ADVANCING 

STRATEGIC THOUGHT 

SERIES

Strategy and 

Grand Strategy:

What 

Students and 

Practitioners 

Need to Know 

Tami Davis Biddle

Carlisle Barracks, PA and

UNITED STATES 

ARMY WAR COLLEGE

PRESS

i

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iii

v

Strategic Studies Institute

and

U.S. Army War College Press

STRATEGY AND GRAND STRATEGY:

WHAT STUDENTS AND PRACTITIONERS NEED 

TO KNOW

Tami Davis Biddle

December 2015

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ISBN 1-58487-714-6
vii

FOREWORD

There is no word or phrase more important and 

essential to the national security community than 

“strategy.” In this monograph, Dr. Tami Davis Biddle 

argues that, while most of us have a sense of what the 

word means, we do not always fully appreciate all 

that it entails and all that it demands of us. Indeed, she 

argues that because strategy is so difficult on so many 

levels, we must not delude ourselves into believing 

that it can be practiced in any idealized form. But she 

insists that in situations where lives are at stake, we 

have a moral obligation to do all we can to meet the 

wide array of challenges we must face as we devise 

and implement strategies (and grand strategies) to 

achieve desired political ends.

Dr. Biddle begins her monograph with a close examination of the terms “strategy” and “grand strategy.” Relying on a wide body of literature by historians, 

political scientists, and practitioners, she examines 

the reasons why political actors adopt strategies and 

grand strategies, and she helps us understand how 

the terms have been used—and have evolved—over 

time. She observes that the way in which strategies 

and grand strategies have been developed and implemented by actors in the international system has 

followed a narrative arc determined largely by the 

changing character, over time, of social, political, and 

military organizations. 

Relying on this definitional and historical groundwork, Dr. Biddle articulates the myriad reasons why 

the practice of strategy is such a difficult and demanding art. She argues that strategy requires a logic that 

can be explained and defended, but points out that often this logic rests on assumptions that have not been 
thoroughly and rigorously examined. She argues that, 

even when the logic of strategy makes sense, its implementation will be eroded and undermined by contending interests and bureaucratic politics; unforeseen 

and unanticipated events; the pressures of domestic 

politics; the limits of human cognition, attention, and 

endurance; and the ongoing challenges posed by civilmilitary interaction. 

Dr. Biddle’s clear-headed examination of strategy, 

which is full of useful examples and sober guidance, 

will sharpen the analytical skills and deepen the situational awareness of students and practitioners alike.

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

viii
ix

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TAMI DAVIS BIDDLE is Professor of National Security at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC), in Carlisle, PA. She was the Hoyt S. Vandenberg Professor 

of Aerospace Studies at the USAWC from 2011-13. 

Prior to that, she was the 2005-07 George C. Marshall 

Professor of Military Studies at the USAWC and the 

2001-02 Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army’s Military History Institute. Before coming to the USAWC, she taught in the 

Department of History at Duke University, where she 

was a core faculty member of the Duke-University of 

North Carolina Joint Program in Military History. She 

is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Society for 

Military History. Dr. Biddle’s research focus has been 

warfare in the 20th century, in particular the history of 

air warfare. She also studies and writes about military 

organization and leadership, civil-military relations, 

grand strategy, national security policy, and professional military education. Dr. Biddle’s book, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British 

and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002) was a 

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2002 and was 

added to the Chief of Air Staff’s Reading List, Royal 

Air Force. Recently, she wrote the chapter on strategic 

bombing for the Cambridge History of the Second World 

War (2015). Other publication credits include: “Leveraging Strength: The Pillars of American Grand Strategy in World War II” in Orbis, Winter 2011; “Dresden 

1945: Reality, History, and Memory,” in The Journal of 

Military History, Vol. 72, No. 2 (April 2008); and “The 

Role of Military History in the Contemporary Academy,” a Society for Military History White Paper (2014), 
written with Robert M. Citino. Dr. Biddle has held fellowships from Harvard, the Social Science Research 

Council, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National 

Air and Space Museum, and she holds a Ph.D. in 

history from Yale University.

x
xi

SUMMARY

In this monograph, Dr. Tami Davis Biddle examines why it is so difficult to devise, implement, and 

sustain sound strategies and grand strategies. Her 

analysis begins with an examination of the meaning 

of the term “strategy” and a history of the ways that 

political actors have sought to employ strategies and 

grand strategies to achieve their desired political aims. 

She examines the reasons why the logic undergirding 

strategy is often lacking and why challenges of implementation (including bureaucratic politics, unforeseen 

events, civil-military tensions, and domestic pressures) complicate and undermine desired outcomes. 

This clear-headed critique, built on a broad base of literature (historical and modern; academic and policyoriented), will serve as a valuable guide to students 

and policymakers alike as they seek to navigate their 

way through the unavoidable challenges—and inevitable twists and turns—inherent in the development 

and implementation of strategy.

1

STRATEGY AND GRAND STRATEGY:

WHAT STUDENTS AND PRACTITIONERS 

NEED TO KNOW

Tami Davis Biddle

The contemporary word “strategy” came to us 

from ancient Greece, where it referred to the art or 

skill of the general. In this original iteration, it was 

closer to what we now call “tactics.”1 The word has 

evolved over time and has been subjected to stretching 

and pulling. It has been appropriated by a wide range 

of actors—many of whom have had little or nothing 

to do with either the military or national security. Indeed, the word “strategy” is so widely used today that 

one may see it applied to everything from warfighting 

to the marketing of beverages.2 Often it is used as a 

substitute or synonym for the rather more basic term 

“plan.” Moreover, there is no standard contemporary 

definition of the term (or the related phrase “grand 

strategy”) embraced by those who write about national security and international affairs. Even within 

this realm, there are definitional differences that vary 

by discipline and reference group. For instance, political scientists often use the phrase “grand strategy” 

to discuss what historians might refer to, instead, as 

a general framework for foreign policy, such as neoisolationism, selective engagement, or primacy.3

Because this lack of consensus can lead to confusion, it is essential for scholars or practitioners who 

study and/or work in the realm of international security to articulate their own definition of the terms 

“strategy” and “grand strategy,” or to select from 

among the many available in the existing literature. 

Students of international security need to think hard 
2

about the history and meaning of strategy, and reflect on what it demands of the practitioner. Students 

who proceed beyond academic study and attempt to 

practice the art of strategy will quickly gain a healthy 

respect for the myriad challenges it poses. 

The purpose of this monograph is to give the student of strategy an anchor point—a foothold that can 

be used as a foundation for further analysis and primer 

for work in the practical realm. After offering definitions that I find helpful, I explain why political actors 

traditionally have sought to develop strategies and 

grand strategies to guide their behavior in the international system. I then examine the evolution of strategy 

and grand strategy in history. Finally, and most importantly, I examine the myriad challenges one must 

face in developing and implementing strategy and 

grand strategy. These challenges exist for many reasons, not the least of them being that strategy demands 

a theory—a proposed causal explanation—that must 

stand up to rigorous analysis. A theory, in its most basic form, can be expressed as: “if x, then y.” Thus, the 

strategist must be able to defend the statement, “If we 

use resource X, then we will achieve objective Y” (“or 

at least move in the direction of achieving objective 

Y”). But the word “then” carries a heavy burden since 

it must be able to do a lot of work and bear intense 

evaluation—and this scrutiny must include, above all, 

the close examination of one’s assumptions since these 

serve as the building blocks of the causal relationship 

linking ends and means. Strategy rests on assumptions; if assumptions go unexamined, then one risks 

building a strategic edifice on a foundation of sand.4

Often, however, such scrutiny does not take place, 

either because no one takes the time for it or because 

it would question or challenge organizational culture 
3

or individual preferences. Too often, the explanatory 

logic of strategy ends up being little more than an 

organizational mantra, or a facile assertion about the 

overwhelming power of a particular military instrument, or the easy opportunity presented by an enemy’s presumed frailties. When faced with an unanticipated crisis, political decisionmakers may grab for the 

first option that looks even vaguely plausible in order 

to keep domestic critics at bay—especially those who 

would charge them with being unresponsive and/

or weak. The laws of cognitive psychology will be at 

work (as they are in all human endeavors): the actors 

involved will “see what they want to see,” filtering out 

disconfirming data or evidence that causes individual 

or institutional stress.5

A seasoned strategist knows that linking objectives 

and resources requires—indeed demands—doing 

homework. If, for instance, one wants to convince a rival state to make a concession, then one must assess (at 

a minimum) the stakes involved for both parties and 

the willingness of their populations to pay a price or 

endure sacrifices for the sake of the interest involved. 

One must assess the nature of the adversary, including its political and social composition and structure, 

the resiliency of that structure, and the robustness of 

its popular and elite will. One must understand the 

adversary’s domestic politics, and the nature of the relationships between the population, the government, 

and the military.6 Finally, one must assess one’s own 

instruments of power available for persuasion and coercion—including whether or not they are available, 

acceptable, and well-suited to the purpose for which 

they will be used. These questions, though crucial, are 

only a starting place since each one raises additional 

questions to pose and answers to obtain. The work is 
4

painstaking and demanding, but the cost of shortcuts 

can be very high—even catastrophic.7

Even if one’s assumptions are sound and if the logic 

of strategy makes sense on a fundamental level, many 

factors will intrude to erode or break the link between 

means and ends. These will include the challenges of 

communication inherent in complex enterprises; the 

adaptability of one’s adversary; the complications of 

domestic politics; the stresses and strains of civil-military relations; and the unavoidable biases, predispositions, and limitations of the agencies attempting to 

implement the strategy.8

The student of strategy who also seeks to become 

an effective practitioner of this difficult art must prepare to develop such qualities as patience, empathy, 

judgment, and, above all, the resilience and determination to rebound from the inevitable and repeated 

setbacks that are inherent in the enterprise. Paul Kennedy has pointed out, perceptively, that grand strategy in particular relies upon “the constant and intelligent reassessment of . . . means and ends; it relies 

upon wisdom and judgment.”9

WORDS AND MEANINGS

Within the military, there is a hierarchy of terms 

that define and delineate specific activities related to 

tactics and strategy; they are nested like a set of Russian dolls, with each one referring to a particular band 

of action and responsibility. They begin with “tactics” 

at the lowest level, and move upward and outward 

to “grand strategy” at the highest level. Because these 

terms must be comprehended and used consistently 

by large groups of people, they have official definitions 

and are incorporated into formal service doctrine. In 
5

general, “tactics” describe how small units (platoons, 

companies, ships, and squadrons) are to be employed 

in a battle space. Moving up one notch, “operations” 

(and “operational art”) concern the movement of 

larger military units, including army divisions, naval 

task forces, and wings of aircraft. “Theater strategy” 

concerns the direction of the largest military units in 

a battle space, including armies and army groups, naval fleets, and numbered air forces.10 Theater strategy 

(also referred to as military strategy) “prescribes how 

military instruments per se are to achieve the goals set 

for them by grand strategy within a given theater of 

war.”11 At the top of the definitional hierarchy, “grand 

strategy” identifies and articulates a given political actor’s security objectives at a particular point in 

time and describes how they will be achieved using 

a combination of instruments of power—including 

military, diplomatic, and economic instruments. John 

Lewis Gaddis has described grand strategy as “the calculated relationship of means to large ends. It’s about 

how one uses whatever one has to get to wherever it 

is one wants to go.”12

In an effort to clarify these relationships, noted 

historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote many years 

ago that: 

General Lee’s decision to cross the Potomac into Maryland in 1862 was strategy, but the manner in which he 

fought General McClellan at Antietam was tactics. The 

British decision in 1942 to hang on in the desert west of 

Egypt was a matter of strategy; whilst General Montgomery’s directives for the Battle of El Alamein, and 

the execution thereof, were tactical.
6

Morison added that “Bad strategy can render the most 

brilliant tactics fruitless . . . Conversely, sound tactics 

are necessary to implement good strategy.”13

Theater strategy and grand strategy form the backbone of the curriculum at senior staff colleges inside 

the U.S. military’s professional military education 

system, where practitioners study the many elements 

shaping the highest level of their art. Faculty members 

at these colleges understand and use the word “strategy” in roughly similar ways.14 They perceive its central idea as the intelligent identification, utilization, 

and coordination of resources (ways and means) for 

the successful attainment of a specific objective (end).15

While this sentence implies a direct and easily comprehended relationship, the simplicity is deceptive. 

Barriers to creating a straightforward linkage between 

ends, ways, and means are not only very real, but also 

multifaceted and persistent. This fact poses challenges 

for the way that strategy and grand strategy is taught 

in an academic setting. A framework that uses “ends, 

ways, and means” is not a bad way to enter into a 

discussion of strategy since it gives students a chance 

to gain initial traction as they begin their analysis. 

However, it is not enough to simply posit a calculated 

relationship between ends and means, assuming that 

optimal means and ends can be readily identified and 

that the relationship between utilizing a particular resource (or combination of them) and achieving a political aim will be straightforward, easily articulated, 

or uncomplicated to implement.

Recently, the teaching of strategy in the professional military education system has been criticized 

on the ground that it fails to capture the complexities 

of the way that strategy and grand strategy are created and implemented in the real world. A RAND 
7

study led by Linda Robinson argued the U.S. military 

is taught to expect a linear approach in which the policymakers provide the objectives and the military develops the options for achieving them.16 Instead, the 

authors argue, “Civilian policymakers require an active dialogue with the military and other sources of 

information to inform the diagnosis of the situation, 

as well as to develop realistic policy objectives.” The 

authors add that there is a need for an “established 

integrated civilian-military process that would rigorously identify assumptions, risks, possible outcomes, 

and second-order effects through soliciting diverse 

inputs, red-teaming, and table-top exercises.”17

The argument raises some important questions 

about how one identifies civilian and military roles in 

a system shaped by what Samuel Huntington called 

‘objective control’ of the military, which requires a 

delineation between civilian and military realms of 

professional competence.18 But the critique is surely 

an important one that ought to inform pedagogy, not 

only in the professional military education (PME) 

system, but also beyond. Military and civilian leaders need to comprehend one another’s professional 

realms well enough to be able to work together to produce coherent strategy. On the military side, officers 

must acquire political acumen without political assertiveness. They must understand the political environment they work in well enough to be effective while 

resisting any temptation toward political meddling.19

This is a non-trivial challenge, but it is central to sound 

civil-military relations and to the kind of strategy that 

such relations make possible.20

Robinson and her co-authors are right to argue 

that civilian authorities are unlikely to frame political 

objectives with precision or clarity—or even timeli-
8

ness. Instead, objectives will develop iteratively (and 

often haltingly) in response to events, contingencies, 

and perceived options. In some cases, civilian authorities may wish to be presented with military options 

before they commit themselves to preferred objectives.21 Thus, military planners must abandon the belief that they will always be able to build a strategy 

that is designed or tailored to meet a well-articulated 

political objective. However much military leaders 

may seek clarity and specific goals, political leaders 

will seek options, possibilities, and flexibility. While 

this may be frustrating for military leaders, it is far 

better for them to recognize the realities than to base 

their expectations on an idealized form of the process 

that exists only in the antiseptic environment of the 

classroom. 

