibition of the rationality and Realpolitik which many
students of this subject- certainly its practitioners - would regard as its starting
point.* In addition to theoretical writings such as these, military professionals have
traditionally searched the campaigns of famous commanders such as Frederick the
Great and Marlborough for insights into the dynamic interplay of material and
non-material factors in the prosecution of war.

Strategy in the Age of Nationalism and Industrialisation

The period of Napoleonic warfare has been generally considered to be a useful

beginning for students of modern strategy. In contrast to the limited wars of
manoeuvre which characterised the conflicts between the absolute monarchs of the
previous century, Napoleonic warfare presaged total war, being characterised by the
dynamic of escalation rather than the habit of moderation. In place of the old rules
and constraints, "modern" war tended to free itself of limitations. Modern war was
nourished by nationalism and ideological conviction; it became equipped with the
products of the industrial revolution; and it was manned by the system of universal
conscription. Although some of the old traditions of war remained for another
century, the Napoleonic era was the harbinger of the fact that warfare had ceased to
be another of the blood-sports of kings for dynastic trifles, and instead had become
a clash between whole peoples over their very political and physical independence.
In this new era of expanding force the concept of strategy grew from being the "art of
the general", focusing on the battlefield conduct of affairs, to being the business of
arranging a nation's whole disposition for war - a business which increasingly
intruded upon peacetime affairs.

The first writer to incorporate Napoleonic warfare into what became a major treatise
on strategy was the Swiss military theorist, Henri Jomini (1779-1869). His major
work, the Précis de l'art de la guerre (first published in 1838) was very influential in
the following half-century in teaching the armies of Europe and North America what
he thought were the lessons of the great struggles which he had witnessed. Because
Jomini wrote for directly practical purposes, he had a relevance to
nineteenth-century military life and thinking which is now difficult to recapture. With
the declining relevance of his prescriptions, however, he was overtaken in reputation
by Clausewitz. This change was widespread by about 1870, but had occurred much
earlier in Germany.

Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) has been widely acknowledged to be "the first
modern strategist". His chief work Vom Kriege (On War), which was first published in
1832, has been recognised in many countries to be a classic. It covers a wide range
of subjects, from the philosophical to the minutely practical. It deals with the nature
of war, the theory of war, the interplay of theory and practice, the relationship
between war and politics, the object of strategy, the relationship between the civilian
and military leaderships, the psychological aspects of war, battles, tactics, and is at
the same time full of military history. His discussion of these subjects (with the
exception of the directly practical side of battles and tactics, and the military history)
is still pertinent to thinking about war and strategy today. He provides no final
answers, but he is a good (if complicated) starting point for students of the subject
today. He cannot be ignored.

Clausewitz's importance lies largely in the fact that he has been the leading exponent
of what has been called the "political philosophy of war"; this is the view that war is
rational, national, and instrumental." As the leading exponent of the prevailing
philosophy of war in the last 150 years Clausewitz's importance has been secure. His
influence has been both direct and reinforcing. His most famous adherents were a
succession of German military leaders and some founders of Soviet strategic
doctrine, including Lenin.

Although Clausewitz's importance has been secure, his precise reputation has not
been: in fact, his reputation has fluctuated con- siderably, in both time and place. He
has been variously identified as a strategist who recommended pushing violence to
its utmost (the "Apostle of Violence"), as the man who created the climate in which
decision by bloody battle became accepted by political and military leaders alike as
the proper objective of a campaign and which reached its culmination in the attrition
of the Great War (the "Mahdi of Mass"). as a proponent of militarism, as a writer
whose ideas were betrayed by his style and the approach of his readers (the
"misunderstood Meta- physician") and as one of the keenest observers of war and
one of its most perceptive interpreters (the "great philosopher of war"). Much has
been said and done in his name. He has been important whether he has been
understood or misunderstood. Because of the contemporary significance of his
concern for the relationship between ends and means (as expressed in his most
famous dictum: "War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other
means") Clausewitz has been "rediscovered" in Western strategic studies in the last
fifteen years. And for better or worse, contemporary strategic writing has been
dominated by "neo-Clausewitzians".

