Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers

Carl von Clausewitz - The Prussian military theorist who wrote, “In the whole range of
human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.”
- war was so fraught with chance that it was much more like a game of poker than
a mathematical equation.
*In war, the skill most essential to improving the odds of success is crafting good
strategy, which hinges on objective strategic analysis.
*The best way to hone one’s skills in strategic analysis is to study the classics of
strategic theory and to test their utility across a range of historical and contemporary
cases.
Why Strategy Matters (Lsn 1)
Strategy - derives from the Greek word strategos: the elected post of general in
classical Athens.
- the process by which political purpose is translated into military action.
*A general must be political, that is, he or she must appreciate the idea that war is a
means to a political end.
Patton - his genius was best suited to the operational level of war: commanding battles
and leading campaigns, that is, subsets of the larger strategy.
Eisenhower - considered the finest staff officer in the U.S. Army.
Great strategic theory recognizes three common truths:
(1) War is a dynamic realm of chance, uncertainty, and interaction;
(2) war serves a political purpose; and
(3) the military is a subordinate instrument of policy.
Thucydides on Strategy Lecture 2
Causes of the Peloponnesian War:
(1) Backed Corcyra against Corinth
(2) Imposed harsh sanctions on Megara
(3) Attacked Potidea
*Sparta’s political objective was unlimited: “Free the Greeks,” in other words, dismantle
the Athenian Empire and liberate Greek city-states from Athenian domination.
Pericles - the leading general of Athens, the goal was limited: Restore the status
quo ante bellum and get back to the business of dominating the Greek world
through commerce and cultural imperialism

* Economy - Sparta’s fundamental weakness

* Athenian power was dependent on market access.
Nicias - the archrival of Alcibiades
- commander of the Sicilian expedition.
Cleon - defeated the Spartans on the small island of Sphacteria
- advocate of the direct approach and an unlimited objective
Brasidas - the Spartan who executed an indirect strategy in the hopes of a negotiated
settlement
* When Lysander finally struck, at Aegospotami in 405, he bested the Athenian fleet and
won a war that had lasted 27 years.
Thucydides as a Possession for All Time Lecture 3
Selinus and Syracuse - two city-states which were both Dorian cities, which meant they
had something of a cultural bond with Sparta and a potential hostility to Ionian Athens.
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War Lecture 4
The Art of War - more accurately translated as Master Sun’s Military Methods.
*Supreme Excellence is to achieve victory without resort to battle.
* The Sunzi begins: “Master Sun said: ‘The use of the military is the greatest affair of the
state. It is the terrain of life and death, the path of survival and ruin. It must be studied.’”
Sun Wu – a general who was born in Qi, but made his name in the service of the
southern state of Wu against its western neighbor, Chu.
Sunzi - claims that the professional management and use of mass infantry armies is
“the greatest affair of the state.”
* The Sunzi makes three major claims: (1) that the text contains the wisdom of Sun Wu,
who deserves the title of master (zi), a thinker on par with the greatest philosophers; (2)
that the sole purpose for the existence and employment of the military is to increase the
wealth and power of the state; and (3) that the general must wield the military with the
same skill and autonomy with which a master swordsman handles his weapon.
* Sunzi says, “If it does not profit the state, do not use the military.” On the autonomy of
the general, it says, “The ruler who has able generals and who does not interfere in their
affairs will be victorious.”
Sunzi - presents a revolutionary ideal that is vastly superior to the aristocratic/heroic
ideal that sees battle as ritual and to the Confucian disdain for military affairs.
*From the three major claims of the Sunzi, we can derive the three core theoretical
prescriptions of the book: Be efficient, avoid protraction, and value the commander’s
intellect and skill above all else.
* Five categories of net assessment to determine the nature of a looming conflict: (1)
the spiritual strength of a state, that is, its ability to mobilize, to make sacrifices, and to
resist the enemy’s attempts at subverting 29 its resolve; (2) the environment; (3) the
terrain; (4) command, that is, the talent of the general, the pivotal figure who must
manipulate these elements; and (5) method—logistics, staffing, discipline, and
organization.
Sun Tzu through Time Lecture 5
The Sunzi in Action
Operation Fortitude - was the Allied scheme that convinced Hitler that the Normandy
landings were a diversion and that the real invasion would come at the Pas de Calais.
