Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman

Columnist Matthew Parris has lamented the ubiquity of the word strategy and the ease with which it becomes attached to any desirable end. He commented on demands for a “growth strategy” in the face of a stagnant and indebted economy but wondered who would claim a “rain strategy” as an answer to drought. “Every sinner needs a virtue strategy. Every starveling needs a food strategy.” “There exist few modern circumstances,” he observed, “where the removal of the word ‘strategy’ from any passage containing it fails to clarify matters, usually demonstrating the argument’s circularity.”

One common contemporary definition describes it as being about maintaining a balance between ends, ways, and means; about identifying objectives; and about the resources and methods available for meeting such objectives.2 This balance requires not only finding out how to achieve desired ends but also adjusting ends so that realistic ways can be found to meet them by available means.

The concept of “Machiavellian intelligence,” as promoted by Byrne, established a link between strategy and evolution. The sort of basic survival techniques identified by Niccolo Machiavelli for sixteenth-century Italy turned out to be similar to those necessary for survival in the most primitive of social groups.

Whatever the ecological imperatives and physical demands that increased brain size, at some point the key driver became the need to maintain sizable and coherent social groups.

The stories of the Exodus and David have both been used to give hope to underdogs. Indeed, reference to David is almost de rigueur whenever an underdog strategy is discussed. Seldom noted, however, is that success did not solely depend on the initial blow but also on the second blow, by which David ensured that Goliath had no chance to recover, as well as the Philistines’ readiness to accept the result. In both stories, the key to success lay in the opponent’s response.

Homer’s heroes were masters of both words and actions, although the differences between Achilles and Odysseus showed the potential tension between the two. The man of action could either be admired for his courage or dismissed as a fool for his sole reliance on strength, while the man of words could be celebrated for his intelligence or treated warily because words could deceive.

A preference for force or guile might reflect a temperamental disposition, but it could not be a strategy in itself. That must depend on how best to turn a complex and developing set of affairs to advantage, which in turn must depend on an ability to persuade those who must implement the strategy that it is wise.

The ability to persuade not only one’s people but also allies and enemies was a vital attribute of the successful strategist. In this way, strategy required a combination of words and deeds, and the ability to manipulate them both.

Odysseus has been described as exemplifying “a particular idea of practical intelligence.” According to Barnouw, he was able to consider “intended actions in the light of anticipated consequences.” He kept his main purpose in mind and thought “back from that final goal through a complex network of means (and obstacles) to achieve it.” The contrast therefore was not just with brute force but the recklessness of those who were not so well tuned to the signs of danger and who failed to think through the potential consequences of their actions. When Odysseus decided not to succumb to some short-term impulse for revenge, it was because he remembered how much more he wanted to achieve his long-term goals of returning safely to his wife Penelope and his kingdom in Ithaca. Rather than seeing reason and passion in opposition to one another, practical intelligence was about finding the appropriate relations between competing ends, each with an associated bundle of passions and reasons. Odysseus’s understanding of how others viewed the world allowed him to manipulate their thought processes by giving out signs that he knew they would read in a particular way.

The headlines from Thucydides were often taken to be the descriptions of the irresistibility of power and the imperviousness of the strong to the complaints of the weak or considerations of morality. On this basis he has been cast as one of the founders of realism, a temperament to which strategic theorists have been presumed to be susceptible because of their relentless focus on power and their presumption that self-interest best explains behavior. According to the more doctrinaire realism, the lack of a supreme authority governing all international affairs has always rendered states inherently insecure. If they dared not trust in the good intentions of others, they must make provisions for their own defense—though these provisions in turn made others insecure.14 The significance of Thucydides from this perspective was that he demonstrated its timelessness.

Yet because Thucydides quoted arguments in favor of crude exercises of power did not mean that he endorsed them. He also reported alternative, even idealistic, views as well as the unfortunate consequences of always worrying about appearing weak, for this led later to disastrous gambles when caution would have been prudent.

Athenian democracy required that all the city’s key decisions follow intense public deliberations. Strategy could not stay implicit but had to be articulated. It was essential not only to have the foresight to see how events might unfold if the right action was taken but also the ability to convince others that this was so.