Clausewitz stressed the importance of the ends-means problem. In the study of

means, the analysis of physical capabilities is a key con- sideration; increasingly, as
time has gone on, this has involved the need for a sound appreciation of
progressively more complex technological factors. For centuries the history of war
witnessed a marked technolo- gical stability; however, strategy in the middle of the
nineteenth century was marked by the advent of a phenomenon which has been a
dominating consideration since the Second World War, that is, the problem of
accommodating the problem of continuous technological innovation into existing
strategic concepts.

The forty years before 1870 saw a series of intense technological changes. The chief
developments were the growth of firepower and the increasing speed and efficiency
of transport and communications. Together, these developments upturned old
calculations about time, space, and destructive potential. The industrial revolution
which caused the changes in the equipment of war also altered the character of
Western society. In the period between 1815 and 1914 the most interest- ing war
was the American Civil War (1861-65). As the first war fought with the new military
products of industrialisation and the fervour of the age of nationalism and ideology,
its most significant feature was not the action on the battlefields but the economic,
industrial, and general staying power of modern socieites.

Those responsible for strategic doctrine in the chief European armies in the second
half of the nineteenth century did not perceive the potential significance of the
American Civil War. Instead, they were much impressed by the rapid and decisive
wars of the Prussian Army under the influence of Helmuth Von Moltke 10 against
Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870-71). With its superb planning, its
efficient and detailed mobilisation plans, its use of the best weapons, its good
training, its General Staff system, and its Clausewitzian inspiration, the Prussian
Army was the model for much of Europe. As for the character of future war, the
precedent was taken to be the rapid and decisive war of movement in the early days
of the Franco-Prussian War, not the prolonged war of technology and attrition which
had ground on a few years earlier between the Confederacy and the Union.

The Armed Peace, 1871-1914

France, the defeated power in 1870-71, was obviously the country most directly
affected by the successful Prussian innovations. Hitherto, France had complacently
regarded itself as the major military power on the Continent; it was now battered by
the defeat into reviving interest in military affairs, as part of the effort to restore
national prestige. The military system was reformed, and military theorists
discovered Clausewitz and sought to rediscover the verve of Napoleon. In
compensation for the country's material weaknesses in relation to Germany, French
writers began to emphasise the non-material aspects of war. Under the influence of
Ardant du Picq, General Bonnal, the future Marshal Foch, and Colonel Grandmaison
in particular, successive French war plans came to be infused with the idea of
l'offensive à l'outrance. In the elaboration of the theory of the offensive questions of
morale and spirit were given more careful attention than the assimila- tion of the
implications of the further developments in firepower and communications at the
end of the century. The desperate spirit which informed the theory of the offensive
was personified by Foch during the disasters at the outbreak of the Great War
(although his own writings were more moderate than his reputation). In a message
to Joffre in September 1914 he reported: "My centre is giving way, my right is in
retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack."

If French military thinking for the European battlefield was anachronistic, there was
one area, doctrine for colonial warfare, in which French thinkers showed flair and an
understanding which was before its time. Men who were both theorists and
practitioners, notably Marshals Gallieni and Lyautey, elaborated ideas which some
counter- insurgency theorists in the 1960s did (or could have) read with profit in this
field where continuity of experience has been considerable.12 Such "small wars"
were even more the main employment for the British Army during the period of the
"armed peace". The British had more practice than the French, but predictably they
produced less theory. The chief problems facing the British Army were the result of
the enormous extent and diversity of the country's colonial interests. One of the most
interesting military commentators at the time summed up the army's predicament in
these words:

Each new expedition demands special equipment, special methods of supply and
special tactical devices, and sometimes special armament... Except for the defence of
the United Kingdom and of India, much remains to be provided when the Cabinet
declares that war is imminent.
Britain's chief contribution to the development of strategy was at sea rather than on
land. As the predominant naval power, and with responsibilities in a world-wide
Empire, the Royal Navy faced numerous problems in maintaining at least the
semblance of the Pax Brittannica during a period of changing international
relationships and rapidly evolving maritime technology. The latter was manifest by
the fascinating evolution of the architecture of warships from Nelson's Victory to
Fisher's Dreadnought. As in land warfare, Britain's contribu- tion to naval strategy was
through example rather than theory. There were a number of naval writers at the turn
of the century whose concern was speculative notably the Colombs, Sir John
Laughton, and Sir Julian Corbett - but the major interest of British naval circles at the
time was narrowly technical. Overall, the practical contribution of Admiral Sir John
Fisher, in terms of structural reorganisation, technical innovation, and strategic and
tactical readjustment far outweighed the contribution of any of the theorists."

