Everett

·       Author: Everett Dolman
·       Publishing: Cass Publishing:2005
·       Central Proposition:
o   Strategy is way bigger than victory.  It is a continual pursuit of advantage.  "Continuation is the goal of strategy, not culmination" - 4..."a plan for attaining continual advantage" - 6..."Every action of the master strategist should be intened to increase options, not eliminate them" - 9
·       Supporting Information
o   ***Good quote: "Strategy is not a thing that can be poked, prodded, and probed.  It is an idea, a prodcut of the imagitionation....anticipation of the probably and preparation for the possible.
o   Historical analyses have shared some common assumptions that have hindered good examination of strategy - 2-3
§  Battles and wars are won or lost
§  Outcome of conflict can be directly traced to actions and decisions of key figtures (agent-centered)
§  Tainted by pre-establishing good cases (victories) and bad (defeats)
§  Although wars & battles can never be repeated, examination of roughly similar events expected to yeid esential elements of future action
o   ***Good quote: A tactician seeks answers, a strategist seeks the right questions - answers to which provide insight and suggest more questions - 4
o   Tactics are concered w/ actions, strategy with interactions - 5
o   Beware of sacrificing interests or even country in pursuit of "victory" - 6
o   "stringing together anticipated outcomes is the essence of applied strategy" - 6
o   "To the strategist...victory is but a moment in time, a point of reference in a continuously chaning web of history" - 9 (See Ikle - Always gazing at a point just beyond the horizon)
o   ***"To have a strategy is to have a plan that sets into motion a series of actions or events that lead the state toward a desired condition or policy" - 11
o   Decision-making within the war is tactical, decision-making about the context of the war and preapartion for it is strategic" - 13
o   Summary of what dudes say strategy is 18 - 
§  CvC: "The use of engagements for the object of war"
§  Jomini: "art of making war upon a map" (brilliance here is that it is a plan in the abstract)
§  Moltkej - More than knowledge, the application of knowledge to practical life...development of an original idea in accordance with continually changing circumstances"
§  Liddel Hart - "art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy"..."true aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decsion, its conintuation by a battle is sure to achieve this" 
o   Great Thucydides summary - 22-23
§  Pericles had a strong strategy b/c it did not have an end-state or condition - simply sit inside until Sparta exhausted themselves, or culuminated, and then counter - 22
o   "The purpose of military strategy is to link military means to the political aim.  The purpose of operations strategy is to contest or gain command of the medium of battle (land, sea, air, etc.), which allows the tactical and political aims to remain at odds logically but to converge practically.  Military power is but one of the means by which the political object is pursued. - 30
§  The purpose of air power is to gain control of the air in order to project force into or from it - 31
§  Each service's purpose is to exploit a medium to achieve goals in its own - 34
§  Purpose of air power is to gain or deny command of the air - 38
§  Combine Mahan and Corbett - the key is to command, but, in the case of sea (or air), you cannot command all, so you must be content to deny enemy.  This need not be done through seek and destroy - it's enough to keep his navy from getting out on the high seas.  Corbett is tripping too, though, b/c he says the only reason is to support land, which is false.  In the end, combine both.