Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman

EVERYONE NEEDS a strategy. Leaders of armies, major corporations, and political parties have long been expected to have strategies, but now no serious organization could imagine being without one.

Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees.

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.”

There is no agreed-upon definition of strategy that describes the field and limits its boundaries. 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.

By and large, strategy comes into play where there is actual or potential conflict, when interests collide and forms of resolution are required. This is why a strategy is much more than a plan. A plan supposes a sequence of events that allows one to move with confidence from one state of affairs to another. Strategy is required when others might frustrate one’s plans because they have different and possibly opposing interests and concerns.

The picture of strategy that should emerge from this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point and not the end point.

So the realm of strategy is one of bargaining and persuasion as well as threats and pressure, psychological as well as physical effects, and words as well as deeds. This is why strategy is the central political art. It is about getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest. It is the art of creating power.

Fighting against superior force may score high on nobility and heroism but normally low on discretion and effectiveness. This is why underdog strategies, in situations where the starting balance of power would predict defeat, provide the real tests of creativity.

Strategy’s etymology goes back to classical Greek. Through the Middle Ages and into the modern era, however, the relevant reference tended to be to the “art of war.”

The word strategy only began to be used in Britain, France, and Germany in the late eighteenth century, reflecting an Enlightenment optimism that war—like all other spheres of human affairs—could benefit from the application of reason.

References to business strategy were rare before 1960. They started to take off during the 1970s and by 2000 became more frequent than references to military strategy.

The social and philosophical movements of the 1960s encouraged the “personal” to become more “political,” potentially introducing strategy into more basic relationships.

The rise of strategy has therefore gone hand in hand with bureaucratization of organizations, professionalization of functions, and growth of the social sciences.

One response to the advance of the strategists was to challenge their presumptions of control and the centralized power structures they encouraged.

This book describes the development of these different approaches, from rigorous centralized planning processes at one extreme to the sum of numerous individual decisions at the other.

Readers might be surprised by some of the characters that appear, and by chapters that barely seem to mention strategy at all. This is because of the importance of the theories that set the terms for strategy.

What fascinates me about strategy is that it is about choice and because these choices can be important the reasoning behind them is worthy of careful examination.

To keep the topic manageable I have focused largely on Western thinking about strategy, and for recent times, I have particularly examined American approaches.

To keep the discussion grounded I have kept in mind Raymond Aron’s observation about how strategic thought “draws its inspiration from each century, or rather at each moment of history, from the problems which events themselves pose.”

George Orwell who, reviewing a book on strategy, observed that “there is something unsatisfactory in tracing

an historical change to an individual theorist, because a theory does not gain ground unless material conditions favor it.”

In keeping with this narrative theme I have also used a number of examples from literature—including the Bible, Homer, Milton, and Tolstoy—to illuminate core issues and the treatment of strategic behavior.

I was taught in political theory to read the original texts and not just the commentaries, and I have tried

to do so, but it would be misleading to suggest that I have not relied extensively on the interpretations of others.

My own expertise and the origins of the subject mean that much of the book is concerned with war, but I have also sought to do justice to revolutionary, electoral, and business strategies and explore how they have influenced each other.

These include deception and coalition formation, and the instrumental use of violence.

But they also appreciated the importance of limiting their conflicts so that they could live cooperatively thereafter.

During the 1970s, Frans de Waal observed the chimpanzee colony at Arnhem Zoo, making copious notes as a remarkable series of dramas began to unfold. In his 1982 book, Chimpanzee Politics, he drew some startling conclusions about the complexity of chimpanzee society. In his view, the evidence of coalition formation and power struggles among the chimps deserved the label “political.”2

The first change charted by de Waal began with the established dominant male, Yeroen, initially enjoying the support of most of the females but appearing unsure of how to respond to a conspicuous challenge to his authority by another male, Luit.

Actual fighting played only a small part in this process. Biting, the most dangerous act of aggression, was rarely used.

As chimpanzees exhibited all these attributes, de Waal concluded that “the roots of politics are older than humanity.”

The brain consumes 20 percent of the body’s energy, far more than any other organ, while making up only 2 percent of an adult’s body weight. Something so costly to maintain must have developed to meet a vital need.

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.

Physical tasks required a sequence of activities, and so it became necessary to plan ahead.

Ants are among the most warlike of creatures. Their foreign policy has been described as “restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week.”

Ant warfare is in no sense strategic. It relies on relentless and ruthless attrition through brute force.

A particularly dramatic conflict occurred at Gombe after a community split as the result of a falling out between two alpha males. Hostility continued between the two communities, known as the Kasekala and the Kahama. It led to a protracted conflict between 1973 and 1974 which concluded with the extinction of the Kahama. The males of the Kasekala took over both the Kahama’s territory and their females.

It has been argued that it would be unwise to generalize from this study because of the artificial conditions created by the reduced habitat and Goodall’s influence over the food supply.

Richard Wrangham

Wrangham argued that adult male chimpanzees “assess the costs and benefits of violence” and attack when the “probable net benefit is sufficiently high.”

When there was greater symmetry among the numbers of adult males, the typical result was “visual and auditory display exchanges without conflict.”

The most effective strategies do not depend solely on violence—though this can play an instrumental role, by demonstrating superiority as much as expressing aggression—but benefit instead from the ability to forge coalitions. Little in the rest of this book will suggest that this list should be expanded. The elements of strategic behavior have not changed, only the complexity of the situations in which they must be applied.

Some stories (David and Goliath being the most obvious example) still influence the way we think and talk about strategy.

The questions of the literalness of the Bible and the issues it raises about free will and causation have long been at the heart of theological debate.

There are two possible explanations for the latitude allowed by God in human behavior. The first is that there is nothing in the end to be learned from all of this because all actions are subject to a higher manipulation. The second is that humans are able to make their own calculations, but in the end only one strategic judgment matters: whether or not to obey God. After recasting biblical stories using game theory, Steven Brams concluded that God was a “superlative strategist.”

But Brams noted that God enjoyed omniscience but not omnipotence. He was not a mere puppetmaster but rather was affected by the choices of the other players. To help explain God’s purpose and his later strategy, Brams drew on the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski. God created the world for “His own glory,” but this would be pointless unless it could be appreciated.

In the face of God’s anger, Adam blamed his own ignorance but also Eve—the “woman whom you gave me”—and so pushed the blame back to God. The source of the Fall was the serpent who persuaded Eve to disobey. The translations of the serpent’s strategy vary from “subtle” to “crafty” and “cunning.”

The point at which God asserted his greatness to his chosen people was when he arranged the escape of the Jews from Egypt, where they were kept as slaves. One reading of the story of Exodus is that it was not so much about freeing the Israelites from slavery as about asserting God’s greatness by establishing a people beholden to him and ensuring that they—and others—were in awe of his power.

Diana Lipton has suggested that the Exodus reflected less a concern that the Israelites were being oppressed and more one that they were being seduced by Egyptian life and were in the process of being assimilated.

Coercive threats must be credible to be effective, yet those issued by Moses depended on a god not worshiped by Egyptians. There was no immediate reason to take him seriously.