The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present

by Beatrice Heuser

• ISBN13: 9780521155243
• ISBN10: 052115524X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-11-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Is there a 'Western way of war' which pursues battles of annihilation and single-minded military victory? Is warfare on a path to ever greater destructive force? This magisterial new account answers these questions by tracing the history of Western thinking about strategy - the employment of military force as a political instrument - from antiquity to the present day. Assessing sources from Vegetius to contemporary America, and with a particular focus on strategy since the Napoleonic Wars, Beatrice Heuser explores the evolution of strategic thought, the social institutions, norms and patterns of behaviour within which it operates, the policies that guide it and the cultures that influence it. Ranging across technology and warfare, total warfare and small wars as well as land, sea, air and nuclear warfare, she demonstrates that warfare and strategic thinking have fluctuated wildly in their aims, intensity, limitations and excesses over the past two millennia.

Author Biography

Beatrice Heuser holds the Chair of International History at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading. Her publications include Reading Clausewitz (2002); Nuclear Mentalities? (1998) and Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949-2000 (1997), both on nuclear issues in NATO as a whole, and Britain, France, and Germany in particular.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. xi
A note on referencing	p. xiii
Introduction
What is strategy?	p. 3
Art of war or science of war, and technical definitions of 'strategy'	p. 3
The articulation of different dimensions of Strategy	p. 9
What is this book examining?	p. 29
Long-term constants
Warfare and mindsets from Antiquity to the Middle Ages	p. 39
Technology and warfare	p. 39
Causes, aims and ethics of war from the Roman Empire to the late Middle Ages	p. 42
Warfare and mindsets in early modern Europe	p. 54
Causes, aims and practice of war in early modern Europe	p. 54
The ethics of war in early modern Europe	p. 64
Themes in early thinking about Strategy	p. 76
Sieges and static defences from Troy to Basra	p. 76
Feudal levies, mercenaries or militia?	p. 82
Battle avoidance or decisive battles?	p. 89
Limited and unlimited wars	p. 97
The enduring quest for eternal principles governing warfare	p. 100
The Napoleonic paradigm and Total War
The age and mindset of the Napoleonic paradigm	p. 113
Causes of wars, world-views and war aims 1792-1914	p. 113
The influence of Social Darwinism and racism	p. 123
The Napoleonic paradigm transformed: from total mobilisation to total war	p. 137
The quest for total victory	p. 139
The centrality of the battle	p. 142
Annihilation of the enemy	p. 145
The universal cult of the offensive	p. 146
Total mobilisation or professional military elites?	p. 152
Challenges to the Napoleonic paradigm versus the culmination of Total War	p. 171
Mars mechanised: the Napoleonic paradigm versus technological innovation	p. 171
The dissenters: Corbett's limited wars and Jaurès's defensive army	p. 176
Lessons of the First World War	p. 179
Strategy responses to the First World War	p. 181
The Second World War: culmination of Total War	p. 194
Naval and maritime Strategy
Long-term trends and early maritime Strategy	p. 201
Strategy on land, at sea and in the air	p. 201
Writing in the age of oar and sail	p. 207
The age of steam to the First World War	p. 216
The 'Anglo-Saxon' writers in the age of steam	p. 216
French naval theorists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries	p. 233
Germany before the First World War	p. 245
Conclusions	p. 247
The World Wars and their lessons for maritime Strategists	p. 248
The First World War	p. 248
British lessons	p. 250
French lessons	p. 256
The second-tier powers	p. 260
US lessons from the Second World War	p. 266
Conclusions	p. 267
Maritime Strategy in the nuclear age	p. 268
The Cold War framework	p. 268
Multiple roles for navies	p. 276
Strategies for second-tier powers	p. 286
Change of world-views and principles in conducting international affairs	p. 290
Conclusions	p. 291
Air power and nuclear Strategy
War in the third dimension	p. 297
Child and grandchild of naval Strategy	p. 297
The beginnings of air power	p. 298
Four schools of air power	p. 313
The strategic or city bombing school	p. 314
The military targets school: denial	p. 336
The leadership targeting school: decapitation	p. 342
The political signalling school: games theories	p. 345
Conclusions	p. 350
Nuclear Strategy	p. 351
Targets	p. 351
Deterrence	p. 357
Nuclear war-fighting Strategy	p. 366
War taken to its absurd extreme	p. 382
Asymmetric or 'small' wars
From partisan warfare to people's war	p. 387
Two meanings of 'small war'	p. 387
The mosquito and the lion: tactics	p. 397
Hearts and minds I	p. 414
Defence in depth	p. 416
Counterinsurgency	p. 419
The legal status of insurgents	p. 419
Brutal repression	p. 422
Hearts and minds II	p. 427
Conclusions	p. 436
The quest for new paradigms after the World Wars
Wars without victories, victories without peace	p. 441
The First World War as turning point?	p. 441
Causes, conduct and ethics of wars since 1945	p. 444
The relinquishment of the Napoleonic paradigm	p. 453
The return of limited wars	p. 456
Coercion	p. 463
Defensive defence and the relinquishment of victory	p. 467
No end of history, the dialectic continues	p. 472
The Napoleonic paradigm strikes back: Summers's Clausewitzian critique	p. 472
Major war since 1945	p. 477
The return of small wars	p. 480
Future developments	p. 486
Epilogue: Strategy-making versus bureaucratic politics	p. 488
Policy and Strategy in practice	p. 488
The frailty of human logic	p. 498
Summaries and conclusions	p. 500
Bibliography	p. 506
Index	p. 571
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