p.13 At its heart, and in any context, strategy describes a relationship
between actions and objectives. The word expresses nothing more or less than the plan, means or method whereby singular events
are linked and/or coordinated to achieve overall goals. Any activity involving some form of competition will inevitably
contain an element of strategy. Strategy is the plan, for example, by which chess pieces are moved to checkmate an
opponent. It is the linkage, in another sense, whereby the actions of individual players on a football team are coordinated
to outscore an opposing team.
p.14 Clearly military strategy remains the link between operations
and objectives - the means by which war actions achieve war aims.
p.18 [British military historian Sir Michael Howard's] basic thesis is that
contemporary Western strategic thinking is flawed in its bias towards the operational aspects of War... Howard concludes
that no campaign can be understood or interpreted unless its logistical problems are studied as thoroughly as the course of
operations.
p.18-19 despite the fact that many of the Southern Generals during the US
Civil War 'handled their forces with a flexibility and imaginativeness worthy of a Napoleon or a Frederick; nevertheless they
lost' - they lost to the inevitable consequence of the North's capacity to mobilise superior industrial strength and manpower
into armies, the size of which rendered the operational skills of their adversaries almost irrelevant. To Howard, this conflict
was a clear case where the logistical dimension of strategy proved more significant than the operational.
p.19 Accustomed to operationally-focused strategies, Western theorists have
mistakenly sought operational solutions to what were essentially conflicts on the social plane. Of all of Howard's contributions,
it is perhaps this last insight which will resonate most loudly in the twenty-first century. The social sources, ramifications,
and implications of the 'Global War on Terror', and ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, are ringing endorsements
of Howard's criticism of operationally-oriented military solutions to socially and politically-oriented strategic problems.
p.24 Time is a strategic dimension too little understood and consequently too little valued by many contemporary
combatants.
p.26 The strength of van Creveld’s contribution is his bold and innovative
approach to modern strategic issues. He contends that, at a basic level, much of Western contemporary strategic thought
is fundamentally flawed, being ‘rooted in a Clausewitzian world picture that is either obsolete or wrong’. The
underlying reason for this monumental miscalculation is unwillingness or inability on the part of modern and particularly
Western strategists to accept that the very nature of war has been transformed from the industrial paradigm of the nineteenth-
and early twentieth-centuries. For van Creveld, the large-scale conventional war - warfare as understood by today’s
principle military powers - may indeed be in ‘its last gasp.’ This does not mean that warfare itself is in the
decline but rather that it has evolved from what it once was.
p.28 For however long that there is competition in human affairs, there will be strategy.
It is the link between actions and objectives - the plan, means or method by which the former achieves the latter.
Strategy and strategy-making are therefore perpetually self-renewing... strategy-making is not dead. Innovation and original thinking mark true advancement in contemporary
strategic affairs. Why then is the strategic debate in this country so shallow? Arguments over various items
of kit, bouncing back and forth between well-established defence policymakers and analysts - most of whom have past or current
ties with the Department of Defence - does not constitute a healthy strategic debate.
p.29 Western strategic thought is not in hiatus or decline. Rather, it progresses and adapts,
albeit perhaps at a more measured pace than in some eras past, in response to the often unfamiliar and uncomfortable challenges
of modern-day conflict. Most importantly, the strategists discussed have incrementally added to the foundations of strategic
thought laid down by the great names of the past, and in some cases are still doing so. In their own way each has questioned
the status quo of prevailing thought. Through questioning comes innovation and through innovation comes improvement.
While none of the authors discussed may turn out to be Clausewitz’s heir, each is a worthy successor.