According to Plato, the sophists were not serious in their philosophical endeavors. They had given up on the search for truth in order to play rhetorical games, using their persuasive powers on behalf of any case—however unworthy the cause or perverse the logic—in return for payment. Based largely on his own testimony, Plato bequeathed an enduring and demeaning image of the sophists as the “spin-doctors” of their day, rhetorical strategists, relativist in their morality, disinterested in truth, suggesting that all that really mattered was power. They were hired hands, traveling wordsmiths who sold their skills to the highest bidder without any view of right and wrong.

The Art of War did not provide a single route to victory and recognized that while battles were best avoided they sometimes had to be fought. Sun Tzu described relatively simple conflicts, in which bold moves left an enemy helpless or dissolving into disorder. A possible weakness, in a “strong tendency to point out what one should strive for, rather than explain how one should achieve one’s aim,” was also a source of strength. Any such explanations would now seem arcane and overtaken by massive changes in military methodology; if Sun Tzu had offered detailed advice on tactics, the book would now tend to be passed over. Instead, students of Sun Tzu are “merely given specific pointers as to what to ponder, but the solution, or the way one chooses to tread, must be one’s own.”

Machiavelli’s method was empirical, which is why he is considered the father of political science. He did not consider himself to be offering a new morality but rather a reflection on contemporary practical morality. Political survival depended on an unsentimental realism rather than the pursuit of an illusory ideal. This meant paying attention to conflicts of interests and their potential resolution by either force or trickery. But guile and cunning could not create their own political legacy: the foundation of states still lay in good laws and good armies.

Although Machiavellian has become synonymous with strategies based on deceit and manipulation, Machiavelli’s approach was actually far more balanced. He understood that the more the prince was perceived to rely on devious methods, the less likely it would be that they succeeded. The wise strategist would seek to develop a foundation for the exercise of power that went beyond false impressions and harsh punishments, but on real accomplishments and general respect.

The concept of free will raises questions about God’s role in human affairs. If God does not intervene, then what is the purpose of prayer and repentance? If he does intervene, then why do bad things happen to good people? Contemporary theologians may have come up with formulations to answer these questions, but in seventeenth-century Europe when Milton was writing, they were hot topics—politically as well as religiously.

His ambivalent character and claims meant that he was not always so easy to resist. For Milton, Satan was Machiavel, using fraudulent rhetoric and force to manipulate the fallen angels while also attempting to attribute exactly these corrosive tendencies to God.9 Satan adopted the republican claims of free choice, merit, and consent in describing his rule, while asserting that God depends on coercion and fraud.

Before 1800, intelligence-gathering and communication systems were slow and unreliable. For that reason, generals had to be on the front line—or at least not too far behind—in order to adjust quickly to the changing fortunes of battle. They dared not develop plans of any complexity. Adopting measures such as splitting forces in order to attack the enemy from different directions or holding back reserves to reinforce success was likely to lead to command and logistical nightmares. Roads were poor and movement was bound to be slow. Although it was no longer necessary to live off the land, logistical support required that magazines be moved along supply lines. This entailed a serious vulnerability if the enemy managed to cut the lines. Modest maneuvers or nighttime marches were the best options for catching an enemy by surprise. Armies that lacked passion and commitment, whose soldiers were easily tempted to desert if food was in short supply or conditions too harsh, did not encourage confidence in sustainable campaigns. Prudence suggested concentrating on pushing enemies into positions where they would feel vulnerable or struggle to stay supplied. All this limited the impact of wars on the apparently stable European balance of power. Then, as transport systems were improving and lands were becoming properly mapped, along came Napoleon Bonaparte, self-proclaimed emperor of France. Napoleon embodied a new way of fighting wars: a combination of individual genius and mass organi...

Even a badly bruised opponent might find a way to continue resistance, regroup, or acquire an external ally. Given the uncertainties and explosive tendencies connected with war, was it wise to assume that this was no more than a form of violent diplomacy? If it was bound to end with a compromise, why not settle the matter with diplomacy before blood was shed, or look for alternative—possibly economic—forms of coercion? Forming alliances and undermining those of the enemy—evidently a matter of statecraft—could be of as much or even greater importance to a war’s outcome than a display of brilliant generalship.

Whatever the scientific method might bring to the battlefield, when it came to deciding on the moment, form, and conduct of battle, much would depend on the general’s own judgment—perhaps more a matter of character, insight, and intuition than careful calculation and planning. When battle was joined, the theory could say little because of the many variables in play. At that point, war became an art form. Strategy could be considered a matter of science, in the sense of being systematic, empirically based, and logically developed, covering all those things that could be planned in advance and were subject to calculation. As art, strategy covered actions taken by bold generals who could achieve extraordinary results in unpromising situations.