- divided into Fortitude North and Fortitude South
- The basic premise of Fortitude was to convince the Germans that major Allied
invasions were planned for Norway and the Pas de Calais in France.
*The northern feint was convincing enough to tie down nearly 30 German divisions in
Scandinavia, a theater of marginal importance.
*Fortitude South convinced Hitler and Field Marshal von Rundstedt that the attack
would be at Calais sometime in August of 1944.
chapter XIII of the Sunzi, which is entitled “The Use of Spies.
Five types of spies
1. Internal spies
2. Reverse
3. Dead
4. Living
5.
Ultra – the divine skein
Machiavelli’s The Art of War Lecture 6
Niccolò Machiavelli – wrote The Prince
 - War was the “sole art” of the ruler and one of the main means by which a prince
could rise to power and maintain his position.
- was born in Florence in 1469. His father, a lawyer, introduced the young Niccolò
to the world of Greek and Roman history. As a boy, he took an avid interest in
ancient history, especially in Livy’s account of the early Roman Republic.
*In his view, a republic was the best and most stable form of government because it
embodies stabilizing tensions.
The Art of War - structured as a Socratic dialogue in the style of Plato.
*Participating in the dialogue is a group of Florentine noblemen, led by Cosimo Rucellai,
and the condottiero Fabrizio Colonna. Colonna, who acts as the spokesman for
Machiavelli’s ideas, takes the role of Socrates, and Rucellai and his guests are the
interlocutors.
*A good military is the foundation of a viable state. Without good arms, a state cannot
build good institutions and cannot defend itself. Without good arms, the prince cannot
see his vision become a reality.
*Machiavelli argues for one who is a member of the elite. A general should be as
comfortable with politics as he is with war and strategy.
The Art of War is divided into a preface and seven chapters.
*In the preface, Machiavelli speaks in his own voice about the interconnection of politics
and war and the intimate relation between the military and civilian order.
Book I of The Art of War - an extended discussion of virtu, the skill and prowess of the
general. Virtu gives the general the ability to assess and adapt to the endless
complexity of the battlefield. Virtu in war also encompasses aggressiveness and the
pursuit of decisive battle.
Book II - deals with armaments and military formations.
Book III - the hybrid Roman/modern army in action.
Book IV - covers marching the army through various types of terrain and weather and
deals with the ways in which a commander can raise and manipulate the morale of his
men to tactical advantage.
Book V - concerns the demands of marching an army into enemy territory.
Book VI - a detailed discussion of how to encamp an army
Book VII - deals with the strengths and weaknesses of different styles of fortifications,
methods of attacking fortifications, and the capabilities and limitations of artillery.
*Decisive battle was the centerpiece of Machiavelli’s entire approach to strategy, and a
decisive battle is the centerpiece of his Art of War. In the opening stages of the battle,
the victorious army takes out the enemy’s artillery.
*The Art of War is primarily tactical in its focus, dealing with the mechanics of military
power rather than with strategy at the higher level.
Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy Lecture 7
Titus Livius - known as Livy, was a Roman whose formative years coincided with the
Roman civil wars, first between Caesar and Pompey and then between Brutus, Marc
Antony, and Octavian Caesar (Emperor Augustus).
- a friend and confidant of Augustus, writing an official history of Rome
commissioned by the emperor himself. It is to that monumental history, Ab urbe
condita libri, that Livy owes his fame and the affection of Machiavelli.
*The Discourses - a kind of downward expansion on The Prince, taking policy in The
Prince down to the level of political institutions and strategy in the Discourses.
*The Art of War - a downward expansion on the Discourses, linking political institutions
and strategy to military institutions, operational doctrine, and tactical methods.
*The Art of War was a call for Florence to follow the ancients in the military arts. The
Discourses is a call to the Florentines to follow the Romans in political organization—
most critically, in their strategic behavior.
Fortuna – fate
Virtu - involves adapting to current circumstances and acting appropriately.
- about insight, adaptability, efficacy, and the will to act; it is strategic agility.
The Discourses is divided into three books
The first book - concerned mostly with Roman political institutions.
Book II - looks at how Rome used its homegrown military power to defend itself and
then used offensive wars to grow and prosper.