Equally, civilian education largely has been inadequate in this realm. Civilians often fail to realize just 

how blunt an instrument military force is—and they 

fail to realize the many challenges of implementing 

it, not least the logistical challenges. This problem has 

been exacerbated by the creation of an all-volunteer 

force and the resulting marked division in American 

society between those who have military experience 

and those who do not. Those in the latter category 

simply do not have enough insight into military operations to understand how they can be used to attain 

political ends or to realize the limitations of their ability to do so.22 This greatly complicates the civil-military dialogue that is the very heart of strategy making 

within a democratic polity. The problem is surely exacerbated by the lack of opportunities for civilians to 

gain even a basic understanding of military operations 

and strategy. Aside from well-developed programs at 

Yale and Columbia—and similarly strong programs 
9

at a few other universities—strategy (especially as it 

relates to military operations) is rarely a topic of serious and sustained examination in the civilian academy in the United States.23 This is unfortunate since the 

stakes, and therefore the costs of failure, are high—

measurable directly in national blood and treasure. 

STRATEGY AND THE 

INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM

Any political actor operating in the international 

system has a set of interests it seeks to defend and 

advance through the utilization of its available resources. These actors (whether the city-states and empires of the past, or the states and nonstate actors of 

the present) are willing to expend resources to protect 

and further those interests in a system wherein neither 

success nor survival is guaranteed. If we link this observation to strategy, we can see that interests relate 

to ends, and resources relate to ways and means.24 If 

they are sufficient in quality and quantity, an actor’s 

resources can serve as “instruments of power”—leverage mechanisms—that can help it to sustain itself, 

and perhaps even thrive, in a competitive and often 

dangerous world.25 Historian and analyst Sir Michael 

Howard has observed that: 

The objective of most states most of the time is always 

to maintain their independence, often to extend their 

influence, and sometimes to extend their dominion. 

The classical tools at their disposal have been three: 

armed force, wealth, and allies.26

States that seek to hold great sway over the international system (its structure and functioning) may be 

willing to expend considerable resources to shape it 

in a particular way; this was the case for Britain in the 
10

era of the Pax Britannica, and it is true of the United 

States today.

Usable resources come in many forms; military 

might is only one way for state actors to attain the ends 

they seek. For instance, actors can leverage knowledge 

and education—as Britain did in World War II—creating a scientific and academic brain trust that made 

immeasurable contributions to the battle with Hitler’s 

Germany.27 Smaller states like Canada, Denmark, and 

Singapore have been able to achieve strategic goals 

through the development of strong relationships 

with larger neighbors, and, in each case, the development of a reputation for stability and predictability in 

domestic and global affairs. 

The instruments of power that a political actor can 

wield—and the complexity of the interactions among 

them—varies with the basic resources available to it, 

and the degree of social, economic, political, and scientific advancement it has attained. But the nature of 

the international system matters greatly since the tools 

at an actor’s disposal are influenced by the nature of 

the system. Armed force, because it enables an actor 

to protect its territory and possessions, typically has 

been considered the ultimate guarantee of existence 

in an anarchical system. But a powerful indigenous 

military is not always necessary for success; indeed, in 

many cases, military power is not the best tool for the 

attainment of political aims. For instance, post-World 

War II Japan relied on its close ties with the United 

States to protect its territorial integrity and regional 

interests. This enabled Japan to develop internally and 

to focus its energy on education, economic development, and nondefense production. These activities, in 

turn, created wealth—and wealth offered Japan another instrument of power with which to determine 

its subsequent fate. 
11

Prior to World War II, the British, relying in particular on their powerful navy, structured and preserved 

a particular global order that served Britain’s interests 

and underwrote a system of international trade. In 

the 20th century—and in particular after World War 

II—the United States created a network of institutions 

that served its interests, but also facilitated the international interaction of states; it offered incentives for 

actors to buy into the U.S.-preferred system and seek 

the advantages to be gained by working within its 

economic, legal, and political frameworks.28 Smaller 

states that took advantage of the system could in fact 

gain outsized influence within it. Challengers to U.S. 

hegemony have sought (and will continue to seek) to 

utilize their resources to sway the system in a direction of their own preference. The system as it exists 

is guaranteed by U.S. willingness to spend resources, 

including force, to preserve it. Therefore, strategy, as 

it applies to the behavior of political actors, can never 

be considered wholly without reference to military 

power.29

As we noted previously, the word “strategy” 

had its roots squarely within the military realm. In a 

seminal article on strategy written in 2000, Professor 

Richard K. Betts argued: 

Strategy is the essential ingredient for making war 

either politically effective or morally tenable. It is 

the link between military means and political ends, 

the scheme for how to make one produce the other. 

Without strategy, there is no rationale for how force 

will achieve purposes worth the price in blood and 

treasure.30

This is among the most powerful and perceptive 

definitions of strategy ever written, and it is one that 
12

military officers and national security professionals 

must take to heart and never forget. It links strategy 

and military force, and it underscores the fact that 

when armed force is involved, strategy includes an 

inherent, undeniable moral component.

The modern international system affords a wide 

array of tools that political actors can employ to attain 

the political ends they seek; these include, among others, wealth and economic leverage, information and 

moral suasion, and diplomacy. Thus, most contemporary authors are willing to employ the word “strategy” even when military power is in the background 

rather than the foreground. But the demands of strategy and strategic decisionmaking are just as high in 

these instances as they are in the military realm, even 

if the cost of failure may not be quite so acute.31 Every time an individual instrument of power is used, 

it must have a logic that informs how means will produce ends. That scheme must be robust enough to 

stand up to critical thinking and aggressive analytical 

scrutiny—and it must be resilient enough to endure 

unforeseen events, unanticipated barriers, failures of 

imagination, and the natural complications of human 

interaction and communication.

The situation grows more complex when multiple

instruments are employed simultaneously to address 

a serious and sustained problem. In this circumstance, 

it is usually appropriate to use the phrase “grand 

strategy.” In his book The Strategy Bridge, Colin Gray 

defines grand strategy as “the direction and use made 

of any or all of the assets of a security community, 

including its military instrument, for the purposes of 

policy as decided by politics.”32 In the journal of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, Peter Layton 

explained that: 
13

The essence of grand strategy is its integrative nature. 

In a conceptual sense grand strategy is a system: a set 

of interdependent elements where change in some elements . . . produces change across the system, and the 

entire system exhibits properties and behaviours different from the constituent parts.33

This echoes what historian Paul Kennedy noted a 

generation earlier, when he described grand strategy 

as a “complex and multi-layered thing” that demands 

the intelligent interaction of all of a nation’s significant 

resources, in order to achieve a desired political end.34

It echoes, as well, elements of Betts’ argument that 

“strategies are chains of relationships among means 

and ends that span several levels of analysis, from the 

maneuvers of units in specific engagements through 

larger campaigns, whole wars, grand strategies, and 

foreign policies.”35

The first requirement of strategy (and grand strategy) is that it be physically possible and economically 

feasible. Any practitioner will quickly come to understand that strategy is unavoidably and ineluctably 

about trade-offs. Even in wealthy nations, resources 

are limited; this fact demands that one choose carefully 

and wisely from the available set. The second requirement of strategy is that it must be acceptable—morally 

and culturally—to the people who will implement it. 

If it fails this test, it will not be sustainable over time. 

Finally, it must be sensibly matched to the problem 

(or set of problems) at hand; in other words, it must be 

well-suited to solving the problem it is meant to address. Failure in any one of these categories will mean 

failure overall.36 Because these fundamentals are so 

important, military and civilian students in the U.S. 

professional military education system are taught to 
14

subject any potential strategy to a “FAS test,” which 

is an acronym for feasibility, acceptability, and suitability.37

These criteria are much more complex than they 

may appear on first glance. Knowing whether a strategy is “suitable” requires knowing a great deal about 

the problem one is trying to solve; similarly, one must 

realize that conditions are not static: what is acceptable to one’s own population early in a conflict may 

not be acceptable later—or vice versa. Hew Strachan 

has observed that: 

If strategy is a matter of combining means, ways, and 

ends, what are the ends towards which a state . . . is 

aiming when it cannot be precise about the future 

context within which its means and ways are being 

applied? 

He adds:

Answering that question is the central conundrum 

of grand strategy, and being able to do so sensibly is 

correspondingly more difficult the more extended the 

definition of the future which grand strategy uses.38

Strategy, unavoidably, involves moving forward from 

a starting point (rarely an ideal one) and then constantly 

reassessing the situation in light of changing conditions. 

This requires an ongoing monitoring of the relationship between ends and means. In wartime, this demands constant reassessment in light of enemy moves 

and the unanticipated twists and turns that develop 

in the ongoing presence of what Carl von Clausewitz 

termed “friction.”39 In 1940, Britain’s wartime strategy 

involved little more than near-term survival; by 1941, 

its policymakers were able to envision and shape the 
15

sweeping goals of the Atlantic Charter; and by 1943, it 

was able to announce, with Allied partners, a demand 

for the unconditional surrender of Germany and 

Japan.40

During the 20th century—in the era of the two 

World Wars and later during the Cold War—the 

phrase “grand strategy” came into frequent and common usage. In his classic 1954 book Strategy, historian 

and military analyst Sir Basil Liddell Hart explained 

that, “As tactics is an application of strategy on a 

lower plane, so strategy is an application on a lower 

plane of ‘grand strategy.’” The role of the latter, he explained, “is to coordinate and direct all the resources 

of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment 

of the political object of the war.”41 Both Liddell Hart 

and Morison saw the phrases “grand strategy” and 

“higher strategy” as synonymous.42

Other prominent authors, writing in the same era, 

had begun to envision “grand strategy” as a phrase 

that was relevant and applicable in both wartime and 

peacetime. In the first (1943) edition of the classic text, 

Makers of Modern Strategy, editor Edward Meade Earle 

set forward elegant definitions of strategy and grand 

strategy that were descriptive and normative: 

Strategy is the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation—or a coalition of nations—including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interests 

shall be effectively promoted and secured against 

enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed. The 

highest type of strategy—sometimes called ‘grand 

strategy’—is that which so integrates the policies and 

armaments of the nation that the resort to war is either 

rendered unnecessary or is undertaken with the maximum chance of victory.43
16

Earle did not restrict either “strategy” or “grand 

strategy” to the wielding of military power alone, but 

placed them squarely within the framework of international security and related them directly to the 

making of war and the preservation of peace. Earle’s 

integrated definition of strategy and grand strategy 

asked that one draw intelligently from a broad but 

not inexhaustible resource base, structuring and coordinating those resources as efficiently and effectively 

as possible to facilitate the realization of discernable 

endpoints that have been articulated by legitimate authorities and have won general support. With respect 

to grand strategy in particular, he offered an overarching conceptualization of an ideal—but an ideal that is 

inherently demanding and difficult to achieve. 

In a lecture to the U.S. Naval War College in 1952, 

Liddell Hart told students that, where warfare is concerned, grand strategy must take a long view—“for its 

problem is the winning of the peace.”44 In this, he was 

surely right. Any actors seeking to attain political aims 

through warfighting must think hard about how those 

aims will facilitate a better, more stable peace than the 

one that preceded the fighting.45 Additionally, they 

must think hard, and with unflinching realism, about 

how the potential costs of war (by every measure) will 

stack up against the potential gains.

Not infrequently, actors will opt for the use of military power when other instruments might have been 

better suited to achieving the political aim. The seduction of military force lies in its promise (rarely if ever 

attained) for straightforward gains over a relatively 

short time period and at minimal cost. In some cases, 

those who believe themselves to be bold and visionary 

leaders assume that, by wielding force, they can sidestep the normal complexities of diplomacy and political interaction. In other cases, military force seems like 
17

the quickest and most satisfactory way to answer an 

insult that has produced a domestic clamor. But hasty, 

ill-conceived, or purely emotional uses of force can 

prove disastrous.46

Wilhelmine Germany almost certainly would have 

attained most of its political objectives in the early 

years of the 20th century if it had avoided a reliance 

on military power (which helped trigger World War 

I). Indeed, Howard has argued that: 

Germany’s growing wealth and productivity would 

eventually by itself have dominated the continent and 

gained her all the allies she needed. She could have 

acquired the status of World Power without having to 

fight for it.47

It is not at all unusual for actors to opt for the use 

of force based on fallacious assumptions about enemy 

will and determination. Sometimes a “quick” victory 

on the battlefield is perceived as a relatively painless 

way of resolving a problem, but there are only a few 

historical instances in which warfighting has been 

either quick or painless. In many cases, the outcome 

achieved is only loosely aligned with the original end 

sought. Actors frequently are poor judges of their own 

vital interests. Indeed, despite a widespread view that 

land wars in Asia were to be avoided, U.S. decisionmakers nonetheless were lured into a long and costly 

fight in Vietnam in part because of an often-repeated 

but superficial mantra that had gained traction in domestic discourse, “the domino theory.”48 Fearing that 

his ambitious domestic agenda would be jeopardized 

if he did not look sufficiently tough in the realm of 

foreign policy, President Lyndon B. Johnson thrust 

the American military into a post-colonial conflict that 

they did not understand and were poorly equipped to 
18

address.49 Writing at the height of the Vietnam War, 

Bernard Brodie addressed the U.S. identification of 

interests in scathing but highly perceptive terms: 

Vital interests, despite common assumptions to the 

contrary, have only a vague connection with objective 

fact. A sovereign nation determines for itself what its 

vital interests are (freedom to do so is what the term 

“sovereign” means) and its leaders accomplish this 

exacting task largely by using their highly fallible and 

inevitably biased human judgment to interpret the external political environment.50

Additionally, a political actor’s ends will very rarely, if ever, align completely with its allies’ preferred 

ends. These differences between allies will likely 

become more acute as a war progresses and moves 

towards a termination phase.51 Allies may share one 

or two overarching objectives, but they are likely to 

differ over the nature of more specific ends and the 

methods required to achieve them. These differences 

can be acute and troublesome. Americans, due to their 

nature and culture, have a particularly hard time accepting that others do not want the same things that 

they want. In a perceptive essay on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) war in Afghanistan, 

Antulio Echevarria observed presciently that in the 

absence of “genuine existential threats,” states may 

prefer to muddle through a war than to embrace a robust and coherent grand strategy that requires serious 

compromise over domestic preference and long-term 

interests.52

Liddell Hart’s insistence on “winning the peace” 

also demands that soldiers and statesmen bear in 

mind that, in most cases, the hardest work comes after battles have been fought. Soldiers remain crucial 
19

here, since they provide whatever ongoing coercive 

leverage the victorious side may need to secure armistice terms and to provide the basic security required 

to facilitate all other projects within the defeated actor’s territorial realm, including political development 

and humanitarian assistance. The moment marking 

the transition from “war” to “post-war,” can be particularly fraught and dangerous since it is especially 

demanding of civil-military cooperation. Seams that 

are not stitched carefully will allow the (often fragile) 

fabric to tear and fray.53

STRATEGY IN HISTORY 

A brief look into the past enables one to understand 

the layers of complexity inherent in strategy and grand 

strategy. Moreover, it allows one to see how they have 

evolved over time in relation to changes in politics, 

socio-economics, and technology. Finally, while one 

must be careful with the too readily wielded phrase 

“strategic culture,” history does allow us to perceive 

some national proclivities and tendencies in the strategic behavior of particular states.54

