The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in history, political science, international relations, military strategy, and diplomacy.
On Grand Strategy is by Professor John Lewis Gaddis, who teaches military and naval history at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, the United States of America.
Professor Gaddis is an expert in grand strategy, the long-term thinking done at high governmental levels to achieve goals for a nation.
The TU Library collection includes several other books about different aspects of grand strategy.
Grand strategy may deal with where to fight wars, or how to focus budget spending among different agencies, what weapons to purchase or manufacture, and which allies are most productive for a country.
While it has a lot to do with foreign policy, grand strategy deals especially with military aspects of policies.
Developing a nation’s grand strategy may keep many generations of senior military officials busy to reach long-term goals.
The military historian Basil Liddell Hart that far thinking is essential in grand strategy, so current wars should not be the only subject of consideration, but also what happens after peace is declared.
Professor Gaddis suggests that one way to make useful decisions about lots of different subjects is to read history and literature, to be aware of other people who were faced by comparable decisions.
He cites many authors, from the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz to the novelist Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace,” for insights, also recommending examples from the lives of such leaders as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and many others whose books are available at the Thammasat University Library.
Professor Gaddis warns that leaders require common sense, but the more power they obtain, the less common sense they usually have:
Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.
The challenge is to deal confidently with what is known, what seems probable, and what is unknown.
The more leaders read of history and literature, the better prepared they are to deal with such uncertainties.
The word strategy derives from a Greek term meaning command, generalship.
Strategy is a general or high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty.
It involves determining goals to aim for, actions to achieve them, and mobilizing resources to execute actions.
Here are some thoughts about strategy by authors, most of whom are represented in the TU Library collection:
Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war?
- The Bible: II Kings, 18:20
To win by strategy is no less the role of a general than to win by arms.
- Julius Caesar, Roman general, statesman. The Civil War, 1.72
Strategy is a system of expedients; it is more than a mere scholarly discipline. It is the translation of knowledge to practical life, the improvement of the original leading thought in accordance with continually changing situations.
- Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, “On Strategy” (1871) in Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings (1993)
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
- Michael Porter, “What is strategy?.” In: Harvard Business Review, November (1996)
All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
For her own breakfast she’ll project a scheme,
Nor take her tea without a stratagem.
- Edward Young, Love of Fame, Satire VI
In 1910, Major-General Sir Wilkinson Dent Bir, an officer in the British Army during the late 1800s through the First World War, published a book, A précis of strategy. It included the following observations:
The struggle to live and the survival of the fittest are fundamental principles of the scheme of our existence. Formerly conducted in the crudest fashion, the barbarity of the fight for existence between individuals has now been modified by codes of law. But no tribunal has as yet been universally recognized whose decisions all nations will obey; hence, in vital international relations, the struggle for existence is still carried on in its harshest form, and force, but little refined by social custom, determines the issue.
In other words, war is still the decisive factor in international policy, which is really conducted under a continual, though more or less veiled threat of war. War has often resulted from some incident, such as an insult, real or fancied, to the national dignity, from religious persecution, or from anarchy in a neighbouring state. The ambition of a ruler, the interests of civilization, or even the desire to distract attention from domestic politics by foreign quarrels, have been responsible for war.
Whatever the spark that fired the train, the predisposing factors have, as a rule, been the stress and rivalry of the struggle for existence. The real cause of war may therefore be traced either to a natural desire to better the position of the nation by seizing territory others seemed too weak to hold; to self-interested resistance to expansion and increase of strength on the part of other peoples; or, again, to trade disputes and rivalry…
A nation, then, must be prepared to wage in the last resort unassisted war in furtherance or support of national interests; to forgo its interests and perhaps even independence; or may, when interests coincide, stave off war by combining with other states for mutual security. Foreign policy that is, the attitude adopted in regard to questions arising with Foreign Powers should therefore be daring, energetic, or conciliatory in proportion to the power possessed of enforcing respect for rights. For if a state, or combination of states, weak in the military sense, follow a course likely to result in serious friction with a powerful neighbour, ruin may result; on the other hand, a too feeble policy pursued in the interests of peace by a wealthy and populous country may, by encouraging aggression which must be resented, defeat its own purpose.
To the Government is confided the duty of furthering and protecting the national welfare by every means short of war, but it is empowered to resort to war when some all-important national interest is seriously menaced, or when the national security, honour, or advantage, require.
War as a rule breaks out between states when the conflict of interest has become so serious and so detrimental to commercial intercourse that war becomes preferable to precarious peace, or when it is felt that even disastrous war will be less disadvantageous to the interests of the nation than a dishonourable composition. War is therefore an act of policy, and it is the nation, through the Government, which makes or accepts war, the soldier being only the piece moved on the international chess-board.
Since war is made to promote or maintain national welfare, its general direction must remain in the hands of the rulers of the nation, who, when there is any choice in the matter, are alone in position to decide in what localities the campaign can take place most advantageously from the political point of view, how much money may be spent, and how long hostilities can be profitably continued.
But the conduct of the campaign is the business of the soldier, interference with which cannot be otherwise than disastrous, as history has shown time and again. At the same time, the Commander-in-Chief in the field should recollect that his actions must be influenced by the policy of the Government.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)