Napoleon never provided a complete account of his approach to war. He did not write of strategy, although he did refer to the “higher parts of war.” His views were recorded in a number of maxims. They were often practical reflections on the standard military problems of his day and lack the universal quality of Sun Tzu’s writings. Yet they capture the essence of his approach: bringing superior strength to bear at crucial moments (“God is on the side of the heaviest battalions”); defeating the enemy by destroying his army; viewing strategy as “the art of making use of time and space”; using time to gain strength when weaker; and compensating for physical inferiority with greater resolve, fortitude, and perseverance (“The moral is to the physical as three to one”). Many of his maxims revolved around the need to understand the enemy: by fighting too often with one enemy, “you will teach him all your art of war”; never do what the enemy wishes “for this reason alone, that he desires it”; never interrupt an enemy making a mistake; always show confidence, for you can see your own troubles but you cannot see those facing your enemy.

Yet in two critical respects he moved beyond Clausewitz and the Napoleonic model. By the 1860s far more could be done with armies than had been possible at the start of the century, as a result of the arrival of the railways as well as improved road networks. Von Moltke was unusually alert to the logistical potential of these developments, appreciating what could be achieved once it was possible to move mass armies with relative ease. He also recognized the potential for deadlock if both sides mobilized large human reserves and a war carried on without either side quite being able to bring it to a conclusion. The second factor influencing von Moltke’s approach was that he internalized Clausewitz’s dictum about war being a continuation of politics. He happily served his monarch and less happily shared influence with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. He acquired as a result a sense of the uncertain fit between political ends and military means, but also of the possibilities of limited war and the value of allies. While, à la Clausewitz, he believed the object of war was to “implement the government’s policy by force,” he grumbled that politicians (read Bismarck) might demand more from war than it could realistically deliver. Once objectives were set, it was up to the military to realize them.

More innovative in von Moltke’s approach to strategy was his refusal to be locked into any system or plan. He was responsible for the famous observation that “no plan survived contact with the enemy.” He told his commanders that war could not be “conducted on a green table” and was prepared to delegate authority so that they could respond to situations as they found them rather than how the high command expected them to be.

Out of these highly charged debates emerged a concept of crucial importance for subsequent military thought. Stressing his delegated powers from the Kaiser to issue operational commands, von Moltke identified the operational level of war as the one within which the commander must expect no political interference. The episode over Paris might have just demonstrated the fantasy of this political exclusion, but for commanders in the field this became an article of faith, essential to the proper and successful implementation of strategy.

The vital question for strategy was not how to win a battle but how to exert pressure on the enemy’s society and government. This argued for consideration of blockade and attacks on commerce (“guerre de course”) as much as seeking out the enemy fleet. Major or grand strategy was about the purposes of war, taking into account international relations and economic factors, to which the strategy for the actual conduct of war should be subordinate. As it was highly unlikely that a war would be decided solely by naval action, except possibly over time as a result of blockade, armies and navies should not be considered separately. “Since men live on the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at war have always been decided—except in the rarest cases—either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and national life, or else by fear of what the fleet makes possible for your army to do.” The relationship between land and sea forces was the business of maritime strategy, from which the fleet’s specific tasks would emerge. That would be the business of a purely naval strategy.

By exalting the offensive “into a fetish,” the defensive was discredited. Yet at sea the defensive was stronger because of the ease with which battle could be avoided. A fleet that knew it was weaker would have every incentive to avoid the stronger. Unlike Mahan, Corbett saw great advantages in dispersal, such as avoiding a stronger fleet, luring a weaker fleet into danger under the illusion that it enjoyed local strength, and producing a winning combination of ships. In this respect, the “ideal concentration” was “an appearance of weakness that covers a reality of strength.” The worst concentration, by the same token, would limit the area of the sea that could be controlled, leaving other parts vulnerable for any use. “The more you concentrate your force and efforts to secure the desired decision, the more you will expose your trade to sporadic attack.”28 The Great War gave far more support to Corbett’s views rather than Mahan’s. The one great naval battle, at Jutland in 1915, was inconclusive and in Corbett’s eyes unnecessary, because the Royal Navy was still able to sustain a blockade that would have weakened Germany over time.