The high level of civilization achieved by the ancient Greeks led to their wielding power in ways that 

seem familiar and “modern” to us today. But this 

changed with the coming of a feudal order in Europe; 

not until the late-18th century would that modernity 

reappear in full form, in particular with the return of 

“the people”—and popular will—as a key element of 

strategic calculation. The political and industrial revolutions of the late-18th century, the reemergence of 

democracy as a powerful political idea, and the rise of 

mass communications changed the landscape of strategic decisionmaking fundamentally. These changes 
20

placed a new emphasis on civil-military relations: the 

requirements of “representative government” meant 

that decisions about the wielding of military and coercive force would be in the hands of elected officials 

who, unlike their military counterparts, would face 

sanction at the ballot box if their strategies failed or 

lost popular support. But these civilian decisionmakers nonetheless had to rely on the professional expertise and skill of a trained military.55

As noted at the beginning of the monograph, the 

ancient Greeks gave us the root of the modern English 

word “strategy,” but their own use of the term was 

more akin to our modern word for “tactics”—movements on a battlefield.56 Still, the Greece of Socrates 

and Aristophanes was advanced enough in its politics to engage in activities that required strategy and 

grand strategy (in their modern conception).57 We can, 

for instance, identify the latter in the plan that Pericles 

developed for war with Sparta. Resting on a set of assumptions about the dominance of Athenian naval 

power, the security provided to citizens by the Athenian long walls, and the unwillingness of the conservative Spartans to engage in a protracted campaign, 

Pericles imagined and articulated a strategy that he 

believed finally would secure full respect for the rising 

Athenian state. He linked Athenian ways and means 

to an end he desired and expected (wrongly, in the 

end) to be achievable at acceptable cost.58

At about the same time in history, albeit in a different part of the world, the warring states of ancient 

China used strategy to maintain their survival in a 

highly competitive environment. Sun-Tzu’s articulation of strategic principles, which would ultimately be 

collected in a volume that modern readers know as 

The Art of War, continues to be studied carefully by 

students of strategy around the world.59
21

We can discern strategy, as well, in the empire 

building of ancient Rome. The Romans were able to 

use a heavy reliance on military power to build a vast 

empire, despite their possession of few natural resources. Constant exposure to external danger helped 

mold a society that elevated martial values, honored 

military skill, and made military service a central element of citizenship. Thus, Rome could field formidable armies, and the Roman polity could endure high 

casualties without changing its political aims. The 

ability of the Romans to extract such manpower resources enabled them to create and sustain a far-flung 

empire that was a vehicle for the extension of Roman 

influence.60

 Europe of the Middle Ages had specific legal, social, and military structures centered on the obligations between vassals and overlords.61 Interactions 

among political actors rested on diplomacy (including 

marriage arrangements), economic leverage, and the 

work of feudal armies. Eventually, the development 

of firearms and artillery contributed to shifts driven 

principally by the expansion of a money economy: 

wealthy overlords increasingly could use payments to 

secure the services of those who would protect their 

interests militarily.62 The deft combination of missile fire and rapid movement demonstrated so well 

at Agincourt in 1415 was replaced over time by large 

formations of musket and pike. Limited in their communications and dependent on fixed points of supply, 

these formations were lumbering and sluggish. Heavy 

reliance on mercenaries contributed to the ossification 

of strategy and the indecisive nature of war in this 

era. Even when they were generally competent, mercenaries were prone to desertion and mutiny unless 

they were promptly paid and supplied; most states 
22

found them “unreliable and often dangerous to their 

employers.”63

By the early-16th century, the problem of raising 

and wielding an army for the purposes of the state 

attracted renewed attention, spurring a revival of interest in the military methods of the classical civilizations—and in particular in the linkage between citizenship and soldiery. Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra

(The Art of War), emphasizing training and hierarchical 

command, was the most notable of many treatises that 

turned for inspiration to the Greco-Roman military 

system. The “new laws of warfare” that Machiavelli 

sought to distill for contemporary use were, in fact, 

“the old laws of the Roman military order.”64

Machiavelli fundamentally believed that to conquer and expand were the natural tendencies of man; 

therefore, he believed that war “was the most essential activity of political life.”65 In this quintessentially 

realist conception of international affairs, he developed a utilitarian idea of war and politics that pulled 

away from more traditional ethical considerations 

and made his name odious to later generations. But 

he had edged in the direction of modern social science 

by relating warfare to economic and political imperatives; he sought, as well, to “enlarge the realm of human planning and to reduce the field of chance.”66

Working at the University of Leiden between 1571 

and 1591, philosopher Justus Lipsius—an admirer of 

Machiavelli—perceived war not “as an act of uncontrolled violence, but rather the orderly application 

of force, directed by a competent and legitimate authority, in the interest of the state.” This perspective 

helped drive the Dutch reforms enacted by the princes 

of the House of Orange-Nassau to create a new model 

army. Inspired by the example of the Romans, these 
23

long-service professionals were “reasonably efficient 

instruments of state policy, responding in a predictable pattern of obedience to the orders of a defined 

political-military chain of command.”67

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Raimundo 

Montecuccoli of the Austrian Hapsburgs were both 

admirers of the Dutch reformers.68 Montecuccoli was 

responsible for the first systematic effort, in the early 

modern era, to address war in all its dimensions—including its administrative, political, and social dimensions. This intellectual heritage was passed on to the 

Duke of Marlborough in Great Britain and Frederick the Great in Prussia. Subsequently, it influenced 

thought and action during the French Revolution and 

the Prussian reformers who responded to it, including 

Gerhard von Scharnhorst and Clausewitz.69

Overall, the 17th century reformers had enlarged 

armies and placed renewed emphasis on discipline, 

drill, chains of command, and orderly administration. 

They had sought to make armies into true instruments 

of foreign policy. But they worked in a dynastic era 

when warfare was a clash between rulers rather than 

peoples. A hereditary class of officers oversaw a mass 

of soldiers who were drawn from the less productive 

classes and who lived largely apart from the citizenry. 

Kept on a short leash, soldiers employed tactics that 

were mechanistic and routine-based; to send them 

on distant reconnaissance missions was to risk losing 

them to desertion. While they could be effective instruments en masse, they were not trusted as individuals. 

It was often difficult for a commander to bring battle 

against an unwilling enemy.70
24

A Revolution in War and Strategy.

As historian R. R. Palmer has noted, the period between the ascendance to power of Frederick the Great 

in 1740 and the final defeat of French General Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815 saw not only the increasing 

perfection of the dynastic form of war under Frederick, but also the dramatic influence of an entirely new 

form, as manifested in the French Revolution.71 That 

historical turning point, which mirrored at least some 

of the ideas and forms of the earlier American Revolution, changed the nature of the relationship between a 

people and their government—and thereby changed 

what was possible in the military realm.

Strachan has argued that the idea of strategy derived from “the growth of standing professional 

armies on the one hand and of the Enlightenment on 

the other”; it is surely true that much of what we recognize in our contemporary notion of strategy finds 

its provenance in this 18th century convergence.72

Strachan cites the work of Paul Gideon Joly de Maizeroy as signaling a decisive shift towards the modern. 

In his Theorie de la guerre (1777), Joly de Maizeroy argued that warmaking involved reflection, foresight, 

and reasoning: 

In order to formulate plans, strategy studies the relationship between time, positions, means, and different 

interests, and takes every factor into account ... which 

is the province of dialectics, that is to say, of reasoning, 

which is the highest faculty of the mind.73

Facing a conservative coalition of European powers in 1793, the revolutionary French Republic created the Committee on Public Safety to arrange for 

the security of the French people. Unfettered by the 
25

limits that had bound the dynastic rulers, the committee aroused the population, called for a general 

draft (the levee en masse), and imposed a war economy. 

Napoleon took full advantage of these opportunities 

to shock and overwhelm the opponents he faced. In 

1799, Napoleon became the leading autocrat of France, 

and a year later he destroyed the Second Coalition arrayed against him through his decisive victory at the 

battle of Marengo, Italy. At the head of large armies 

fired by revolutionary zeal, Napoleon was able to part 

company with more limited forms of warfare. Though 

he worked with familiar tools—infantry, artillery, and 

cavalry—he was able to employ them with new levels 

of sophistication. He could take advantage of maneuver, reconnaissance, and exploitation in ways that his 

opponents could not. When a Third European Coalition was formed, Napoleon again humiliated them at 

Ulm and Austerlitz, Austria, in 1805.74

In addition to tactical genius, Napoleon exploited 

planning skills, administrative excellence, and superior staff work. All these were enhanced by the new 

meritocracy that opened command positions to those 

outside the hereditary classes.75 In this, he sought to 

reduce the element of chance in battle and to elevate 

the significance of strategy—the considered linking 

of ways and means with political aims. Ultimately, 

Napoleon’s vast political ambitions would catalyze 

enough military power—among those states trying to 

balance against him—to bring about his defeat on the 

battlefield.

 As perceptive observer Heinrich Dietrich von 

Buelow noted, issues of military command began to 

overlap with those of diplomacy and domestic affairs: 

“under modern conditions of strategy there could be 

no separation between politics and war—great soldiers must understand foreign affairs, and success-
26

ful diplomats must understand military action.”76 In 

this observation, we see the beginnings of a modern 

conception of that crucial element of modern strategy: 

sound civil-military relations. Von Buelow was surely 

correct to argue that generals and politicians needed 

to understand one another’s work.

Strachan has observed that: 

Napoleon himself did not use the word strategy until 

he was exiled at St. Helena, but those who wrote about 

what he had achieved certainly did—not only Clausewitz, but also Jomini . . . and the Austrian Archduke 

Charles.77

An insistence on the linkage between politics and war 

would be, perhaps, the most important contribution 

of Napoleon’s most important observer, Clausewitz. 

It was not the newness of Clausewitz’s statement, but 

rather the forcefulness of its assertion that set Clausewitz apart: “His originality is not in his reassertion of 

what must really be an old idea but rather in the clarity 

and insistence with which he hews to it and develops 

it.”78 War, which makes sense only if it serves a political aim, is a political process conducted “with other 

means”—a process that analyst Thomas Schelling, 

writing in the mid-20th century, would describe as 

“vicious diplomacy.”79

 Published a year after his death in 1831, Clausewitz’s On War remains the greatest effort ever made 

to understand the nature of war.80 No doubt because 

he had faced so formidable an opponent as Napoleon, 

Clausewitz placed a heavy emphasis on the profound 

and sustained effort required to overcome friction in 

warfighting. Swiss writer Antoine Henri Jomini, who 

had fought alongside Napoleon and thus wrote from 

a different—and rather more optimistic—perspective, 
27

sought to identify and enumerate the scientific principles of warfighting that had enabled Napoleon to 

enjoy such dominance for nearly 2 decades. In large 

part because they seemed tangible and concrete—and 

thus seemed to offer the prospect of being reproducible in other situations—these principles would hold 

great appeal for many, especially in the 19th century. 

Jomini would have a deep influence, for instance, on 

the newly professionalizing U.S. Army, which had its 

intellectual roots in the discipline of engineering. John 

Shy has written perceptively that: 

Even across the Atlantic, Jomini was the leading interpreter of Napoleon and the dean of military theorists. . 

. . The younger, post-Napoleonic generation of officers 

was as impressed as its seniors by the value of reducing warfare to a handful of strategic maxims.81

While navies had long been crucial elements of 

state-based coercive leverage, the nature of their power as military and economic instruments was not fully 

articulated until the turn of the century when two talented theorists, Alfred Thayer Mahan of the United 

States and Sir Julian Corbett of Britain, put their observations and insights on paper. Mahan drew a linkage 

between maritime trade and national prosperity—and 

therefore between sea power and security. He also 

drew attention to the relationship between a state’s 

geography and its strategic culture. Continental powers, surrounded by potentially hostile armies, had no 

choice but to focus the bulk of their attention on land 

power. But states freed by geography from the need 

for vigilant and expensive land-based defenses could 

develop cultures that highlighted individualism, capitalism, and the cosmopolitan outlook that comes with 

naval power and overseas trade. Both Corbett and 
28

Mahan sought theories of grand strategy; for the latter, there was a “symbiotic link between sea power, 

liberal democracy and ideas of grand strategy.” What 

Corbett called “major strategy” had “in its broadest 

sense to deal with the whole resources of the nation 

for war.”82

In the early-20th century, the development of airplanes as powerful instruments of war highlighted the 

role of geography and culture in grand strategy. States 

with ongoing land-based threats tended to emphasize 

their armies and focus on air-land cooperation, while 

states like Britain and the United States had more 

freedom to think about air power as an independent 

coercive instrument, operating on its own to shape an 

enemy’s incentives. The first main body of air power 

theory would develop during and after World War I, 

with its most public iterations issuing forth from the 

pens of Guilio Douhet, Sir Hugh Trenchard, and General Billy Mitchell. Writing after World War I, they 

promised—to those who would follow their advice—a 

restoration of offensive capabilities to warfighting and 

prompt, decisive victories. They warned of humiliating defeat for those who failed to exploit the potential 

of long-range bombardment to undermine an enemy’s 

ability to fight and will to fight. These authors were 

not, however, as explicit as they might have been 

about the linkage—the exchange mechanism—between the employment of independent air power and 

the achievement of a desired political end. They did 

not tend to submit their work to the serious critical 

analysis necessary for sound strategic thinking; thus, 

their theories were notably underspecified. In addition, the technological challenges inherent in implementing air power as an independent instrument of 

war proved daunting.83
29

While air power would very quickly become an 

essential asset on the field of battle, its utility as an 

independent instrument capable of carrying out warwinning “strategic” bombing proved more elusive. If 

long-range bombing (in many forms and from many 

platforms) surely has been able to contribute to victory in past wars, its ability to do so independently 

has frequently fallen short of expectations and has 

been a source of ongoing debate and controversy. But 

the degree to which air power should be thought of 

as, or expected to be, an independent instrument is 

also a bone of contention. Throughout history, military forces that have been able to combine their many 

tools—intelligently and synergistically—have been 

the most successful. This fact did not change when air 

power appeared on the scene. 

Strategy and Grand Strategy in the 

War-torn 20th Century.

By the late-19th century, political reforms and expansion of the franchise had extended the voice of the 

people in democratic states, and the growing circulation of newspapers to an increasingly literate public 

in Europe had heightened the volume and intensity 

of that voice. As Howard has noted, the role of public 

opinion had expanded over time: 

The mobilization of public opinion at home, the persuasion of opinion in neutral states, and the undermining of the legitimacy of the enemy government 

through propaganda, all became as much tools of 

grand strategy as the maintenance and deployment of 

armed forces, the preservation of a healthy economy, 

and the preservation of alliances.84
30

A revolution in sanitation and medicine had greatly increased the populations of European states, allowing for the possibility of vast conscripted armies. 

The rise of nationalism and a fiercely competitive environment in Europe, exacerbated by a second wave 

of aggressive colonialism, helped stoke embers that 

would erupt into an unprecedented conflagration.

When Europe plunged into war in 1914—just shy 

of 100 years after Napoleon’s defeat—science, technology, economics, social relationships, and politics were 

all in the midst of rapid and unprecedented change. 

Industrialization and the widening array of highly lethal weapons had changed the nature of war forever 

(although neither soldiers nor civilians fully appreciated this fact prior to 1914). Other industrial processes, 

including mass production of everything from trucks 

to foodstuffs and clothing, would also affect the size 

of armies and the ways they could fight.85 With all this 

happening at once, warfighting became a vastly larger 

and more daunting enterprise than it had ever been 

before in history. The need for nations to rationalize 

and organize their own resources fully, and to coordinate them with those of their allies, became acute, a 

matter of life and death.