The task of encapsulating current naval wisdom was left to, or was usurped by an
American, Captain (later Admiral) Alfred Mahan (1840- 1914). In the twenty-five years
before his death Mahan wrote a series of voluminous books on sea power, with a
novel emphasis on the role of navies in a country's foreign policy.16 His work
emphasised the critical interrelationship between sea power, commerce and
colonies. Success in naval war was based in his view on employing a concentration
of fire. power from battleships in decisive battles. Generalising as he did from the
Royal Navy's experience in the age of sail, he was dismissive of other approaches to
naval warfare; most notably, he minimised the potential impact of a guerre de course
doctrine. Mahan became the most widely acclaimed naval writer of his time, and had
a generally reinforcing influence in the age of imperialism; his exposition gave further
impetus to existing ideas about naval strategy, big navies and the inter-relationship
between commerce, colonies and sea power. However, his direct influence has
probably been exaggerated: and certainly his prescriptions were quickly obsolete, as
a result of his weak methodology and the rapid technological innovation of his later
years, notably the development of the submarine and aeroplane.

While the strategic problems for Britain (and the United States even more so) were
eased by the relative security provided by geography, geography made the strategic
problems of the Continental powers, especially Germany, much more immediate and
critical. These problems were also compounded by technological developments.
Surrounded by potential enemies and in an environment in which war- fare appeared
likely to be decided by the opening moves, the framers of German strategic doctrine
became psychologically encircled. At the same time, Germany's armies became
increasingly efficient. This was the background to the influence and especially the
war plans of Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the General Staff between 1891 and
1905. Schlieffen's plans attempted to deal with the dilemma of a possible war on two
fronts. His final solution was to concentrate first on defeating France in the west; he
aimed to achieve this by a massive hook by the right wing of the German forces
through neutral Belgium, thereby outflanking the French forces and pressing them
against the German frontier. With this victory achieved, he then planned to turn
eastwards to deal with the more slowly mobilising Russians. Schlieffen's grandiose
conception, which in its altered version in 1914 came near to success, nevertheless
left a great deal to chance. It also played down the political aspect of strategy. The
history of the German Army in the fifty years before the First World War was
personified by the contrast between the flexible approach and political intelligence of
Moltke the Elder, and the military obsession of Schlieffen and the technical and
psychological inflexibility of his war plans. Such was the hair- trigger mentality and
sense of encirclement amongst key members of the Germany military and political
leadership that German strategic doctrine meant that mobilisation not only meant
war, but inevitably a major European war at that.

In a number of important ways the Schlieffen Plan epitomised strategic

developments at the start of the century. The concept of strategy was expanding,
with the idea that detailed advanced planning from mobilisation to victory was
necessary and possible before the outbreak of war. International politics were
becoming militarised in several senses: in foreign policy considerable attention was
paid to the military factor as a signifier of prestige and as a major instrument of
diplomatic leverage; in domestic politics military establishments, which were
increasingly specialised and professional, claimed more autonomy and influence.
Civil and military co-ordination was generally poor. The alliance systems and their
attendant strategic doctrines promised to spread danger rather than improve
stability through deterrence. The increasing complexity of war meant that
organisation for it depended much more on corporate technique. The General Staff
system proliferated, and war became much more bureaucratic. The complexity of
war, together with the belief that the opening moves would be decisive, 15 meant
that as much as possible had to be worked out in "peacetime". The bureaucratisation
of war together with the conviction that to move first would dramatically increase the
chances of victory, produced a rigidity and instability which was summed up in the
dangerous maxim that "mobilisation means war". In such an unstable environment
ideas about preventive and pre-emptive war flourished, and produced the edginess in
crises which gives meaning to A.J.P. Taylor's verdict that the First World War was
"imposed on the states- men of Europe by railway timetables.