As Azar Gat has demonstrated, behind the enthusiasm for the new engines of war, whether on land or in the air, was a modernist fascination with the possibility of a rationalist, technocratic super-efficient society built around machines, linked to elitism in political theory and futurism in art, and feeding naturally into fascism.6 This did not mean, however, that those who developed new strategic theories around these weapons adopted the whole package. Many did not. They were imagining a future not necessarily far away but still well beyond current capabilities. Their theories developed around a combination of optimism about technology and pessimism about humanity.

Deterrence answered the stark exam question posed by the arrival of nuclear weapons: What role can there be for a capability that has no tactical role in stopping armies or navies but can destroy whole cities? Answers in terms of war-fighting, though explored by the Eisenhower administration, appeared distasteful; answers in terms of deterrence promised the prevention of future war. It sounded robust without being reckless. It anticipated aggression and guarded against surprise but could still be presented as essentially reactive. The difficulty was whether deterrence could be expected to hold if it was self-evidently based on a bluff. Credibility appeared to depend on a readiness to convey recklessness, illustrated by another of John Foster Dulles’s comments about the need to be ready “to go to the brink” during a crisis. Thus the residual possibility of use left a formidable imprint, precisely because it would be so catastrophic.

Herman Kahn, an early popularizer of some of the more abstruse theories of deterrence, distinguished three types: Type I involved superpower nuclear exchanges; Type II limited conventional or tactical nuclear attacks involving allies; and Type III addressed most other types of challenges.6 At each stage, the requirements in terms of political will became more demanding, especially once both sides had acquired nuclear arsenals.

The theorist who did more than any other to explore the conundrums of deterrence and nuclear strategy was Thomas Schelling.

All partnerships were to some degree precarious, just as all antagonisms were to some degree incomplete.

Herman Kahn sought to show that even once nuclear exchanges had begun there were ways of conducting operations that might keep the pressure on the other side while avoiding Armageddon. He saw escalation as a dragon to be slain: not so much a phenomenon operating independent of human action but a possible product of inadequate intellectual and physical preparation. He introduced the idea that escalation might be a deliberate act. The noun acquired a verb when he referred to “people who wish to escalate a little themselves, but somehow feel that the other side would not be willing to go one step further.”54 Escalation was transformed from a hopelessly unruly process to one that might be tamed and possibly manipulated. In his 1965 book On Escalation, he introduced the “escalation ladder” with sixteen thresholds and forty-four steps. For most, the striking feature of the book was the possibility of anyone coming up with almost thirty distinct ways of using nuclear weapons following their first use at rung fifteen.55 The escalation up the ladder concluded, when all semblance of control had been lost, with a “wargasm.” Kahn declared himself innocent of the Freudian connotations.

Yet he was repelled by the idea of an “absolute war” that was concerned solely with the destruction of enemy forces in “the one process battle.” It felt like buying victory in blood and he did not think the Arabs would want to do that. They were fighting for their freedom (“a pleasure only to be tasted by a man alive”). While armies were like plants, “immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head,” the Arab irregulars were more “a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like gas.” The Turks would lack enough men to cope with the “ill will of the Arab people,” especially as they were likely to treat the rebellion in absolute terms. They would not realize “to make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.” Attacking the Turks’ supply lines would keep them short of materiel. Instead of a war of contact there was the possibility here of a war of detachment. This would involve becoming known to the enemy only when there was an opportunity to attack and avoiding being put on the defensive by “perfect” intelligence. There was a psychological aspect to this. Lawrence spoke, in the commonplace of the time, of the “crowd” and the need to adjust the “spirit to the point where it becomes fit to exploit in action, the prearrangement of a changing opinion to a certain end.” The Arabs not only had to order their own men’s minds but also those of the enemy (“as far as we could reach them”) and of support...

Mao saw guerrilla warfare as an acceptable strategy when on the defensive but not as an independent route to victory. He relied on it whenever his immediate need was simply to survive. As this was often the case, his writings on guerrilla tactics have a certain authority, but his preferred form of warfare involved mobile, regular forces.