The way in which different actors handled 

these changes affected their ability to leverage their 

strengths, compensate for their weaknesses, and link 

ways and means—both military and nonmilitary—to 

political objectives. World War I, which was the largest, costliest, and most complex conflagration that 

the world had ever seen, created a need for a grand 

strategic thought that was unprecedented in its range 

and scope. The states of the Entente (including Britain, 

France and, ultimately, the United States) fared better 

in the end than the Central Powers, anchored by the 
31

undemocratic Wilhelmine Germany and the fragile, 

fading Austro-Hungarian Empire. The grand strategy 

employed by the Allied Powers included the mass 

mobilization of state resources (human, industrial, 

technological, and scientific); information and propaganda campaigns, the extraction and leveraging of the 

resources of the British Empire; and the eventual attraction of American resources and American citizens 

to the cause. On behalf of political ideals, members of 

the Entente endured prolonged, brutal military campaigns on the Western Front and sustained an array 

of costly peripheral campaigns as well. Keeping their 

coalition together despite the loss of the Soviet ally in 

1917, they revealed resilience and commitment to the 

goal of protecting democracy on the European continent. But the price was frightful, and the outcome of 

the war, detailed and articulated in the Treaty of Versailles and a set of related instruments, would unsettle 

world politics for the remainder of the 20th century 

and beyond.86

Deep German resentment of the Treaty of Versailles 

eventually would give Adolf Hitler running room to 

implement his vision for overturning the existing order and implementing a craven racialist ideology. The 

absence of the United States as a European security 

guarantor after the war, and the Anglo-French fear of 

facing another costly conflagration so soon after the 

last one, helped open doors for Hitler that otherwise 

might have been closed to him.87

In the end, Britain and France reluctantly decided 

that they had to stand up to Hitler’s challenge to the 

international system. At the start of World War II, the 

survival of democratic principles and a capitalist economic structure for the developed world were once 

again in the balance. After France fell quickly, Prime 

Minister Winston Churchill realized Britain had little 
32

hope for a successful grand strategy in the absence of 

American help. But that help came slowly, first in the 

form of materiel, and then later in the form of a fully 

developed alliance with shared resources and knowledge.88 In the interim, the democratic cause received 

an unexpected and ironic boost when Hitler invaded 

the Soviet Union. 

Though American resources were partially diverted eastward after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 

HI, the Americans proved wealthy enough to fight on 

two fronts on opposite sides of the world. Once again, 

two democratic states, working in a loose but crucially important alliance with the Soviets, were able 

to prevail in the art of grand strategy. This was not 

done, however, without considerable difficulty and 

multiple setbacks along the way. Hitler’s Third Reich 

was a formidable, adaptive foe that forced intelligent, 

effective, and sustained use of Allied resources. The 

energy of Allied grand strategy, and the glue that held 

it together, was the shared goal of defeating Hitler’s 

heinous and exceptionally dangerous regime. Crafted 

in real time, Allied grand strategy was iterative; not 

infrequently, it was based on mistaken assumptions 

and judgments. Often it reflected the strains that 

stemmed from the different postwar hopes and visions 

of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. But 

flawed as it was, it had strengths and advantages that 

Axis grand strategy simply did not possess.89

If we look specifically at American grand strategy 

in World War II, we can identify five central pillars of 

success. First, Americans built and sustained a functional civil-military relationship that facilitated all 

other activity. Second, they found ways to mobilize 

men and material, and to fight inside a democratic, 

capitalist paradigm that worked in concert with the 
33

nation’s existing institutions. Third, the Americans 

leveraged the moral high ground ceded to them by 

their enemies and sustained national will by relying 

on mechanisms with well-established roots in the 

culture. Fourth, they used their ongoing relationship 

with the British to make better strategic choices than 

they might have made entirely on their own. Fifth, 

they embraced adaptability and resiliency, which allowed them to learn from their many mistakes and 

take advantage of their enemies’ mistakes.90

However, the post-World War II environment 

proved to have little in common with the fondest hopes and aspirations of any of the combatants. 

The United States, which had emerged from the war 

largely unscathed and in a dominant economic position, found itself taking increasing responsibility for 

the liberal, capitalist world order that the Royal Navy 

had previously underwritten. But the Americans, 

much to their dismay, discovered that war against 

Hitler had not transformed the views and proclivities 

of the battered, distrustful Soviet leader. Josef Stalin’s 

speech of February 9, 1946, made it clear that he did 

not expect any easy coexistence between communism 

and capitalism. A new environment entrenched as 

an “Iron Curtain” descended across central Europe.91

The emergent Cold War brought an atmosphere of 

great mistrust, trapping the contending parties in an 

odd new realm between war and peace. Once the Soviets acquired nuclear weapons in 1949, the role of 

U.S. Armed Forces (and its allies around the world) 

became, more than ever, to deter wars rather than 

fight them.92 The competitive structure of the postwar 

world also catalyzed a dramatic change in the disposition of the U.S. military. The creation of a permanent 

and well-resourced military organization raised the 
34

question of how that institution might be inserted into 

a liberal democratic political structure that held representative government (“government by the people 

and for the people”) as its highest virtue.93

 The U.S. grand strategy for coping with the communist threat—“containment,” first authored by Soviet specialist George Kennan—sought to limit and 

circumscribe Soviet influence while avoiding warfighting; the Soviet system, Kennan believed, would 

ultimately collapse due to its own internal deficiencies 

and contradictions.94 Kennan’s original conception, 

developed in 1946-47, was hardened and sharpened 

when National Security Council Report Number 68, 

written principally by Paul Nitze, gained traction after the Korean War began in June 1950. As a result, 

vast resources moved to the Pentagon, which began 

to eclipse the State Department in power and influence. Both Kennan and Nitze had envisioned a grand 

strategy that brought myriad resources—including 

economic, diplomatic, and military—to bear, but Nitze’s version of containment placed much more emphasis on military power than Kennan’s.95 In terms of 

our focus here, the main point is that the United States 

found it necessary to develop a grand strategy for a 

sustained engagement that it believed was existential 

in its stakes, but was not in any traditional sense a 

war. This expanded the notion of what grand strategy 

is and which circumstances demand it. The nuclear 

element of the new grand strategy: 

had no real precedents, beyond the dropping of the 

two atomic bombs on Japan. And so it focused on finding a new methodology, building scenarios and borrowing from mathematics and probability theory.96
35

The nature of the international system changed in 

another fundamental way in 1945. Rejecting their previous abandonment of the League of Nations, Americans took primary responsibility for the development 

of a new international constitutional system that 

gave a voice to all independent nations and created 

a mechanism for collective security within the United 

Nations.97 Through this means, small nations, many 

of them coming out from under the yoke of European 

imperialism, were able to gain forms of influence and 

leverage never before afforded to them. But, in its ongoing competition with the Soviet Union, the United 

States also manipulated the politics of smaller nations in order to sustain regimes or produce outcomes 

favorable to capitalism and hostile to socialism or 

communism. 

The U.S. grand strategy for the Cold War, which 

went through many iterations between 1945 and 1989, 

served reasonably well as an overall framework for 

stability and U.S. influence in the world, even if the 

Americans sometimes failed to identify their own vital interests, and even if they sometimes alienated nations that did not wish to have to choose between the 

United States and Soviet models. But the Cold War—

fueled by fear and profound mistrust—had its own 

perverse logic that led to a barely controlled spiral of 

unprecedentedly lethal arms. The atmosphere of mutually assured destruction was endured not only by 

the protagonists in the conflict, but also by the entire 

world. It had a large monetary and psychological cost, 

and it had an immense set of opportunity costs.98

The prevailing tendency to perceive the struggle 

with the Soviet Union as a zero-sum enterprise, and 

the domestic political effects this produced, ultimately led the United States into a lengthy ground war in 

which its own interests were limited, but those of its 
36

enemy were unlimited. A desire to reunify and liberate his people after the exit of French colonialists 

prompted Ho Chi Minh and his followers to fight a 

fierce people’s war against what they perceived to be 

a series of U.S.-backed puppet governments in Saigon. 

Unable to build a robust state and effective military 

around the corrupt regimes in the south, the United 

States was never able to make adequate headway or 

extinguish the North Vietnamese will to fight. The 

fierce irregular fight put up by the North Vietnamese 

and their supporters in the south was by no means the 

world’s first experience of “people’s war”—indeed, 

Clausewitz and Jomini had been shocked by similar fights (especially the popular Spanish resistance 

against Napoleon) during their own era. But the Vietnam war surely made clear, once again, the challenge 

that a great power faces against an enemy willing to 

fight unconventionally and unremittingly over a protracted period of time.99 One major result of the war in 

the United States—the rejection of the draft in favor 

of an all-volunteer military—would have lasting and 

transformative consequences for U.S. civil-military 

relations and U.S. strategy.

In 1989, the rather abrupt collapse of the Soviet 

Union thrust the United States and its allies into a new 

security paradigm that was, at first, driven by the selfrestructuring of the old Soviet-dominated world and 

then by the rising threat of al-Qaeda’s militant activists. After the latter’s attacks on U.S. targets on September 11, 2001, the United States responded by an attack on the Taliban-dominated regime in Afghanistan 

and then shifted briefly to a preventive war strategy. 

The latter produced a U.S. war against Iraq in 2003, 

the goal of which was “regime change” designed to 

remove Saddam Hussein, whom key American leaders feared might transfer weapons of mass destruc-
37

tion to terrorists. A second but important goal of the 

war, in the minds of those who commenced it, was 

to open space for the creation of a new democracy in 

the Middle East. The project in Iraq was, however, 

rushed into action without a full analysis of likely consequences. The kind of useful debate that might have 

taken place was simply absent in a nation traumatized 

by the shock of a costly and tragic terror attack on its 

soil. The resulting war, which shifted resources away 

from the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan and which 

was mishandled by two different administrations, has 

seen in its wake a seemingly endless string of disappointments, dashed hopes, and tragedies. The details 

go far beyond the scope of this monograph, but the 

war itself, and the U.S. failure to realize its goal of 

stabilizing Iraq, was a result, in part, of the collapse 

of a well-functioning civil-military relationship in the 

United States.100

In the second decade of the 21st century, the United States is struggling to contend with the wide array 

of security threats that compromise its present and its 

future, including, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in the 

Levant, fragile states, international criminal networks, 

infectious disease, cyberwarfare, and global warming 

(and the displacement and upheaval the latter is likely 

to cause). In addition, it faces the challenges posed by 

the rise of China, a near peer competitor with a large 

economy and an undemocratic and illiberal system of 

governance.101 All this must be managed against the 

backdrop of dramatically shrinking budgets driven by 

entitlements to, and medical costs for, an increasingly 

elderly population. These threats all require strategies that will make intelligent, robust, and defensible 

linkages between ends sought and limited means 

available.
38

THE CHALLENGES OF DEVISING AND 

IMPLEMENTING STRATEGY AND GRAND 

STRATEGY

In an article he wrote for The Washington Post in 

December 2009, scholar and former State Department 

advisor Eliot Cohen explained that, “Strategy is the 

art of choice that binds means with objectives.” He 

added that it involves “priorities, sequencing, and 

a theory of victory.”102 The first is terribly important 

since strategy must involve trade-offs. It requires the 

practitioner to accept the idea of limited resources, to 

choose wisely among them, and then to organize and 

utilize them so that they serve a defined political end. 

For grand strategy, this demand grows exponentially. 

One must not only choose wisely among resources, 

but also integrate, rationalize, and synchronize their 

use—frequently in conjunction with allies. In fact, 

Cohen’s own experience in government, as an advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the 

second term of the George W. Bush administration, 

convinced him that this task is so hard to perform in 

the maelstrom of day-to-day events that the entire notion of grand strategy might be in doubt. The best one 

might aim for, instead, is a kind of enlightened and 

informed muddling through.

In the United States, those who would criticize a 

given administration’s grand strategy for a lack of 

clarity, purpose, or vision are usually those who are 

observing it from the outside, often from think tanks 

and academic posts. Those inside the administration 

are, instead, frantically busy trying to cope with prevailing events and crises. While they will make efforts 

to articulate their broad vision in the congressionally 

mandated National Security Strategy of the United States
39

and in speeches at various venues, they will find themselves fighting daily to get out from under the reactive 

stance that is largely unavoidable inside government 

and is exacerbated by the battles waged by contending 

interest groups, the constraints of world and domestic 

opinion and, most of all, the 24/7 news cycle. 

Senior policymakers within the U.S. Government 

are subjected to hectic schedules that are divided daily 

into small increments. There is little, if any, time for 

the kind of reflective thought that allows for a broad 

perspective or for detailed analysis of any one subject. 

Robert Jervis has written recently: 

The number of meetings . . . the need to deal with multiple crises simultaneously, the difficulty in getting the 

relevant information, the growing fatigue, the necessity of dealing with self-important and ill-informed 

members of Congress . . . and what must be the knowledge that the decisions being made may be misguided 

take their toll.103

Steven Metz has observed that grand strategy 

“attempts to impose coherence and predictability on 

an inherently disorderly environment composed of 

thinking, reacting, competing, and conflicting entities.”104 That coherence must emerge from a domestic 

interagency process that has its own competitive dynamics and serious challenges of communication flow. 

Despite their exhausting schedules, all parties who are 

necessary to the success of a strategy or grand strategy 

must attempt to stay in ongoing and open communication with one another, not least of all to make sure 

that the logic relating ends and means is not usurped 

or undermined by the course of events, or simply forgotten. (Once a problem has existed for any length of 

time, it often becomes difficult to recall the original 

logic underpinning the strategy for dealing with it.) 
40

Progress (or lack of it) towards the aim must be 

monitored, and adjustments must be made in light of 

setbacks or stagnation. This requirement has significant ramifications at the organizational and bureaucratic levels. In the United States, the National Security Council, as the main interagency coordinating 

body, has a high responsibility not only to tee up issues appropriately for senior decisionmakers, but also 

to understand and monitor, to the greatest extent possible, the actions that flow from these decisions. Only 

in this way can integration and forward momentum 

be sustained. But the tyranny of immediate events and 

crises, tight schedules, and complexity of the U.S. interagency system place serious barriers in the path of 

this ideal.105

Political decisionmakers not only must understand 

when it is justifiable to use military force to solve a political problem, but they must understand the limitations of the instruments that the military wields. They 

must avoid moving toward violence in the absence of 

strategy; and they must also understand that violence, 

once employed, will reshape the political landscape—

both domestically and internationally. None of this is 

easy, and the great contested stew of domestic politics will often complicate their efforts and force their 

hand. Political decisionmakers must comprehend that 

the triumphs and failures of the military constantly 

will redefine which ends are still possible and which 

ones are not. Finally, they must understand that weariness, emotional fatigue, and shortened attention 

spans (often caused by the press of events) ineluctably 

will affect the quality of the choices they make and the 

policies they implement.
41

In the United States, few civilians in high policymaking circles have any military experience; they 

therefore lack a firsthand appreciation of the inherent complexity of military operations, including their 

propensity for what Clausewitz called “fog” and “friction.”106 Many civilians are inclined to believe that 

military operations are fairly straightforward, more 

or less like other business and commercial activities. 