The increase in peacetime military planning did much to blur the distinction between
war and peace. This distinction was also being significantly eroded by military
practice: in particular there were frequent "small wars" in the colonial field; there was
the thriving phenomenon of "gunboat diplomacy" in which the object was to threaten
rather than to use force; and there were demonstrative shows of military power in the
European context as a means of structuring the policies of others. The manipulation
of the instruments of violence well short of the set-piece battles for which European
armies had traditionally been trained was becoming an increasing feature of the
foreign policies of the great powers. It was an important advance in the accelerating
trend towards the mid-twentieth-century situation in which "strategy" and "policy"
became almost synonymous.

The generation of Total War, 1914-1945

In the opinion of many, the four years after 1914 are the classic example of strategy,
in its narrowest sense, usurping policy. "Military necessity" came to dominate other
considerations. Important aspects of the running of the war were handed over to the
technicians of violence, in order that they might bring about the "victory" which was
the aim of the struggle. The problems caused by the uncertainity of the political as
opposed to the military objectives of the war were compounded by the bloody
indecisiveness of the means at hand. The massive confronta- tion in a limited
geographical theatre of ever larger armies, ever more destructive firepower, ever
quicker communications, ever more efficient industry, and ever more impassioned
nationalism produced a prolonged strategic deadlock. It was beyond the wit of
generalship to break it by military means, and it was beyond the wit of statesmanship
to settle it by diplomatic means: technology hobbled military success on the
battlefield, while the daily loss of men and treasure constrained diplomatic initiatives.

With fluctuating ends and indecisive means the so-called "Great War" is a major
symbol to students of strategy. Its importance and novelty, historically, was the
"remarkable disparity between the end sought, the price paid, and the results
obtained." As long as the verdict is rejected that a whole generation of soldiers and
politicians were either stupid or mischievous or both, then 1914-1918 is a symbol of
the tragic and inescapable dilemmas of war and of the delusion that acceptable
solutions can always be found for military problems. At the end of it all Clemencau
said: "War is too serious a matter to be left to generals." This should not be read to
mean that those who are not generals can necessarily do better. Rather it should be
taken as a remin der that modern war has become so complex and significant that it
demands the pooling of the widest range of a society's relevant intelli- gence. More
particularly, the specific horror of the Great War might be taken, not as an excuse for
hiding away from the study of war and strategy, but as a sick invitation to think about
them all the more. They will not go away.

While the emotions of the peoples of many countries after 1918 were in an anti-war
direction, certain groups of military theorists were turning to two new forms of
warfare which seemed to offer a hope of escaping from prolonged strategic
deadlock, and restoring instead a style of warfare which might produce speedy and
decisive results. Theories of mechanised warfare and air power were the most
interesting features in the evolution of strategic doctrine in the inter-war years.

In theorising about mechanised warfare the pragmatic British for once took a lead.
First in prominence was the unconventional J.F.C. Fuller, who finally became a Major
General and who later wrote a series of interesting and idiosyncratic books on the
subject of war.

He was sufficiently far-sighted, even in the poorly handled tank opera- tions of
1916-18, to see the immense potentialities of this new weapon, if organised into
sufficiently large groups, and co-ordinated with mobile artillery, mechanised infantry,
and integrated air power. Fuller's inspira- tion was enthusiastically taken up,
developed, and publicised by Liddell Hart, who from the mid-1920s to the late 1960s
was Britain's most well-known (if not always influential or popular) writer on military
strategy.

Liddell Hart's twin interests in military history and mechanised war- fare converged in
the late 1920s to produce Strategy: The Indirect Approach, which was first published
in 1929, and which has presented his general theory of strategy through its various
editions. In essence, the "indirect approach" involved an attempt to weaken
resistance before attempting to overcome it; this was to be achieved by exploiting
movement and surprise away from the line of natural expectation. The most
common description of Liddell Hart is that of "prophet without honour" in his own
country. Certainly, his ideas faced much military conservatism; perhaps even more
important, his doctrine of mechanised warfare was not considered to be of primary
relevance to an army preoccupied with world-wide imperial policing, and a strategy
of limited liability for the European Continent.

