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Strategy has been presented as a conceit and an illusion, a pretense that the affairs of the multitudes can be manipulated from above by an elite.
It shows how in these distinct military, political, and business spheres, there has been a degree of convergence around the idea that the best strategic practice may now consist in forming compelling accounts of how to turn a developing situation into a desirable outcome.
As a theme of this book is the growing importance of stories as a means of thinking about and communicating strategies,
According to the more doctrinaire realism, the lack of a supreme authority governing all international affairs has always rendered states inherently insecure.
Battle was considered an enforceable wager. It was precisely because so much could be at stake and fortune could play such a large part that it was approached with such caution.
remarkable trinity—composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes [war] subject to reason alone.17
Clausewitz’s definition of strategy as “the use of the engagement to achieve the objectives of the war” translated political goals into a military aim.
Clausewitz offered three reasons. First, despite all the talk of unpredictability, not everything was a mystery.