This, in turn, leads them to be overly optimistic about 

what missions the military can accomplish and at 

what cost.107

Even academics who study international affairs 

and strategic studies may be poorly equipped to analyze effectively what Betts calls barriers to effective 

strategy since, as he explains: 

so few of them anymore learn enough about the processes of decision-making or military operations to 

grasp how hard it is to implement strategic plans, 

and few focus on the conversion processes that open 

gaps between what government leaders decide to do 

and what governmental organizations implementing 

those decisions actually do do.108

In a different but related vein, those on the military 

side of the civil-military divide often fail to comprehend the overwhelming desire that political decisionmakers have for confidence in their choices and their 

policies. Because they must “sell” their choices to the 

public, they become ineluctably (and sometimes irrationally) wedded to them: they feel a need to be consistent, to project an image of foresight, wisdom, and 

determination; and they feel a strong need to uphold 

the implicit and explicit pact they have made with 

their own polity. Robert Jervis has explained that:
42

For reasons of both psychology and politics, decision 

makers want to minimize not only actual value tradeoffs but also their own perception of them. . . . Maximimizing political support for a policy means arguing 

that it meets many goals, is supported by many considerations, and has few costs.109

Politicians and policymakers are consumed by 

their own unique challenges and burdens; indeed, 

they must spend as much time on domestic politics 

and interagency coordination as they spend on the 

development of plans. They must, above all, invest 

an extraordinary amount of time in creating a domestic environment that will enable them to implement, 

build, and sustain a strategy in the first place.

110 Once 

they invest this time, putting their words and their 

integrity on the line as they do so, they find that it becomes very hard for them to change course at all, let 

alone to do so in the timely and adroit way that good 

strategy often demands.

Because policymakers, especially those closest 

to the President, want to appear confident in their 

choices and self-assured as they implement strategic 

plans, they often resent information from military 

or intelligence officers that seem to erode that confidence, or present a different opinion. Their response 

to such cognitive dissonance is often to simply ignore 

information that does not align with their policy preference or proposed course of action. In other words, 

the stress inherent in facing the prospect of failure is 

so crushing that decisionmakers simply avoid it, or at 

least avoid it for as long as possible.111

Just as detailed intelligence can muddy the waters 

of political decisionmaking (when that information 

is not wholly supportive of a decision or policy), so 

too can the military’s reflexive conservatism and per-
43

ceived responsibility to plan for the worst case. This 

structural tension, which is largely unavoidable, can 

create serious problems of communication since one 

side will not want to hear what the other side feels is 

most important to say. The George W. Bush administration immediately dismissed and discredited Army 

Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki’s estimate of the number 

of troops that might be required to bring order in Iraq 

in the aftermath of a war there. Likewise, the Barack 

Obama administration resented Lieutenant General 

Stanley McChrystal’s estimate of the troop numbers 

required by a surge in Afghanistan.112

Complicating this situation is the fact that politicians will want to respond to crises, most of the time 

with a limited use of resources. Mimicking the business community, they will want to solve problems 

in the least amount of time and at the lowest cost. 

However, the instinctive tendency by democratic 

politicians to rely on a minimalist approach will place 

them at odds with military planners who do not wish 

to risk professional embarrassment due to the underresourcing of an initiative. Acutely aware that cutting 

any corner may well mean a real cost in terms of lives, 

the military prefers to work with a substantial reserve 

of resources to deploy if things go awry, which, in the 

realm of conflict and war, they often do. 

In situations where American interests are real but 

limited, and our adversaries interests are unlimited, 

political leaders often will grasp, first, at a seemingly 

low-cost option; if it fails, they will face the prospect 

of doubling down or pulling out—neither of which is 

appealing. Usually they will select some intermediate option between the two extremes. If compromise 

is usually a sound instinct for democratic policymakers, it does not always serve leaders well in this 
44

instance since compromises—a middle way between 

two unhappy options—often prolong conflict without 

providing the means to end it satisfactorily.113

Betts has observed presciently that: 

politicians often conflate strategy with policy objectives (focusing on what the desired outcome should 

be, simply assuming that force will move the adversary toward it), while soldiers often conflate strategy 

with operations (focusing on how to destroy targets or 

defeat enemies tactically, assuming that positive military effects mean positive policy effects).114

Policymakers may, indeed, reach too readily for 

armed force as a preferred instrument because they 

assume, simplistically, that force will have the desired 

effect on the enemy, even when those aims cannot possibly be achieved by military arms alone. In the United 

States, this tendency to reach for the military has been 

made easier by the creation of a professionalized allvolunteer military and the erosion of the requirement 

to obtain popular consent, through Congress, for the 

use of force.115 For decisionmakers anxious to keep a 

problem off the front pages, the use of force (including 

the employment of unmanned aerial vehicles in recent 

years) can be a seductive option.116

 The civil-military relationship within a nation is a 

complex one that is partly structured and partly improvised, but always challenging.117 At no moment 

in time does it acquire a permanent condition of stability; instead, it must be managed, worked on, and 

nurtured every single day. A further challenge at the 

highest levels is that any given administration may 

attempt to co-opt, politically, the military decisionmakers who work closely with it. An administration 

may well do this without being aware of it or with-
45

out fully countenancing how corrosive it is of healthy 

civil-military relations. Military officers are obliged to 

give their best professional military advice to civilian 

decisionmakers. This advice must be as objective as 

possible and as nonpartisan as possible. But holding 

on to true objectivity can be challenging, for instance, 

for a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who is the 

primary military advisor to the President and who 

works shoulder-to-shoulder with him (or her) in the 

White House for long periods of time.118

Just as military leaders must understand the demands on political decisionmakers, so too must political decisionmakers understand the environment 

in which military leaders work and the heavy demands and expectations placed upon them. Soldiers 

(and sailors, marines, and airmen) are unavoidably 

consumed by the relentless, ever-changing needs of 

military operations: making and then adapting plans; 

implementing decisions and revisiting them in light of 

feedback and data; building necessary infrastructure; 

supplying and sustaining troops, equipment, morale, 

and momentum; and keeping all this aligned with the 

goals and desires of the civilian leadership. Simply the 

act of getting equipment and personnel to the right 

place at the right time is an all-consuming task that 

will supply plenty of its own challenges, setbacks, and 

moments of high drama. Warfighting is, in itself, the 

most demanding of all human endeavors, not only 

physically, but also emotionally and intellectually. Indeed, to enter into war is to lift the lid on a Pandora’s 

Box of uncertainty and contingency, with each new 

act or phase either opening up or closing off future 

options. It is enough to find ways to fight effectively 

against an enemy trying to thwart you at every turn. 

But you must do more: you must tie every military 
46

action to the political aims sought by the leaders in 

charge of the effort. To keep those aims in view and 

to implement them within the cacophony of a democratic political structure is a challenge of the highest 

order.119

An additional challenge for military leaders, which 

civilians would do well to understand, is the lure or 

the appeal of operations. These possess a hard-to-resist 

attraction, not only because they are demanding and 

thus time-consuming, but also because they represent 

the place where military officers can demonstrate the 

full complement of skills that their long institutional 

training and education have bestowed upon them. 

It is in this realm where they are most comfortable 

and where they feel they can make the most difference, both professionally and personally. Strachan has 

pointed out that armed forces are inherently attracted 

to the operational level of war: “it allows them to appropriate what they see as the acme of their professional competence, separate from the trammels and 

constraints of political and policymaking direction.”120

Mackubin Thomas Owens has observed that “wartime 

service doctrines will dominate the conduct of operations if strategy is absent.”121

Just as civilian decisionmakers will feel pressure 

to stay the course once a decision is made, so too will 

military planners once they have embarked on a campaign—even if it was not in line, originally, with their 

own preferences or advice. This is so because once an 

operation is underway, it places the military’s professional expertise and competence under a national 

spotlight. Like all institutions, they want to perform 

well when they are called upon to do so. They want to 

justify their existence, avoid embarrassment, and justify the sizable expenditures on equipment, resources, 
47

and education they argued for and gained through 

testimony to Congress and the American people. Their 

own strong arguments for a campaign plan or piece of 

kit can lock them into a set of expectations they wish 

to see realized.122 Even more importantly, the military 

will seek to carry a campaign through to success to 

justify the human losses sustained in the midst of it. 

These losses are felt keenly, and they fuel determination to stay the course and uphold the cause for which 

brothers- and sisters-in-arms have given their lives.

 All this necessarily creates bias in the way that the 

military reads metrics and attempts to assess progress 

in an operation, campaign, or war that is underway. 

This is exacerbated by a “can do” culture that will be 

inclined to dismiss or downplay evidence indicating 

that a military mission is failing to meet its objectives. 

In his memoir about his time spent as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates wrote: ‘“The more time you spend 

in Afghanistan,’ I told the President, ‘the closer to the 

front you get, the more optimistic people are’.”123 Both 

civilian and military leaders have strong psychological incentives to filter information and to deny—or 

simply screen out—information suggesting that their 

current course of action is problematic. Acknowledging failure (or simply a lack of progress) and then 

adapting involves considerable psychological stress, 

and frequently, a great deal of pain.124

Yet another structural barrier to effective communication between civil and military leaders stems, 

again, from the nature of the division itself—a division 

that exists in democracies for sound and admirable 

reasons. In a representative democracy, elected civilians are the ones who quite rightly have the responsibility for consequential choices affecting the polity as 

a whole. If their choices prove misguided or simply 
48

unpopular, elected civilians can be removed in the next 

voting cycle. Since no one elects military officers and 

they are not, therefore, subject to sanction at the ballot 

box, they ought not hold the lion’s share of influence 

over national decisions about the start of a war, the 

political aims of a war, or the ending of a war. But how 

does a military leader confine himself (or herself) to 

offering professional military advice when any use of 

force—and certainly any entry into war—has so many 

political dimensions? If we accept the Clausewitzian 

notion that war is a continuation of politics by other 

means, is not the military planner necessarily thrust 

into the realm of politics, whether he or she wants to 

be there or not? This is an important question that is 

not discussed often enough in the realm of professional military education. In his memoir, McChrystal 

observed that, during his service in Afghanistan, “The 

process of formulating, negotiating, articulating, and 

then prosecuting even a largely military campaign involved politics at multiple levels that were impossible 

to ignore.”125

A fear of getting ahead of the President, or getting crosswise with the White House in general, is 

something that most high-level military officers take 

very seriously; they know that it can have profoundly 

negative consequences for the nation, not to mention 

the consequences for their own careers and reputations. Most, therefore, will tread quite carefully when 

they walk the line, perhaps “high wire” is the better 

phrase, that runs between political choices and military ones. U.S. Presidents are highly sensitive to the 

history of military interference in politics; indeed, 

General Douglas MacArthur’s insubordination during 

the Harry Truman presidency left a stain that lingers 

to this day and haunts contemporary civil-military 

relations.126
49

The trust that is so essential to sound civil-military 

decisionmaking must be built, in part, on education, 

and on the belief that generals will not use their power 

and influence to meddle in the realm of democratic 

politics.127 If military leaders leak information about 

national strategy (in order to influence the direction 

or momentum of a debate), the result can be highly 

corrosive, causing subsequent communication to become constrained and fraught. Similar outcomes result if civilians believe that military leaders are trying 

to game, stack, or stall a consequential decision.

Wary of all this, and aware of the way that military influence can and does continue to upend democratic governance around the world, most officers try 

to leave themselves a safety zone designed to buffer 

them from charges of political behavior or political 

interference. But discerning exactly where that safety 

zone begins and ends can be highly stressful. Even officers who are trying to be very careful can find themselves wandering into dangerous territory. On the 

other hand, military leaders simply may not foresee all 

the political and strategic consequences that will flow 

from what they believe to be an operational (or even 

tactical) decision. Perhaps the most stunning example 

of this oversight was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s 

decision not to share plans about the Pearl Harbor attack with key civilians because he felt that the attack 

plan was about military operations and tactics rather 

than strategy.128

All this complicates the ability (and, indeed, willingness) of senior-level military officers to engage in 

realms that appear to be within the lane of other authorities or agencies, including the State Department 

or the United States Agency for International Development. But regardless of their concerns, and in the 
50

interest of sound strategy, they must be prepared to 

work together with civilian authorities to figure out 

how to walk the civil-military high wire successfully. 

By no means does this imperative end at the moment 

of an armistice. Since winning a war means finding 

a way to create a satisfactory and sustainable peace, 

military officers must be willing to learn, embrace, 

and utilize a range of tools in the transition from combat operations to stability and peacekeeping. Even if 

other agencies of the government own large swaths of 

the expertise in this realm, the military will own the 

manpower and the equipment required for the implementation of goals and the guarantee of satisfactory 

outcomes. It will be necessary for military leaders to 

stay involved in planning and to be prepared to employ the threat and/or use of force as coercive leverage if such leverage proves necessary to produce and 

sustain acceptable political outcomes.129

At all levels, officers must be willing and able to see 

and understand the political, cultural, historical, and 

social contexts that shape the foreign environment in 

which they are operating. A failure to do this (along 

with a narrow focus on the strictly military aspects of 

an operation), in nearly every case, will prohibit them 

from realizing the results they seek.130 This holds not 

only for campaigns, but also for training and advising missions. If, for instance, U.S. troops make heroic 

efforts to train foreign troops in marksmanship, leadership, and tactics without recognizing that the environment those foreign troops operate in is dominated 

by corruption and graft, their investment of time and 

energy is likely to be for naught. 

In counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, planners 

must pay particular attention to the political environment since bad governance (which was the root of the 
51

problem to begin with) will make impossible or obviate any serious gains on the battlefield. Explaining 

that COIN can be successful in many circumstances, 

Stephen Biddle warns that hard-won gains can be 

quickly lost: 

COIN is obviously hard and slow. But the Afghan 

experience shows that current U.S. methods can return threatened districts to government control, when 

conducted with the necessary time and resources. 

This certainly does require combat and hard fighting. 

Counterinsurgency is not social work, and its purpose 

is not to make local civilians like Americans.

Importantly, though, he adds: “But combat and 

security alone will have difficulty sustaining control 

if all they do is allow a predatory government to exploit the population for the benefit of unrepresentative elites.”131

Stove-piping information, institutional infighting, 

and organizational and cultural biases can cause the 

strategy process to founder on the shoals of ignorance, self-interest, or arrogance. But if we are intentional about recognizing these phenomena, we can 

work to ameliorate their effects. Even though there 

are permanent, unavoidable bureaucratic and civilmilitary tensions that complicate the articulation and 

execution of strategy, it is possible—through education and action—to shift the odds in favor of success. 

Interpersonal relationships will matter, too, especially at the highest levels; key players must be willing 

and able to pull towards an agreed-upon end state. If 

they refuse, even the most robust strategy will be in 

jeopardy. 
52

Are Better Outcomes Possible?

Peter Layton has identified two alternatives to 

grand strategy that may be valid for some actors under certain circumstances. “Opportunism” posits that 

actors may change, shift, or evolve in order to take 

advantage of possibilities as they present themselves. 