Mao played down material factors, such as economic and military power, in which he was evidently deficient, in favor of human power and morale: “It is people, not things that are decisive.”15 Given the armed struggle in which he had been engaged for over a decade, it was not surprising that he insisted in another famous aphorism that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” reflecting the twists and turns of the armed struggle that had shaped his life. Mao had read Clausewitz and Lawrence.16 John Shy judged him to be in some respects closer to Jomini, with “similar maxims, repetitions, and exhortations,” and the same “compounding of analysis and prescription” and “didactic drive.”17 The influence of Sun Tzu was clear in his observations on how to wear down a superior enemy while avoiding battle (“The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass. The enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats; we pursue”) and the importance of intelligence and a better grasp of the situation (“Know the enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”).

The most assiduous follower of Mao after his revolution was General Vo Nguyen Giap, a schoolteacher from Vietnam who fought against colonial France and then the U.S.-supported anti-communist government in the south. He immersed himself in Maoist theory and practice in China in 1940 and then returned to Vietnam to lead the fight against the Japanese and later the French. He is also reported to have described Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom as his “fighting gospel” that he was “never without.” Giap took Mao’s three stages seriously, but his major innovation was his readiness to move between the different stages according to circumstances, whereas Mao had seen these as sequential steps. Vietnam was a relatively small country compared to China and so required greater flexibility. In particular, Giap was prepared to use regular forces before the third stage, to hold space, for example. His description of guerrilla warfare captured the best practice of the Asian communist struggle of the mid-twentieth century. Guerrilla war served the broad masses of an economically backward country standing up to a “well-trained army of aggression.” Against the enemy’s strength was poised a “boundless heroism.” The front was not fixed but was “wherever the enemy is found” and sufficiently exposed to be vulnerable to a local concentration of forces, employing “initiative, flexibility, rapidity, surprise, suddenness in attack and retreat.” The enemy would be exhausted “little by little by smal...

Vietnam, a war for which the civilian strategists had not prepared and on which they had relatively little of value to say, marked the end of the “golden age” of strategic studies. Just as the arrival of mutual assured destruction and a period of relative calm took the urgency out of the Cold War, Vietnam “poisoned the academic well.”43 Colin Gray charged the civilian “men of ideas” with being overconfident about the ease with which theory might be transferred to the “world of action.” The prophets had become courtiers, living off their intellectual capital. Their “dual-loyalty” to the needs of problem-oriented officials on the one hand and the disinterested “policy-neutral” standards of scholarship on the other “had tended to produce both irrelevant policy advice and poor scholarship.”

The successes of 1940 did convince Hitler that blitzkrieg was the way to win wars, so he adopted it as the basis for the attack on the Soviet Union. Soviet mistakes again helped with early progress, but the offensive soon faltered and the economic demands of the campaign were inadequately addressed. While celebrating blitzkrieg as a doctrine, its proponents paid inadequate attention to this experience in the East—not only its failure but the objectives of conquest, plunder, and racial domination that shaped its course.43 In the end, the experience of the Second World War followed that of the First. The Germans found themselves fighting an attritional campaign after attempting to force a result with a winning maneuver. The blitzkrieg model was therefore flawed, taking little account of the historiography of the Second World War.

One famous example of a commander thrown into mental confusion by a shock military move (although one about which he had been warned) was Stalin in June 1941 as the German offensive began and made rapid gains. For a few days the Soviet people heard nothing from Stalin as he struggled to make sense of the situation. While he was doing so, individuals at the front responded as best they could, some retreating and some throwing themselves into the fight with great bravery. Eventually Stalin rallied himself, broadcast a stirring message to his people, and took command of the fight. The size of his country and his population meant that a quick victory for the Germans was essential, and Hitler was sufficiently contemptuous of the Slav mentality to believe that a hard push by his forces would see the enemy crumble. When the moral collapse failed to materialize to the degree necessary, Hitler’s forces were stuck and eventually pushed back. The shock effect wore off as the Soviet leadership steadied itself. It was one thing to argue that because minds controlled bodies, disrupting the workings of minds was preferable to eliminating their bodies, but quite another to assume that just as physical blows could shatter bodies, so mental blows could shatter minds. It was one thing to recognize the importance of the cognitive domain, but quite another to assume that it was susceptible to straightforward manipulation. Human minds could be capable of remarkable feats of denial, resistance, ...

he revolution in military affairs may bring a kind of tactical clarity to the battlefield, but at the price of strategic obscurity. —Eliot Cohen

The initial focus was on the role of information flows in sustaining standard military operations, facilitating faster decision-making and ensuring more precise physical effects. The irregular warfare in the 2000s soon brought into focus the more traditional forms of information warfare, and the Americans appeared to be losing ground to apparently primitive opponents regarding how these conflicts, their stakes, and their conduct were perceived. Their opponents lacked physical strength but seemed to know how to turn impressionable minds. Superiority in the physical environment was of little value unless it could be translated into an advantage in the information environment. As this was the “chosen battlespace” of its foes, the United States was now required to learn to conceptualize its victories in terms of shaping perceptions over time rather than in terms of decisive engagements that annihilated the enemy.42 The issue was not so much the flow of data but the way that people thought.