There was also a group advocating mechanised warfare in France. This group, of
which Charles de Gaulle was the most famous member, was having an equally
frustrating time in a country whose leaders were pushing the static warfare of the
First World War to its logical conclu- sion- the idea of the Maginot Line. However, the
Maginot Line itself was not pushed to a logical conclusion. For political reasons it
was not extended along the frontier with Belgium, and so left dangerously exposed
the French flank which Germany had attacked thirty years earlier. Given the alliance
policy pursued by the French in Eastern Europe, the projection of power made
possible by mechanised warfare made it a relevant doctrine for them. However, the
unwillingness of French leaderships to take war-related decisions was even greater
than that of their British counterparts.

In contrast, in Germany and the Soviet Union, there was a receptive audience for
ideas of mechanised warfare. In both cases military defeat and political revisionism
provided the fertile ground in which the blitzkrieg idea could develop. To its
supporters, tank warfare reached its culmination in the decisive and cheap victories
by Hitler's forces between 1939 and 1941. To the sceptics, however, the subsequent
tank battles of 1942-5 on the eastern front were more spectacular and significant;
they indicated that although tanks had restored mobility, they did not necessarily
reduce the appalling casualty lists of modern war.

The second method by which it was hoped to overcome strategic deadlock was
through air power, which attracted a particularly bombastic group of advocates. The
most famous air power theorists were the Italian Brigadier General Douhet
(1869-1930), the Commander-in- Chief of the RAF General Sir Hugh Trenchard, and
General "Billy" Mitchell in the United States. These three individuals have attracted an
exaggerated amount of attention.23 The influential group from which they sprang
was wide. In Britain alone, for example, attention is also due to F.W. Lanchester, Sir
Frederick Sykes, the Smuts Committee, Brigadier General Groves, J.M. Spaight, Sir
John Slessor, Air- Commodore Charlton, E.J. Kingston-McLoughry and Professor
Haldane. Although the early air power enthusiasts differed over important details,
they shared many common beliefs. In particular, they believed that air power had
revolutionised warfare. They argued that it would be devastating in the next war.
Command of the air would make the difference between a good victory and a bad
defeat. The expectations of the air power theorists were inflated by a mixture of
vested interest, ignorance, and hope. Many of the assumptions upon which their
theories were based were untested: the destructive power of high explosive bombs
was exaggerated, the problems of target selection were minimised, the accuracy of
bombing was overestimated, the impotence of air defence was considered almost
axiomatic (but this belief was invalidated by radar), and the fragility of civilian
popula- tions in face of bombing was taken as an article of faith. History has shown
that these assumptions are not valid in conventional war. The test of the Second
World War showed the important contribution which successful air power could
make to the prosecution of varied military missions, but it also showed that for the
time being at least, strategic bombing could not make air power independently
decisive.

The promise of air power was particularly attractive to the two Anglo-Saxon powers.
To the British, air power promised a capital- intensive solution to the bothersome
problems of the "Continental commitment". To the United States on the other hand
air power promised to be the perfect technological accompaniment to such
traditional American attitudes to war as the direct approach ("there is no substitute
for victory") the ideological fervour ("give me liberty or give me death") the tendency
to absolutes (the opposite to war is "normalcy") and the crusading spirit ("the devil
theory of war"). Although the ideological element in US thinking distinguishes it from
that of Britain, both their attitudes to strategy were affected by the luxury of relative
security, which permitted a strategy of the "long haul", and by an attitude which
tended to see war and peace as separate entities and so deserving of very different
postures. In contrast to the relative doctrinal consistency of Marxists and Nazis,
resulting from their appreciation of politics in terms of struggle between massive
forces, the Anglo-American approach was more incoherent, resulting from their
seeing war as an "aberration", a "crusade", a "disease", or a "scourge", and their seeing
so-called "peace" as "normal". The result of this perception was to produce policies
which Lippmann neatly summed up as "too pacific in peace: too belligerent in war".

The Clausewitzian philosophy of war fitted very comfortably into the conflict doctrine
which was developed by Marx and Lenin and their supporters. Soviet military
doctrine as it evolved after 1917 fitted into an overall strategy which was permissive
about means: expediency was the guide to any particular usage. It was also
incorporated into an overall foreign policy which was markedly pragmatic and
rational, once the short-lived period of revolutionary innocence had passed. The
evolution of Soviet military policy can be seen as the synthesis of two heritages, the
revolutionary and the traditional,27 within the framework set by the geopolitical
opportunities and constraints of the Soviet Russian state, and the thrust of events in
international relations. Given the strategic weaknesses of the Soviet Union after
1917, and its percep tion of "inevitable war", the objective demands were for a
deterrent and defence strategy allied to a foreign policy which sought to buy time
and allies, and weaken potential enemies. In such an environment it was not possible
for a "revolutionary" element to intrude prominently into Soviet strategic practice -
whatever the theory.