This requires not so much a specific aim point, or end, 

than a general direction. It is an option for actors who 

may not have the resources to shape outcomes, but 

instead may wish to grasp and exploit the breaks that 

come their way. It surely has advantages, not least 

being that it can be far less resource-demanding than 

grand strategy. But it has downsides, too. It is reactive, leaving an actor largely at the mercy of outside 

forces it cannot control: “the state using opportunism 

does not initiate and therefore must accept boundaries determined elsewhere; the state is part of another’s 

project and is responsive to that.”132

The flip side of the opportunism coin is risk management. Layton explains that in this approach, an actor will seek mainly to avoid harm to itself as a result 

of the forces around it. Actors can anticipate potential 

harm and take steps to make themselves less directly 

or acutely subject to it. These steps can include “building capabilities and capacities to survive shocks,” or 

“continuing operation[s] in the presence of external 

stresses,” or “absorbing shocks and evolving in response.” These might be political and/or physical 

in nature.133 An example of the latter might include 

the building of protective walls to hold back rising 

seas caused by melting Arctic ice. Like opportunism, 

though, risk management will not offer the sense of 

agency that strategy and grand strategy can confer 

when they are well-designed and implemented.
53

Strategy always will demand clear and honest interaction and cooperation between two very distinct 

tribes, civilian and military, who have different priorities, cultures, and modes of operating. At the end of 

the day, neither structural tensions nor inherent problems of communication and implementation should 

prohibit strategic decisionmakers from striving towards an ideal and working to make their choices as 

intelligent and informed as possible.134 Indeed, this is 

a moral imperative whenever lives are on the line.

Because of the myriad opportunities for miscommunication and failure, resilience and recovery mechanisms must be built into the strategy process. These 

mechanisms depend above all on healthy, trust-based 

organizations (and relationships) that facilitate learning and adapting—both from the top down and from 

the bottom up. The learning and adapting depend, of 

course, on analysis and critical thinking. Being able to 

ask the right questions at the right time is key—but 

this skill requires moral courage, sound judgment, 

and wisdom on both the civilian and military sides of 

the aisle. Hard questioning, analytical thinking, and 

the repeated challenging of assumptions are requirements of strategy, especially in wartime. This skill can 

be honed in many ways, but among the most important is the use of historical case studies in strategic 

education. These are important for both civilian and 

military pedagogy. Case studies allow students to go 

beyond frameworks and definitions; they invite students to plunge into the details of the strategy making 

process, illuminating where challenges, frictions, and 

potential miscommunications are to be found. 

History and historical case studies are vital to the 

development of critical thinking skills. To attempt to 

explain the past in a coherent way is to wrestle with 
54

evidence and argument. We seek out arguments with 

the greatest explanatory power, and the search sharpens our critical faculties and forces us to use our logical and analytical powers to their maximum capacity. 

Explaining the past also forces us to prioritize and 

systematize the information available to us: a useful 

explanation of the past has to be more than a jumble 

of undifferentiated facts; instead it must be a rational, 

robust, coherent argument that rests on evidence from 

the record and is not easily dismissed or replaced by 

another argument. To study history is to bring discipline to our minds. One noted scholar has explained 

that history trains students: 

in the rules of evidence and logic, teaches them how 

to approximate truth through the patient exposure of 

falsehood, and gives them the mental trellis they need 

to place themselves in time and space and organize 

every other sort of knowledge they acquire in the humanities and sciences.135

Of course, history never repeats itself exactly, but 

the study of history can help us learn to see patterns 

and trends more clearly. Once we understand the patterns of the past, we can learn what kinds of questions 

are most useful to ask ourselves about the present. 

While these questions will not provide us with immunity from mistakes or protect us from false analogies, 

they may well help us to become more self-aware and 

more alert to our own circumstances. They may help 

us develop the quality of empathy, which is such a 

central part of emotional intelligence and successful 

analysis.136

Civilian students of strategy ought to be given 

opportunities to immerse themselves, occasionally, in the culture of the military in order to learn its 
55

vocabulary, its priorities, and its principles of functioning and organizing.137 Military students should 

have opportunities, if they so desire, to study for 

periods of time in civilian academies or to rotate for 

periods of time into civilian institutions. Nonmilitary 

members of the interagency ought to be encouraged 

to study, side-by-side with military officers, in senior 

staff colleges. Such activities can aid in producing 

multilingual individuals who understand both civilian and military cultures and language and therefore 

can act as interlocutors and translators between the 

two groups. In addition, those who have acquired 

such abilities through long service in the Washington 

arena should perceive themselves as crucial bridgebuilders in the strategy process.138

Military students in particular ought to have every 

opportunity to learn to see their world through lenses 

other than their own. Cultural awareness and cultural 

literacy are essential to politics and to strategy, and 

thus military decisionmakers, in addition to political 

decisionmakers, must be adroit in these realms. One 

way in which this need has been addressed in recent 

years has been through the increased numbers of international students coming to U.S. staff colleges and 

learning alongside their American counterparts. If 

the former gain useful knowledge to take home with 

them, they also provide key bodies of knowledge—

and essential forms of cultural awareness—to their 

American brothers- and sisters-in-arms.

Even if civilian policymakers inevitably are trapped 

by the high volume of information and the rapid demand for decisions in the age of the Internet and the 

24-hour news cycle, they can try to educate themselves 

in order to prepare for this situation. Occasional tabletop exercises and red-teaming of thorny problems are 
56

likely to prove worthwhile—not least because they 

facilitate the building of personal relationships and 

allow necessary forms of civil-military communication to be practiced. Time invested in them, especially 

early on in the life of an administration, is likely to pay 

major dividends later. In 2006, Michele Flournoy and 

Shawn Brimley looked to the Dwight Eisenhower administration’s “Project Solarium” for a way to imagine a major reanalysis of U.S. National Security Strategy

for the 21st century. In the summer of 1953, Solarium 

brought together key national security professionals, 

insisting that they pose deep questions that would 

force a close look at the structural underpinnings of 

the existing strategy for waging the Cold War. It was 

a model of its kind and, indeed, should serve as a template for future efforts of a similar type.139

On the military side, skilled, efficient, and highly 

competent staff work is essential; there is simply no 

substitute for it. Finding answers to essential questions will depend on the presence of a skilled and 

diligent staff of dedicated professionals who are wellinformed, instinctively analytical, and adaptive. They 

must be willing to allow information to flow freely, 

even from the bottom up; and they must be open to 

information and advice from partners and from subject matter experts. Neither strategy nor grand strategy can rest upon individual genius (although good 

fortune can sometimes lend a hand). Some of those we 

frequently identify as successful strategists, including 

George Marshall and Churchill, promulgated seriously flawed strategies at various points in their careers. But they had people alongside them who could 

offer contrary opinions and catch errors; and they had 

organizations under them that could do dedicated, 

first-rate staff work, the kind of work that allows for 
57

learning, adaption, and adjustment.140 Indeed, adroitness, perhaps, is the single most important quality 

of strategy—the quality that is most likely to give an 

actor an advantage over an adversary.

To be even partially successful, a strategy must 

have staying power, resiliency, and robustness. All 

parties must realize this and commit to it, even when 

domestic political interest has begun to wane and new 

items creep onto the security agenda. With reference 

to the military instrument, Betts has observed: 

If effective military strategy is to be real rather than 

illusory, one must be able to devise a rational scheme 

to achieve an objective through combat or the threat 

of it; implement the scheme with forces; keep the plan 

working in the face of enemy reactions (which should 

be anticipated in the plan); and achieve something 

close to the objective.141

This is surely a nontrivial set of demands, but it 

is fully justified, he argued, in situations where the 

stakes are high, lives are at risk, and failure will be 

costly on multiple levels. 

Historian Walter McDougall has defined sound 

grand strategy as “an equation of ends and means so 

sturdy that it triumphs despite serial setbacks at the 

level of strategy, operations, and campaigns. The classic example is Allied grand strategy during World War 

II.”142 Serial setbacks surely beset U.S. grand strategy 

in World War II, from the fall of the Philippines to the 

missteps at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia; from the 

chaos of the Sicily landing to the early failures of the 

strategic bombing offensive; from the glider disasters 

at Normandy and the torpedo failures in the Pacific 

to the enemy counterpunches at Arnhem, The Netherlands, and the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, Bel-
58

gium. But each time, the Americans, in concert with 

their allies, recovered and adjusted. 

Finally, all parties must embrace the idea that the 

use of force must always be a last resort. While it can 

and should work constantly in the background as a 

form of potential leverage and coercion, it should be 

wielded only sparingly and soberly, when other options fail. In any situation where lives are at stake, we 

have a powerful moral obligation to proceed carefully 

and with restraint, and to craft strategy and grand 

strategy that is as sound, efficient, and adaptive as 

possible.143 Because it is so challenging on so many 

levels, strategy is difficult to practice in any idealized 

form. But it is not an impossible art. Diligent students 

of strategy who are fully alive to its complexities and 

demands will be prepared to anticipate and accommodate the inevitable twists and turns, setbacks, and 

disappointments they will face—and will be asked to 

overcome. 

ENDNOTES

1. Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy, Cambridge, UK: 

Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 4; Antulio Echevarria, Reconsidering the American Way of War, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014, p. 47; Hew Strachen, The Direction 

of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective, Cambridge, 

UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 28.

2. In reference to this problem, Strachan has opined that, “The 

word strategy has acquired a universality which has robbed it 

of meaning, and left it only with banalities.” See Hew Strachen, 

The Direction of War, p. 27; also see Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. x; 

Hal Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy? Ithaca, NY: Cornell 

University Press, 2014, p. 3.
59

3. See, for instance, Barry Posen and Andrew Ross, “Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security, Vol. 

21, No. 3, 1997, pp. 5-53; Elbridge Colby, “Grand Strategy: Contending Contemporary Analyst Views and Implications for the 

U.S. Navy,” CRM D0025423.A2, Arlington, VA: Center for Naval 

Analysis, November 2011. 

4. For important insights, see Richard K. Betts, “Is Strategy 

an Illusion?” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 2, Fall 2000, pp. 

5-50; and Richard K. Betts, American Force: Dangers, Delusions and 

Dilemmas in National Security, New York: Columbia University 

Press, 2012. 

5. On this point, students of strategy have much to learn from 

students of cognitive psychology who investigate how we absorb 

and process information through our senses. Contemporary political scientists have helped us learn to apply cognitive psychology 

to the behavior of decisionmakers charged with strategic choices. 

For the foundational literature, see Robert Jervis, Perception and 

Misperception in International Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976; Robert Axelrod, Framework for a General Theory 

of Cognition and Choice, Berkeley, CA: Institute of International 

Studies, 1972; Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making: 

A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and Commitment, New 

York: Free Press, 1977. For a recent application of some of the insights from this literature, see an illuminating essay by Robert Jervis, “Why Intelligence and Policymakers Clash,” Political Science 

Quarterly, Vol. 125, No. 2, Summer 2010, especially pp. 197-200.

6. The relationship between the leader and the military 

institution(s) within a state (or nonstate actor) can greatly affect 

the behavior and potential competence of the military within that 

state. This ought to be factored into strategic analysis. For insights, 

see Stephen Biddle and Robert Zirkle, “Technology, Civil-Military Relations, and Warfare in the Developing World,” Journal of 

Strategic Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1996, pp. 171-212; Stephen Biddle, 

“Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the 

Future of Conflict,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2, Autumn 

1996, pp. 139-179.

7. Sir Michael Howard has identified four “forgotten dimensions” of strategy: operational, logistical, social, and technologi-
60

cal. Colin Gray has identified a much longer list of elements to 

be considered. He divided these into three sub-categories: people 

and politics; preparation for war; and war proper. See Sir Michael 

Howard, “The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, 

Vol. 57, No. 5, Summer 1979; also see Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 23-44. Edward 

Luttwak describes strategy as a “multilevel edificace.” See Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, Rev. Ed., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001, especially p. 209. 

For a brief but perceptive examination of some failed strategies 

of the past, see Paul Kennedy, “Grand Strategies and Less Than 

Grand Strategies: A Twentieth Century Critique,” in Lawrence 

Freedman, Paul Hayes, and Robert O’Neill, eds., War Strategy 

and International Politics: Essays in Honour of Sir Michael Howard, 

Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1992, pp. 227-242. 

8. For a perceptive analysis of these challenges, see Betts, 

American Force, pp. 232-271. See also Williamson Murray, Richard 

Hart Sinnreich, and James Lacey, eds., The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Policy Diplomacy and War, New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 2011, p. 254.

9. See Paul Kennedy, ed., Grand Strategies in War and Peace, 

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 6.

10. For a useful overview, see Stephen Biddle, “Strategy in 

War,” PSonline, www.apsanet.org, July 2007.

11. Biddle, “Strategy in War.” Strachan has insisted that the 

more limited, short-term quality of “military strategy” must not 

be substituted, one for one, with the broader, longer-term orientation of “grand strategy.” He argues, “By using the same word, 

‘strategy,’ in both sets of circumstances, we create an expectation, 

each of the other, which neither can properly fulfill.” See Hew 

Strachan, “Strategy and Contingency,” International Affairs, Vol. 

87, No. 6, 2011, p. 1281. He points out that what the United States 

calls “grand strategy” is called ‘national strategy’ in many other 

nations of the world.

12. John Lewis Gaddis, “What is Grand Strategy?” Karl 

Von Der Heyden Distinguished Lecture, Duke University, Durham, NC, February 26, 2009, keynote address for the conference, 
61

“American Grand Strategy after War,” p. 7, available from tissnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/KEYNOTE.Gaddis50thAniv2009.

pdf. Brands echoed this idea a few years later, stating, “grand 

strategy involves figuring out how to align today’s initiatives with 

tomorrow’s desired end state—how to get from where one is to 

where one ultimately wants to go.” Brands, p. 4. For a description 

of some definitions as they were developed at a recent conference 

on strategy held by the U.S. Army, see John C. Valledor, “Strategy 

Education across the Professional Military Education Enterprise,” 

Parameters, May 18, 2015, available from www.strategicstudies

institute.army.mil/index.cfm/articles/Strategy-Education/2015/05/18.

13. Samuel Eliot Morison, Strategy and Compromise, Boston, 

MA: Little Brown, 1958, pp. 4-5.

14. These include the Naval War College, the Air War College, the U.S. Army War College, and the National War College.

15. For detailed descriptions of what is meant by the senior 

staff colleges when they use the terms “ends, ways, and means,” 

see Harry R. Yarger, “Toward a Theory of Strategy: Art Lykke 

and the Army War College Strategy Model” in James Bartholomees, ed., U.S. Army War College Guide to National Security Policy 

and Strategy, 2nd Ed., June 2006, pp. 111-112; and Harry R. Yarger, 

Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, February 2006. Mackubin Thomas Owens has explained the 

relationship concisely: “strategy describes the way in which the 

available means will be employed to achieve the ends of policy.” 

See Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Strategy and the Strategic Way of 

Thinking,” Naval War College Review, Autumn 2007, pp. 111-124. 

16. Linda Robinson, Paul D. Miller, John Gordon IV, Jeffrey 

Decker, Michael Schwille, and Raphael S. Cohen, Improving Strategic Competence: Lessons from 13 Years of War, Arlington, VA: RAND 

Arroyo Center, 2014, p. xiii, available from www.rand.org/content/

dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR800/RR816/RAND_RR816.pdf; 

See also Valledor.

17. Robinson et al., p. xiii.
62

18. In his classic work on civil-military relations, Samuel 

Huntington argued for a system of “objective control,” enabling 

civilians to control the military by carefully delineating the political and military spheres and keeping them as distinct as possible. 

Civilians would retain dominance in the political realm, while 

handing authority to the military in its own sphere of professional 

expertise. Through this bargain, the United States could simultaneously protect itself from external threats while guarding against 

military meddling in the political realm. Huntington felt this was 

the best way to locate a competent, capable military inside a liberal democratic system of governance. See Samuel Huntington, The 

Soldier and the State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 

1957; Samuel Huntington, “Civilian Control and the Constitution,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 50, No. 3, September 

1956, pp. 676-699. The literature that has followed in the wake of 

this argument—both supporting and critiquing it—is vast. 

