The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age

Yet the essence of strategy is straightforward: it is the craft of summoning and using power to achieve our central purposes, amid the friction of global affairs and the resistance of rivals and enemies. Strategy is the indispensable art of getting what we want, with what we have, in a world that seems set on denying us.

strategy encompasses the use of all forms of power to prosper in an unruly world.

“strategy is the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation—or a coalition of nations—including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed.”

The apotheosis of strategy is synergy: combining multiple tools, whether arms, money, diplomacy, or even ideas to achieve one’s highest objectives.

Second, grappling with strategy requires recognizing the primacy and pervasiveness of politics.

Third, strategy is most valuable when it reveals power in unexpected places.

A fourth theme of this work, however, is that strategy will always remain an imprecise art, no matter how much we might like it to be a science instead.

Strategy is an incessantly interactive endeavor, one in which a thinking adversary is poised to spoil even the most elegant design.

This leads to a fifth theme—that the cost of strategic and historical illiteracy can be catastrophically high.

“strategy is the art of plans of campaign and tactics the art of battles.”

The original Greek words, strategos and strategía, referring to generals and the things generals did, made regular appearances in these works, along with taktiké, or tactics.

Frontinus described strategy (strategikon) as “everything achieved by a commander, be it characterized by foresight, advantage, enterprise, and resolution.”

Prussian’s sequence by defining strategy in terms of the preparation for battle, while tactics were bound up with the actual conduct of battle. In Jomini’s most concise formulation: “Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point; grand tactics decides the manner of execution and the employment of the troops.”

“Tactics constitute the theory of the use of armed forces in battle; strategy forms the theory of using battle for the purposes of the war.”

“Strategy equals ends (objectives toward which one strives) plus ways (courses of action) plus means (instruments by which some end can be achieved).”

Grand strategy, therefore, came to include not only how governments sought to win wars using all available means, but also the most effective combination of means—non-military as well as military—to achieve the objectives of national security and prosperity at times of peace.

Psychology, whether of humanity (human nature), of a particular community or place (culture), or of individuals (character) was another critical factor influencing the fortunes of war.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all present the human story as one of a fall from a primeval paradise into a realm of conflict and misery.

Polybius was an early chronicler of what we would now call globalization. Before the Second Punic War, he wrote: things happened in the world in a sporadic fashion, because every incident was specific, from start to finish, to the part of the world where it happened. But ever since then, history has resembled a body, in the sense that incidents in Italy and Libya and Asia and Greece are all interconnected, and everything tends towards a single outcome.

Each generation ransacks the wisdom of the past in search of insight for the world it lives in, and today, the greatest contributions the ancients can offer Western policymakers flow from their insights into the relationship of strategy and statecraft.

“five fundamental factors”—the will of the people, weather, terrain, command, and doctrine—and to know oneself and to know the enemy, including each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

The Art of War thus helps strategists to think beyond military means.

Clausewitz was largely concerned with war at the tactical and operational levels whereas the Art of War considered broader political, strategic, and prewar elements of armed conflict. At higher levels of strategy, for example, deception can be effective while intelligence can be quite valuable.

Shi, in his view, is an advantage derived from positioning and mass.

François Jullien describes shi as the “potential energy within the situation,” including positioning, morale, and adaptation to circumstances.

Niccolò Machiavelli made modern political thought and in so doing, he made modern strategy.1 He emphasized “the effectual truth,” studying the world as it is, rather than how it should be.

Machiavelli was a realist who understood the brutal realities of politics and the importance of military force in statecraft.

Machiavelli was the Michelangelo of politics and strategy. He brought his field into the modern world.

Machiavelli looked to the ancient world, especially to the example of ancient Rome, to inform his views of politics.

How Machiavellian was Machiavelli? What was the strategic context and personal biography that shaped Machiavelli’s worldview and writing? Why was Machiavelli the founder of modern strategy?

To understand Machiavelli as a strategist, however, it is necessary to situate him within the geopolitical context in which he lived and wrote. It was a time of rapid change: European exploration, the Renaissance, cultural advancement, scientific discovery, and intense geopolitical competition among the major powers of Europe and the smaller powers on the Italian Peninsula.

This profound state consolidation beyond the Italian Peninsula led Machiavelli to fantasize about a new prince who could create a unified Italian state capable of holding its own among the major powers of Europe, just as the Roman Republic had been a major Italian geopolitical force in the ancient world. Instead, at the time Machiavelli was writing, Italy was fragmented into its own multi-polar, balance-of-power system.

An effective prince must be able to lie, deceive, murder, and apply “cruelty well used” (crudeltà bene usata) if they are to achieve their goals.

famous dichotomy between virtue and fortune, or what we might call today, skill and luck.

“if all men were good,” a prince could afford to be just, but because “men are wicked and not prepared to keep their word to you, you have no need to keep your word to them.”

nature creates few brave men—diligence and training create many.”

Well-ordered and well-trained armies outperform their opponents. States governed by republican forms of government enjoy unique advantages in international power politics. Early and judicious applications of military force can forestall greater catastrophes later.

Its best-known principle is that war is the continuation of policy by other means.

limited wars as fought for “concrete, well-defined objectives that do not demand the utmost military effort”; major wars, by contrast, had no clear objectives beyond the destruction of the enemy.

war could be of two kinds, because—like Clausewitz—they saw the differentiation in terms of ends rather than means. The value of the objective would define how war would be fought.

how to manage the relationship between ends, ways, and means and what happened at the junctions between each,

Theory “becomes a guide to anyone who wants to learn about war from books; it will light his way, ease his progress, train his judgment, and help to avoid pitfalls.”63 In other words, theory is a form of a shortcut, because it obviates the need “to start afresh each time” and clarifies “concepts and ideas that have become confused and entangled.”

At the same time, theory must not become dogmatic or doctrinaire. Rather than an end in itself, it is a tool. Theory helps the commander recognize “the point at which all lines converge,” and provides “the thinking man with a frame of reference for the movements he has been trained to carry out.”

systems undermine military strategy only if one allows them to become prescriptive.

strategy actively involved the direction of forces as well as setting the conditions for success.

Controlling major trade routes across the seas—what Mahan called a great highway and wide common—was the mission of navies in war.

Mahan believed that the study of strategy “has an interest and value for all citizens of a free country, but especially for those who are charged with its foreign and military relations.”4

One of Denis Hart Mahan’s former students who lobbied on behalf of the younger Mahan was none other than Jefferson Davis. Alfred Thayer Mahan would later recount “that I owed my entrance to the United States navy to the interposition of the first and only President of the Southern Confederacy.”

Whereas Americans were long accustomed to looking upon the oceans as moats protecting the New World from the Old, Mahan instead saw the seas as highways for the United States to promote economic growth, to gain diplomatic influence, and to find greater security.