Modern Strategy

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Brilliant analysis of war - Rated
This is an outstanding contribution to strategic studies, a comprehensive placing of virtually all theorists and historians of war and strategy, and hugely thought-provoking. Yet Gray never forgets that practice is primary, noting the 'authority of practice over theory'.

He uses Clausewitz's method, defining strategy as 'the use that is made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy': it is about objectives, effects. The nature and function of strategy and war are unchanging, though their characters change constantly. "Every war is both unique yet also similar to other wars." Strategy is in every conflict everywhere.

Tactics, by contrast, is the use of instruments of power in action. Strategy proposes; tactics dispose. "War is not 'about' economics, morality, or fighting. Instead, it is about politics."

Strategy's dimension are politics, ethics, military preparations, people, technology, time, war proper. Technological changes alter the character not the nature of war: "Technology is important, but in war and strategy people matter most."

Gray analyses strategy's components, its various environments, land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Seapower, airpower and spacepower function strategically as enabling factors: a war's outcome may be decided by action at sea, in the air or in space, but all conflicts have to be finally resolved on land, where people are.

He illuminates wars from the Punic to the Boer, but focuses mainly on the 20th century's excessive amount of war experience: wars between empires, still all too possible, and wars against nations, opposed by wars for national liberation and independence. He writes, "how truly heroic is Mao's message of eventual success through the conduct of protracted revolutionary warfare." Success can mean just stopping the enemy from winning.

We can check the quality of his approach by assessing the strategic conclusions it generates, despite his overmuch reliance on histories emanating from State Department and Foreign Office. He shows that bombing Germany before defeating the Luftwaffe was a costly error. He proves that the atomic bomb did not defeat Japan in 1945; Japan was already defeated. He praises the Soviet Union's prudent and successful practice of nuclear deterrence.