19. In the latter portions of this monograph, I explore the political terrain that military officers need to understand; equally, I 

explore some of the military fundamentals that civilians need to 

understand.

20. In an important essay addressing key aspects of this issue, 

Richard Betts has written: 

One could make the case that for ideal integration of objectives, strategy, and operations, civilians and military should 

be equally conversant in each others’ terms of reference and 

should participate equally at all stages. In the end, however, 

few would deny that there is some level of high politics at 

which soldiers should be silent, and some level of tactical 

specificity or micromanagement where civilians should 

keep their hands off.

He adds, “Equality in strategic discussion does not compromise the civilians’ ultimate primacy. Presidents have the right 

to be wrong in the end, but generals should have every chance 

to prevent error before that end.” Richard K. Betts, “Are CivilMilitary Relations Still a Problem?” in Suzanne Nielsen and Don 

M. Snider, eds., American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and 

the State in a New Era, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 2009, pp. 11-41. For quoted material, see pp. 36, 40.
63

21. Robinson et al, pp. 47-48; Janine Davidson, “The Contemporary Presidency: Civil-Military Friction and Presidential 

Decision Making: Explaining the Broken Dialogue,” Presidential 

Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2013, p. 141. While some of his arguments are controversial, one might also consult Dayne E. Nix, 

“American Civil-Military Relations: Samuel Huntington and the 

Political Dimensions of Military Professionalism,” The Naval War 

College Review, Vol. 65, No. 2, Spring 2012, pp. 88-104.

22. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 7. For some insights into 

the reasons for inadequacy on the civilian side, see Tami Davis 

Biddle and Robert M. Citino, “The Role of Military History in the 

Contemporary Academy,” a Society for Military History (SMH) 

White Paper available on the SMH website; reprinted in the February 2015 edition of Footnotes, the online journal of the Foreign 

Policy Research Institute and in Army History, No. 26, Summer 

2015, pp. 24-30.

23. Yale’s Grand Strategy Program and the programs of Columbia’s Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies (including 

prominently, its Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military 

Strategy and Operations) have made admirable efforts to help 

bridge this civil-military divide. In recent years, Duke University 

has developed a strong program in grand strategy. Other notable 

programs that cover elements of this important topic include: 

those at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns 

Hopkins University; MIT; Temple University; the Ohio State University; George Washington University; the University of Texas; 

Dartmouth University; Georgetown University; and, Texas A&M 

University. 

24. Mackubin Thomas Owens has written: “In general, strategy provides a conceptual link between national ends and scarce 

resources, both the transformation of those resources into means 

during peacetime and the application of those means during war.” 

See Owens, “Strategy and the Strategic Way of Thinking,” p. 112.

25. See Thomas Mahnken, ed. Competitive Strategies for the 

21st Century: Theory, History, and Practice, Stanford, CA: Stanford 

Unversity Press, 2012.
64

26. Sir Michael Howard, “Grand Strategy in the Twentieth 

Century,” Defence Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2010, pp. 1-10, 

especially p. 6. 

27. For perceptive insights, see David Edgerton, Britain’s War 

Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War, 

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011; and Paul Kennedy, 

Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the 

Second World War, New York: Random House, 2013.

28. For a sophisticated overview, see G. John Ikenberry, After 

Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order 

after Major Wars, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001; 

and Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the 

American World Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

2011. This U.S. dominated system has surely not been without its 

critics. For an insightful treatment of its origins, see Adam Tooze, 

The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global 

Order, 1916-1931, London, UK: Allen Lane, 2014.

29. Charles Hill has written: “Aristotle would use the Iliad 

to teach the first principle of statecraft: diplomacy and power 

are indispensable and must be used, for best effect, in tandem.” 

See Charles Hill, Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World 

Order, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010, p. 9.

30. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” pp. 5-50. Quoted material 

on p. 5. 

31. John Lewis Gaddis, “The Rise, Fall and Future of Deterrence,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1983/84. See also Peter Layton, 

“The Idea of Grand Strategy,” The RUSI (Royal United Services 

Institute) Journal, Vol. 157, No. 4, online, August 15, 2012, pp. 56-

61, especially pp. 57-58; Owens, “Strategy and the Strategic Way 

of Thinking,” p. 111. 

32. Colin Gray, The Strategy Bridge, Theory for Practice, New 

York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 3.

33. Layton, “The Idea of Grand Strategy,” p. 58. He adds that 

grand strategy also concerns itself with “assembling the manpower, money and material necessary to build and sustain the means 

needed.”
65

34. Under the heading of resources, he included economic, 

technological, and scientific resources; diplomacy; and national 

morale and political culture. See Kennedy, ed., Grand Strategies in 

War and Peace, pp. 4-5. Brands adds that “a grand strategy represents and integrated scheme of interests, threats, resources, and 

policies.” Brands, p. 3.

35. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 6. He notes, “The logic 

at each level is supposed to govern the one below and serve the 

one above.”

36. Writing about strategy involving military operations, 

Betts observes that: 

Strategy fails when some link in the planned chain of cause 

and effect from low-level tactics to high-level political outcomes is broken, when military objectives come to be pursued for their own sake without reference to their political 

effect, or when policy initiatives depend on military operations that are infeasible. 

Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 7.

37. See Yarger, “Toward a Theory of Strategy,” p. 112. F. G. 

Hoffman has written about the constraints on strategy. See F. G. 

Hoffman, “Grand Strategy: The Fundamental Considerations,” 

Orbis, Fall 2014, pp. 472-485.

38. Strachan, “Strategy and Contingency,” p. 1281.

39. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter 

Paret, eds. and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1976, pp. 119-121. See also Antulio Echevarria, Clausewitz and 

Contemporary War, Oxford, MA: Oxford University Press, 2007, 

especially pp. 103-109.

40. There are many worthwhile overviews of British strategy 

in World War II. See Williamson Murray, “British Military Effectiveness in the Second World War,” in Williamson Murray and 

Allan Millett, eds., Military Effectiveness, Vol. III, Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1988, pp. 90-135. A recent treatment is David French, 

“British Military Strategy” (and the related bibliographical essay), 
66

in John Ferris and Evan Mawdsley, eds., The Cambridge History of 

the Second World War, Vol. I, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 28-50, 716-718.

41. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd Rev. Ed., London, UK: 

Faber and Faber, 1967, p. 322. The book’s first edition appeared 

in 1954. 

42. Morison, p. 6. He stated: “grand strategy or higher strategy is simply national foreign policy continued in time of war.”

43. Edward Meade Earle, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1943, p. viii.

44. Liddell Hart, quoted in Morison, p. 6. 

45. It is important to realize that, for a peace to be stable over 

time, former rivals will need to agree that the resulting situation 

is in some sense “better” than it was before. Liddell Hart realizes 

that “winning the peace” can be a complex and demanding process. I find this concept useful even though I do not prefer to use 

the phrase “winning the peace.” Rather, I see warfighting (or the 

phrase “fighting and winning the nation’s wars”) as inclusive of

the attainment of the peace. In other words, warfighting includes 

war termination. Violence merely opens the space for the vital 

political work that can flow from it. As Clausewitz understood, 

war is a continuation of politics; political bargaining carried on 

through violence reveals further information about the way that 

rivals perceive stakes, undertake commitment, and sustain will. 

Once those have been revealed, a new equilibrium becomes possible. See, in general, Thomas Schelling’s seminal volume, Arms 

and Influence, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966. Also 

see Nadia Schadlow,“War and the Art of Governance,” Parameters, Vol. 33, No. 3, 2003, pp. 85–94; Nadia Schadlow and Richard 

Lacquement, “Winning Wars, not Just Battles: Expanding the Military Profession to Incorporate Stability Operations,” in Nielsen 

and Snider, eds., American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and 

the State in a New Era, pp. 112-132.

46. For a perceptive insight, see H. R. McMaster, “The Pipe 

Dream of Easy War,” The New York Times, July 20, 2013, available 

from www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/the-pipe-dreamof-easy-war.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
67

47. Howard, “Grand Strategy in the Twentieth Century,” 

p. 4. He echoes A. J. P. Taylor’s claim in The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 

1954, p. 528.

48. This idea, which gained traction during the Eisenhower 

administration, argued that if one nation fell to communism, it 

would affect those around it, in the same way that a falling domino knocks over those around it. See, for instance, Frederik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation 

of War in Vietnam, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 

1999, p. 31.

49. See generally Frederick Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall 

of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, New York: Random House, 2013; also see Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and The 

American Dream, New York: Harper and Row, 1976, pp. 263-265.

50. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, London, UK: Cassell, 

1973, pp. 2, 343-345. 

51. This problem surely beset Britain and the United States 

in the last months of 1944 and the early months of 1945, when 

fissures in the Anglo-American “special relationship” became 

heated, emotional, and public. See, for instance, Max Hastings, 

Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945, New York: Knopf, 2010, 

pp. 422-449.

52. Antulio Echevarria, “After Afghanistan: Lessons for 

NATO’s Future Wars,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 159, No. 3, July 2014, 

pp. 20-23.

53. Schadlow, “War and the Art of Governance”; H. R. McMaster, “Decentralization vs Centralization,” in Thomas Donnelly and Frederick W. Kagan, Lessons for a Long War: How America 

Can Win on New Battlefields, Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2010; Nix, “American Civil-Military Relations,” 

pp. 99-101. William Flavin, “Planning for Conflict Termination 

and Post-Conflict Success,” Parameters, Autumn 2003, pp. 95-112, 

available from strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/

Articles/03autumn/flavin.pdf. On war termination generally, see 

Gideon Rose, How Wars End, New York: Simon and Schuster, 
68

2010; and Matthew Moten, ed., Between War and Peace, New York: 

Free Press, 2011. 

54. For reasons to approach the phrase “strategic culture” 

with care, see Antulio Echevarria, “American Strategic Culture: 

Problems and Prospects,” in Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers, 

The Changing Character of War, Oxford, UK: Oxford University 

Press, 2011, pp. 431-445. For interpretations of the phrase, see 

Theo Farrell, “Strategic Culture and American Empire,” SAIS 

[School of Advanced and International Studies] Review, Vol. 25, 

No. 2, Summer-Fall 2005, pp. 3-18; and Thomas Mahnken, United 

States Strategic Culture, Ft. Belvoir, VA: Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Science Applications International Corporation, 

2006. More generally, see Wayne Lee, Warfare and Culture in World 

History, New York: New York University Press, 2011.

55. For a concise introduction to this topic, see Mackubin 

Thomas Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain, New York: Continuum, 2011, pp. 12-

43. For interesting insights into the 19th century debate over civil-military relations in wartime, see John Shy, “Jomini,” in Peter 

Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear 

Age, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 160-162.

56. Strachan, The Direction of War, p. 28.

57. For an illuminating yet succinct foray into this topic, see 

Donald Kagan, “Athenian Strategy in the Peloponnesian War” in 

Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein, eds., 

The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, Cambridge, UK: 

Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 24-55. Scholars wishing to 

go deeper will want to examine more of Kagan’s extraordinary 

body of work.

58. Equally, we can identify elements of strategy in the planning and implementation of action by other commanders who 

led armies during the Peloponnesian War, including Bracidas, 

Alcibiades, and Nicias. See the seminal history of the war (written 

by Thucydides and captured in many modern, English language 

editions); among the best of these is The Landmark Thucydides, 

Robert Strassler, ed., New York, Free Press, 1996. 
69

59. The two most highly regarded translations are Samuel B. 

Griffith, Sun Tzu The Art of War, New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1963; and Ralph Sawyer, Sun Tzu The Art of War, Boulder, 

CO: Westview Press, 1994. 

60. For its armies, Rome also drew upon two outside groups: 

the Latins who were linguistically similar to the Romans, and 

the non-Latin tribes in Italy who were subject to Rome’s will. 

See Alvin Bernstein, “The Strategy of a Warrior-State: Rome and 

the Wars against Carthage, 264-201 BC,” in Murray, Knox, and 

Bernstein, eds., pp. 56-69.

61. See Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, Michael 

Jones, trans., New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1984, p. 77; 

Richard Preston, Alex Roland, and Sydney Wise, Men in Arms: A 

History of Warfare and Its Interrelationships with Western Society, 5th 

Ed., Ft. Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991, p. 59.

62. Felix Gilbert, “Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of 

War,” in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1986, pp. 12-13. Preston, Roland, and Wise, pp. 69-71.

63. Gunther E. Rothenberg, “Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus 

Adolphus, Raimundo Montecuccoli, and the ‘Military Revolution’ of the Seventeenth Century,” in Paret, ed., Makers of Modern 

Strategy, pp. 32-33, quoted material on p. 33.

64. Gilbert, pp. 21-22; Bernstein, “The Strategy of a Warrior-State,” in Murray, Knox, and Bernstein, eds., p. 56; Heuser, 

pp. 84-85.

65. Gilbert, p. 24.

66. R. R. Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bulow: From 

Dynastic to National War,” in Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 91. See also Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought: From 

the Enlightenment to Clausewitz, Oxford, UK: Oxford University 

Press, 1989, pp. 1-9. 

67. Rothenberg, pp. 34-36.
70

68. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden and reforming general, ascended to power just a few years before the start of the destructive Thirty Years’ War in Europe, 1618-48. Raimundo Montecuccoli, a field marshal of the Austrian Hapsburg army, was a 

noted reformer, administrator, and master of maneuver warfare. 

He fought in the latter stages of the Thirty Years’ War.

69. Rothenberg p. 36. Scharnhorst considered Montecuccoli 

“an indispensible guide to the eternal nature of war.” On Montecuccoli, see Gat, pp. 13-24.

70. Palmer, pp. 91-93; John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of 

Combat and Culture, Rev. Ed., Cambridge, MA: Westview, 2003, 

pp. 123-125. 

71. Palmer, p. 91. For helpful general overviews, see Geoffrey 

Wawro, Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792 to 1914, London, UK: 

Routledge, 2000; David Kaiser, Politics and War: European Conflict from Phillip II to Hitler, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 

Press, 1990. 

72. Strachan, The Direction of War, p. 28.

73. Maizeroy quoted in Ibid. When the first two volumes of his 

Cours de tactique, theoretique, practique et historique (Course in Tactical Theoretical, and Historical Practices) appeared in 1766, Maizeroy was a lieutenant colonel in the French Army. His Theorie de la 

guerre (Theory of War) followed in 1777. 

74. Palmer, pp. 113-119; Peter Paret, “Napoleon,” in Paret, ed., 

Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 123-142. 

75. Wawro offers compelling insights into Napoleon and his 

era, see Wawro, Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914, pp. 1-23.

76. Palmer, p. 117.

77. Strachan, The Direction of War, p. 29.

78. Brodie, pp. 1-2.
71

79. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven, Yale 

University Press, 1966, pp. 1-34, especially p. 2.

80. Peter Paret, “Clausewitz,” in Paret, ed., Makers of Modern 

Strategy, p. 187. Also, Strachan, The Direction of War, pp. 46-63.

81. On Jomini’s influence, see Shy’s masterful essay in Paret, 

ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 143-185. See also Strachan, who 

writes: 

His [Jomini’s] ideas were plagiarised by military theorists 

across the continent, and they provided the axioms inculcated in the military academies which proliferated from the 

turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. His emphasis on planning, cartography and lines of communication meant that 

his definition of strategy became the raison d’etre and even 

justification of the general staffs which were similarly institutionalised during the course of the 19th century. 

