Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman

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that once the enemy army was defeated in battle, the route to victory was clear. Without an army a state was helpless.

policy linked the statesman and the general:

policy gave the general his objectives and the resources available to meet them.

relying on military victory as the sole means of achieving political objectives.

military task should be set by the politicians. Once that had been accomplished, the military could expect the politicians to use a military victory to best advantage.

War

“The war must be extended widely,” and the other agreed that “the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one cannot take into account the loss of private individuals.

Prussia had “yielded up all Europe to him [Napoleon], and have now come to teach us. Fine teachers!

Tolstoy deplored the “great man theory of history,” the idea that events were best explained by references to the wishes and decisions of individuals who through their position and special qualities were able to push events in one direction rather than another.

Tolstoy stressed the “sum of men’s individual wills” rather than just those of the senior but ultimately deluded figures who believed that their decisions had significant effects.

Victory therefore had to be swift and conclusive, and that meant there was no option but to get on the offensive as soon as possible.

“strategic envelopment,

concentrating superior forces faster than the enemy and came to be a feature of German strategy thereafter.

importance of ...

(“march divided; strike united

In the 1866 war with Austria he used the railways to get his troops into position first, even though Austria had been the first to mobilize. Observers were staggered when he allowed his two armies to be separated by some one hundred miles. If the Austrian commanders had been more alert, this could have proved disastrous for von Moltke. In the end, the Austrians

In the critical war with France in 1870, von Moltke’s victory was complete, at least in terms of the conventional phase of the war.

Although the French army was defeated after seven weeks, the war was not over.

Irregular and regular forces came together in France to form a government of national defense. This was a vivid demonstration of how political victory did not always follow automatically from battlefield victory.

Von Moltke was worried this would only stiffen French resistance and preferred a siege. Bismarck worried that a slow conclusion to the campaign might prompt Britain and Austria to enter the war on France’s side.

swift military action that would deal the enemy a knockout blow. But if the enemy

While these debates about land offensives and decisive victories preoccupied continental powers, Great Britain, was content to rely upon its maritime strength.

The dominant concept was command of the sea, which could be traced back to Thucydides. This essentially meant being able to move men and materiel wherever you wished without interference while being able to prevent the enemy’s attempt to do the same.

In the nineteenth century, Great Britain enjoyed the command of the sea.

aura of irresistible strength, despatching warships to remind lesser powers of the country’s interests, conveying menace, providing assurance, and creating a bargaini...

British naval superiority had been reasserted at Trafalgar in 1805.

Only at the turn of the century, with the conversion to steam underway and Germany growing in industrial strength, was this standard threatened.

stress on the decisive battle.

The role of navies was to compete with other navies for the command of the sea.

dismissive of engaging in commerce destruction until after the decisive naval battle, for victory would put enemy commerce at your mercy.

Germany by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz,

who was responsible in the late nineteenth century for turning the navy of the recently unified Germany from a second-rate force into a seriou...

navy’s “natural mission” was a “strategic offensive,” to seek victory in an “arranged mass battle.

Other possibilities, such as coastal bombardments and blockades, were impossible so long as “the opposing fleet still exists and is ready for battle.

“No Vietcong ever called me a nigger,” observed the boxer Cassius Clay, now Mohammed Ali.