One reflection of the growing recognition of cultural factors was that the Pentagon employed an anthropologist, Montgomery McFate, to consider the interplay between military operations and Iraqi society. Among the mistakes she identified were failures to appreciate the role of tribal loyalties as the established civilian structure of power collapsed, the importance of coffee shop rumors compared with official communications, and the meaning of such small things as hand gestures.

The revolutionaries acquired their notoriety by the power of their ideas and their ability to spread them through newspapers, pamphlets, and books. Not surprisingly, the reconciliation of meager means to glorious but somewhat distant ends often required considerable intellectual gymnastics and heroics of belief. This led to rancorous disputes as to the relative merits of a range of impossible strategies. It was one thing to define a good society, quite another to explain how it would be the natural outcome of a great popular movement. It was one thing to develop an intellectually consistent narrative to explain how the revolution could work itself through to the desired outcome, quite another to follow its lines when the moment for revolution came. These great dramas would allow the revolutionaries a glimpse of everything they had been trying to achieve. The question was whether there would be anything more than a glimpse.

For Herzen, according to Stoppard, “there was no libretto or destination, and there was always as much in front as behind.”2 When a radical spoke of the “Spirit of History, the ceaseless March of Progress,” Herzen exclaimed, “A curse on your capital letters! We’re asking people to spill their blood—at least spare them the conceit that they are acting out the biography of an abstract noun.”3

The whole meaning of the Commune lay in its spontaneity and decentralization to workers’ councils. Marx’s idea of a hard state under strong central direction appalled him. He warned of the “ruling of the majority by the minority in the name of the alleged superior intelligence of the second.” In retrospect, Bakunin’s warnings about the rise of a new elite and the oppressive role of the state under socialism looked prescient.20 They flowed naturally from his conviction that the state was the root of all evil, and from his opposition to anybody setting themselves up as a power over others.

For his part, Bakunin considered Marx naïve to believe that a state so forged would ever wither away. States could be expressions of any sectional interests and not just classes. Even well-intentioned revolutionary elites were capable of authoritarianism and deploying state power to maintain and develop their own position. “I am not a communist,” he explained, “because communism concentrates and absorbs all the powers of society in the state; it necessarily ends with the concentration of property in the hands of the state.”

As Franco’s forces gained ground, the CNT leadership accepted the need for a united front with the socialists and was soon requiring its members to follow a party line. On entering government, the CNT paper observed that because anarchists were now ministers, the state was no longer oppressive. There was conscription and demands for strict military discipline, while the social experiments (some of which had been successful) were halted. In practice, an army composed of militias, each with their own political sponsor, was always likely to lead to factional in-fighting. As the more disciplined force, and with the Republic increasingly reliant upon Soviet support, communists soon dominated the officer corps.36 Eventually the communists, with Soviet backing, turned on the anarchists and a civil war within the civil war began. To anarchism’s association with terror, the experience of Spain added an association with futility and ineffectuality. Anarchists might

He was not against a democratic party in principle, but in practice revolutionaries were bound to act conspiratorially, otherwise they could not survive. One of Lenin’s closest associates turned out to be a police agent.

Max Weber exemplified both the problems and potential of social science. Born in 1864, he was the son of a minor liberal politician with whom he had a distant relationship. Weber’s reputation and influence grew after his death from pneumonia in 1920, not least because (like Clausewitz) his devoted widow ensured that his writings were properly organized for posthumous publication. Her biography, published after the Second World War, presented him as moderate liberal, representing the best of Germany that had been suppressed by the Nazis. His views (along with his personal life) are now acknowledged to have been much more complex, certainly liberal (always evident in his readiness to speak up for the right of individuals to voice their opinions) but also imperialist and committed to a strong German state.