In Hitler's Germany there was a comparable appreciation of the permanence of the

struggle and the utility of violence. However, not only was the violence of the struggle
seen to be more glorious, but also the geopolitical environment was more
permissive, giving him more opportunity to play out his appointed role: and time was
more pressing for Hitler than almost any Marxist. In the late 1930s Hitler showed
himself to be a consummate manipulator of the techniques of bargain- ing backed by
the threat of military force. To those leaders in Western Europe who wanted peace at
almost any price his style was irresistible. As a result, up to 1939, he was able to
incorporate a large amount of territory into the Reich at relatively little cost. The
urgency of his ambition fed upon his success. When war was the only instrument, he
had little hesitation in using it. In the first two years of the Second World War he
proved to be as successful a military strategist as he had been an exponent of the
"diplomacy of violence". By 1941 he was "master of war".29 However, like many
military adventurers his success was short-lived. His policies were badly based; they
built up formidable opposition. He also made a series of strategic and political
mistakes which threw away the opportunities which his earlier success had created
for him. His failure in 1945 could not have been more complete.
It required six years of the most total warfare in history to bring about Hitler's
downfall. It was the first truly global war, extending into all continents and seas, and
was the first real air war. With some reserva- tions it was remarkably total in both
ends and means: limits were fixed by expediency and capability rather than morality.
It sucked in the lives of millions, by-standers and workers, as well as fighting men.
Unprecedented destructive potential was developed and displayed. Science and
industry were mobilised as never before. Its economic and psychological dimensions
were far-reaching. It had massive impact, in the realms of politics, science,
economics, social change and culture, as well as strategically. Both on and off the
battlefields, the Second World War is a fascinating subject for the student of military
affairs."

In terms of the evolution of strategic thinking the Second World War was most
impressive in the realm of practice rather than theory. Its "lessons" are still being
assimilated. On the battlefield itself the most notable feature was the return (in some
campaigns) of hard-hitting mobile warfare, based on tanks and close air support
organised around the blitzkrieg concept. In the air the tactical utility of aircraft was
proved time and again, although many questions still remained about the
"decisiveness" of strategic bombing, on which so many resources had been invested
by the Allies. Naval warfare changed significantly, with the aircraft carrier emerging
as the primary force at sea, and with the increased efficiency of the submarine. At
sea the era ended where like fought like. The allied amphibious landings, which were
huge feats of organisation as well as offensive spirit, were notable integrations of all
arms. While there was much that was novel in this war, the ultimate importance of
ground forces in order to occupy territory was again demon- strated, with the war on
the Russian front having a significance which is only now being fully appreciated. On
the home front there was plenty of interest in the social, psychological, and material
mobilisation of whole populations. It was a war in which the strategic impact of
logistics and administration was particularly important. At the theatre level it was full
of fascinating case studies of "command decisions" in circum- stances which were
confused, but over issues which were fateful. At the governmental level all the
problems of civil-military relations in modern wars between giant coalitions over
widely separeted theatres were mani- fest. Inevitably there were the perennial
problems of relating ends and means when the consequences of defeat were
unthinkable. At the diplo- matic level there was the relationship between alliance
problems and the course of the campaigns, and the tendency for conferences to
usurp the traditional primacy of the battlefield. And underlying everything there was
the interplay of relative competence in integrating national strategy and tactics with
developments in science and industry. In short, by studying the Second World War
the student may fully appreciate the meaning of Kissinger's dictum that "strategy is
the mode of survival of a society" in a most detailed way and in its manifold
dimensions. Because it is within living memory, and its impact is still with us in many
fields, the Second World War is also a reminder that strategy is ultimately a very
practical business.32 As Brodie has put it: "There is no other science where
judgements are tested in blood and answered in the servitude of the defeated."33