Strachan, “Strategy and Contingency,” p. 29. Similarly, he argues, “These facets of Jomini’s background conform with the 

self-image of the US armed forces, confident of their invincibility 

but also of the value of a rational and managerial approach to 

war.” Strachan, “Strategy and Contingency,” p. 1289. Also Gat, 

pp. 106-135.

82. Strachan, The Direction of War, pp. 31-33. On the rise of 

sea power and the influence of the Pax Brittanica, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, London, UK: Allen Lane, 1976; Geoffrey Till, Modern Seapower: An Introduction, 

London, UK: Brassey’s, 1987; Geofrey Till, Understanding Victory: 

Naval Operations from Trafalgar to the Falklands, New York: Praeger, 

2014; Preston, Roland, and Wise, pp. 104-156, 192-208.

83. For insights, see Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality 

in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Thinking about 

Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University 

Press, 2002, pp. 11-153; Richard Overy, The Air War, 1939-1945, 

Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005, Reprint Ed. See also the 

many excellent essays in Phillip Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Air Power Theory, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: 

Air University Press, 1997.
72

84. Howard, “Grand Strategy in the Twentieth Century,” p. 3.

85. For an elaboration, see Preston, Roland, and Wise, pp. 212-

216. Also Wawro. Enlightened essays on various aspects of this 

transformation can be found in Roger Chickering, Dennis Showalter, and Hans van de Ven, eds., The Cambridge History of War, 

Vol. IV, War and the Modern World, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge 

University Press, 2012.

86. The literature on World War I is immense. For a useful, 

perceptive, and brief summary, see Michael Howard, The First 

World War, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Other essential texts from recent years include Hew Strachan, The First World 

War, New York: Penguin, 2005; and Michael Neiberg, Fighting the 

Great War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2009. See also David Reynolds, The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth 

Century, New York: Norton: 2014; and Heuser, pp. 179-183.

87. For perceptive insights, see Tooze.

88. See Max Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord, 1940-

1945, London, UK: Collins, 2010.

89. Maurice Matloff, “Allied Strategy in Europe, 1939-1945,” 

and Clayton D. James, “American and Japanese Strategies in the 

Pacific War, in Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 677-732. 

For more insights on the Far Eastern campaigns, see Alessio Patalano, “Feigning Grand Strategy: Japan 1937-1945,” and John T. 

Kuehn, “The War in the Pacific, 1941-1945,” in John Ferris and 

Evan Mawdsley, The Cambridge History of the Second World War, 

Vol. I, June 2015, pp. 159-188, 420-454.

90. The argument is made in detail by this author in “Leveraging Strength: The Pillars of American Grand Strategy in World 

War II,” Orbis, Winter 2011, pp. 4-29.

91. The phrase was first used by Churchill in his 1946 speech 

at Westminster College in Missouri.

92. Strachan has written, “. . . theories of deterrence were 

developed and employed . . . Deterrence itself then became the 

cornerstone of a new discipline, strategic studies, but strategic 
73

studies were concerned not so much with what armies did in war 

as how nations used the threat of war in peace.” The Direction of

War, p. 36.

93. This was the central question of Samuel Huntington’s 

classic 1957 work, The Soldier and the State.

94. For insight into Kennan’s original conception of containment, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical 

Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 25-54.

95. See Ernest May’s introduction to National Security Council (NSC) 68 in American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68, 

Boston, MA: Bedford Books, 1993, pp. 1-19.

96. Strachan, The Direction of War, p. 37. See also Tami Davis 

Biddle, “U.S. Strategic Forces and Doctrine Since 1945,” in Andrew Bacevich, ed., The Long War: A New History of US National 

Security Policy Since World War II, New York: Columbia University 

Press, 2009.

97. See G. John Ikenberry, After Victory and Liberal Leviathan.

98. On the history of the Cold War, see John Lewis Gaddis, 

The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, Rev. Ed., New 

York: Columbia University Press, 2001; Strategies of Containment, 

Rev. Ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2005; and The Cold 

War: A New History, New York: Penguin, 2006; Melvin Leffler, A 

Preponderance of Power, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 

1993; Melvin Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge 

History of the Cold War, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University 

Press, 2012.

99. The literature on Vietnam is vast, but notable volumes include: David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, New York: 

Random House, 1972; H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, New 

York: Harper Perennial, 1998; Frederick Logevall, Choosing War, 

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001; George Herring, America’s Longest War, 5th Ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, 

2013; and Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, Chapel Hill, NC: 

University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
74

100. Emphasizing civil-military relations, Strachan writes 

that: 

strategy was driven out by the wishful thinking of [the U.S. 

military’s] political masters, convinced that the United States 

would be welcomed as liberators, and determined that war 

and peace were opposites, not a continuum. This cast of 

mind prevented consideration of the war’s true costs or the 

implications of occupation, and the United States found itself without a forum in which the armed forces could either 

give voice to their view of the principles at stake or be heard 

if they did.

Strachan, The Direction of War, p. 45. For insights into the Iraq war, 

see, for instance, James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: A History of 

Bush’s War Cabinet, New York: Penguin, 2004; Bob Woodward, 

Plan of Attack, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004; Ron Suskind, 

The One Percent Doctrine, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006; 

Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, 

Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, New York: Crown, 2006; 

Thomas Ricks, Fiasco, Reprint Ed., New York: Penguin, 2007; 

Emma Sky, The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities 

in Iraq, New York: Public Affairs, 2015. Also see Robert Jervis, 

“War, Intelligence, and Honesty: A Review Essay,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 123, No. 4, Winter 2008-09, pp. 645-675; and 

Robinson et al., especially pp. 24-29. 

101. For official United States’ statements on these threats, see 

The National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington, DC: 

The White House, 2015, available from https://www.whitehouse.gov/

sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf; and The

Joint Chiefs of Staff, The National Military Strategy of the United 

States, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2015, available from www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/2015_

National_Military_Strategy.pdf. For an insightful essay on the 

strategic complexities posed by the rise of China, see Adam 

P. Liff and G. John Ikenberry, “Racing Toward Tragedy?” 

International Security, Vol. 39, No. 2, Fall 2014, pp. 52-91.

102. Eliot Cohen, “Obama’s COIN [Counterinsurgency] 

Toss,” The Washington Post, December 6, 2009, p. 1.
75

103. Jervis adds, “As Henry Kissinger put it, “Historians rarely do justice to the psychological stress on a policymaker. . . . What 

no document can reveal is the accumulated impact of accident, 

intangibles, fears and hesitations.” See Robert Jervis, “Serving or 

Self-Serving? A Review Essay of Robert Gates’s Memoir,” Political 

Science Quarterly, Vol. 129, No. 2, 2014, pp. 319-331, with quoted 

material on p. 331.

104. See Steven Metz, Iraq and the Evolution of American 

Strategy, Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008, p. xviii.

105. The large size of the present-day NSC may add to this 

challenge. Rather than functioning primarily as an organization 

overseeing and coordinating strategy, the NSC has become a major player in the interagency push and pull. See Robinson et al., p. 

45. For advice on possible reforms, see Dafna Rand et al., Enabling 

Decision: Shaping the National Security Council for the Next President, 

Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, June 2015.

106. See Paret and Howard, trans., On War, pp. 119-121. 

These pages are among the most insightful and enduring in 

Clausewitz’s text.

107. For insights, see Jervis, “Serving or Self-Serving?” p. 323.

108. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 7.

109. Robert Jervis, “Why Intelligence and Policymakers Clash, 

Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 125, No. 2, Summer 2010, p. 188.

110. For insights, see Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?”

111. Jervis, “Why Intelligence and Policymakers Clash,” pp. 

188, 190-195.

112. Matthew Moten, “A Broken Dialogue: Rumsfeld, Shinseki, and Civil-Military Tension” in Nielsen and Snider, eds., American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era, 

pp. 42-71. Also Jervis, “Serving or Self-Serving?” p. 323; and Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task, New York: Penguin, 2013, 

pp. 316-361.
76

113. See Stephen Biddle, “Afghanistan’s Legacy: Emerging 

Lessons of an Ongoing War,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 37, 

No. 2, pp. 73-86, especially p. 82. 

114. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 7.

115. For an overview of this trajectory, see Rachel Maddow, 

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, New York: Broadway Books, 2013.

116. Mark Bowden, “The Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, September 2013, available from www.theatlantic.com/maga

zine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-aboutdrones/309434/. 

117. There is a large literature on this topic, but key recent 

texts include: Peter D. Feaver and Richard Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security, 2nd 

Ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001; Peter D. Feaver, Armed 

Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil Military Relations, Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 2005; Eliot Cohen, The 

Supreme Command, New York: Anchor, 2003, reprint; Peter D. 

Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, Choosing Your Battles: American 

Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004; Marybeth P. Ulrich and Martin L. 

Cook, “US Civil-Military Relations since 9/11: Issues and Policy Development,” Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2006; 

Thomas S. Szayna et al., The Civil-Military Gap in the United States, 

MG-379-A, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007; Nielsen and Snider, 

eds., American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in 

a New Era; Sarah Sewell and John P. White, Parameters of Partnership: US Civil-Military Relations in the 21st Century, Cambridge, 

MA: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009; 

Mackubin Thomas Owens, US Civil-Military Relations after 9/11, 

New York: Continuum, 2011; Betts, American Force, Chap. 9, 

“Civil-Military Relations: A Special Problem?” pp. 201-231.

118. Objective control in civil-military relations requires a 

delineation between the political and military realms, but this 

line can be blurred, intentionally or inadvertently, by civilian 

leaders or military leaders who either do not understand objective control or who may be caught in its very real challenges of 

implementation.
77

119. Betts explains that: 

Both policymakers and soldiers have more than they can 

handle, working around the clock to deal with the demanding problems in their respective realms, with neither 

focusing intently on the linkage—the bridge between objectives and operations, the mechanism by which combat will 

achieve its objectives. 

He warns that when the logic link is broken, strategy becomes 

“whatever slogans and unexamined assumptions” occur to them 

in the moments “left over from coping with their main preoccupations.” Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 7.

120. Hew Strachan, “The Lost Meaning of Strategy,” Survival, 

Vol. 7, No. 3, Autumn 2005, pp. 33-54.

121. Owens, “Strategy and the Strategic Way of Thinking,” p. 115. He relates this to what Samuel Huntington termed 

“structural decisions,” including organizational imperatives and 

proclivities.

122. There are many examples of the military feeling a need 

to justify a particular weapon; the history of the B-29 bomber, and 

its effect on the campaign in the Pacific in World War II, is one 

of many notable examples. For insights, see William W. Ralph, 

“Improvised Destruction: Arnold, LeMay, and the Firebombing 

of Japan,” War in History, Vol. 13, No. 4, October 2006, pp. 495-522.

123. Robert Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War, New 

York: Knopf, 2014, p. 563.

124. Jervis, “Why Intelligence and Policymakers Clash,” 

p. 195.

125. He wrote: 

Like many soldiers of my generation, my ideal for how a 

military leader should advise and answer to a civilian, democratic authority had been drawn from Samuel Huntington’s seminal treatise, The Soldier and the State. He argued 

a military commander should endeavor to operate as inde-
78

pendently of political or even policy pressures as possible. 

And yet I found, as much as I wanted my role to be that 

described by Huntington, the demands of the job made this 

difficult.

See McChrystal, My Share of the Task, p. 351.

126. The details of the Truman-MacArthur crisis are explained 

well in Brodie, pp. 57-112.

127. See Williamson Murray, “Professionalism and Professional Military Education in the 21st Century,” and Richard Kohn, 

“Building Trust: Civil Military Behaviors for Effective National 

Security,” in Nielsen and Snider, eds., American Civil Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era, pp. 287-301.

128. Scott Sagan, “The Origins of the Pacific War,” Journal of 

Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, Spring 1988, p. 917.

129. For insights on how to maintain skills for post-conflict 

operations and stability operations within the military and how 

to organize them, see Richard Lacquement, “Professionalizing 

Stability Operations in the U.S. Armed Forces,” J. Boone Bartholomees, ed., U.S. Army War College Guide to Strategic Issues, 5th Ed. 

Vol, II, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War 

College, 2012, pp. 317-333. Also see Schadlow and Lacquement 

in Nielsen and Snider, eds., American Civil-Military Relations: The 

Soldier and the State in a New Era, pp. 112-132.

130. Steven Metz, “To Deter Adversaries, U.S. Military Must 

First Understand their Fears, World Politics Review, April 17, 2015.

131. Stephen Biddle, “Afghanistan’s Legacy,” p. 75. In a 

similar vein, H. R. McMaster, has written:

If the indigenous government and its security forces act to 

exacerbate rather than ameliorate the causes of violence, 

the political strategy must address how best to demonstrate 

that an alternative approach is necessary to avert defeat and 

achieve an outcome consistent with the indigenous government’s interests. If institutions or functions of the supported 

state are captured by malign or corrupt organizations that 
79

pursue agendas inconsistent with the political strategy, it 

may become necessary to employ a range of cooperative, 

persuasive, and coercive means to change that behavior and 

restore a cooperative relationship. 

H. R. McMaster, cited in Robinson et al., p. 55.

132. Layton, “The Idea of Grand Strategy,” pp. 56-61.

133. Ibid., pp. 56-61.

134. Robinson et al., outline seven imperatives for the improvement of strategic competence. See especially pp. 31-77, 93-

109. See also David Barno, Nora Bensahel, Katherine Kidder, and 

Kelley Sayler, Building Better Generals, Washington, DC: Center 

for a New American Security, 2013.

135. Walter McDougall, “The Three Reasons We Teach History,” Footnotes 5:1, Washington, DC: Foreign Policy Research Institute, February 1998, available from the Foreign Policy Research 

Institute website.

136. Biddle and Citino. See also Strachan, “The Lost Meaning 

of Strategy,” p. 48.

137. Both the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Mellon 

Foundation have supported programs enabling this kind of very 

important educational interchange. Of particular note are the 

Smith Richardson-supported Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy and the grants offered by 

the Mellon Foundation to support exchanges between civilian 

academies and institutions in the Professional Military Education 

system. In the spring of 2015, I was fortunate enough to co-teach 

a course, supported by a Mellon grant, that brought together 20 

undergraduates from Dickinson College and 25 U.S. Army War 

College students. We used World War I as a lens for examining 

contemporary military, political, and social issues. 

138. Jervis is critical of Gates for failing to fulfill this role as 

well as Jervis felt he might have done while Secretary of Defense, 

especially during the Obama administration. See Jervis, “Serving 

or Self-Serving?” 
80

139. Michele A. Flournoy and Shawn W. Brimley, Strategic 

Planning for National Security: a Project Solarium for the 21st Century, The Princeton Project Papers, Washington, DC: Woodrow 

Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, 2006.

140. See Echevarria, Reconsidering the American Way of 

War, p. 47.

141. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 6. 

142. Walter McDougall, “Can the United States do Grand 

Strategy?” The Telegram, April 2010, available from www.fpri.org/

articles/2010/04/can-united-states-do-grand-strategy.

143. No one has made this point more profoundly than Betts: 

Action is preferable to inaction only where policymakers 

think seriously beyond the objective and to the logic by 

which military means will take them there. Whatever the 

costs of refraining from war may be, they can seldom be 

greater than those from killing without strategy.

Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” p. 48.
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