Book III - deals primarily with the deeds of great Roman citizens and how their virtu
benefited Rome.
The Policies and Strategies of Republican Imperialism
In the Discourses, war is divided into four basic categories:
1. Offensive
2. Defensive
 3. limited - waged to expand the power and influence of the state. The populations
of the conquered territory are generally treated humanely and are either allowed
to live with their own laws or incorporated into the winner’s state.
4. Total - a cruel and frightful zero-sum affair in which a nation seeks to seize a new
homeland and either drive out or exterminate the indigenous population.
*In general, Machiavelli favors the offensive both strategically and operationally.
*Machiavelli claims that republics invite wars because foreign princes are either eager
to conquer a fledgling republic or are frightened into a preventive war against an
expanding republic.
*War is also more likely for a republic because it is a more dynamic and expansive
system of government than a monarchy.
*Machiavelli is one of the first thinkers to show us why different types of political
systems tend to have significantly different strategic inclinations.
The Napoleonic Revolution in War Lecture 8
Battle of Jena - took place in 1806 between the Prussians and the French, was a
masterpiece of classic Napoleonic tactics
Battle of Auerstaedt - highlighted the superior morale and leadership of the French
grande armée.
Carl von Clausewitz - a 26-year-old Prussian aide-de-camp at the time of Jena, later
referred to Napoleon as the “god of war.”
The Levée en Masse – It had two results: a massive French army of more than
700,000 men and an unprecedented nationalization of the French war effort.
Napoleon Bonaparte - The child of minor Corsican nobility and a 20-year-old artillery
officer in the French army at the outbreak of the revolution in 1789. By 1793, he was a
brigadier-general.
* The grande armée allowed Napoleon to build a strategy based on speed, maneuver,
firepower, shock, and pursuit.
* Napoleon’s goal was to inflict the most decisive blow possible on the enemy’s army.
* Napoleon’s grande armée inflict shocking casualties on its adversaries, along with
strategic and psychological blows directed at the enemy’s means and will.
* the grande armée could threaten an enemy capital.
* For both Napoleon and Clausewitz, this “principle of continuity” was the key to
Napoleon’s quick, decisive victories.
*the core of the transformation of war in the Napoleonic era was, as Clausewitz noted,
political—driven by the revolution in France and the nationalization of war.
Baron Jomini as a Strategist Lecture 9
Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini - a prolific military historian and strategic analyst. A
French-speaking Swiss, he had prepared for a business career but got caught up in the
romance and excitement of the revolutionary changes sweeping Europe at the end of
the 18th century.
- at the age of 22 moved to Paris, where he began his study of military history and
the art of strategy.
A Treatise on Great Military Operations - Jomini’s first major work
* In contrast to Clausewitz, who argued that the French Revolution had fundamentally
transformed war, Jomini tried to explain Napoleon’s successes and failures in
accordance with what he viewed as immutable principles of military strategy.
Jomini’s Core Theoretical Tenets
Jomini hammered again and again on a deceptively simple lesson: “That all strategy is
controlled by invariable scientific principles; and that these principles prescribe offensive
action to mass forces against weaker enemy forces at some decisive point if strategy is
to lead to victory.”
* Summary of the Art of War, written in 1838. In it, he argued that the eternal key to
victory lay in the ability to maintain a concentration of one’s own forces and to throw that
larger mass against smaller elements of the enemy’s forces at a series of what he calls
decisive points.
* Jomini was also an operational and theoretical optimist.
*Ultimately, for Jomini, a well-planned and well-executed campaign offers a much
greater chance of success, regardless of its objective.
* strategic intuition—what Jomini calls “the most valuable characteristic of a good
general.
Jomini - emphasized the importance of history and self-education to the cultivation of
consummate military leadership.
Clausewitz’s On War Lecture 10
Carl von Clausewitz - was born under the ancien régime but came of age during
Prussia’s two-decade struggle with revolutionary France.
- joined the army at the age of 12 and was still in uniform when he died 39 years
later.
*In the “pure concept,” war would always be for the most unlimited objectives and
involve a total effort; in other words, destroy the enemy’s armed forces, occupy its
country, and exterminate its population.
* Absolute war is an abstraction that is meant to help us to better understand war in
reality.
* Every war, Clausewitz says, is characterized by three dominant tendencies: (1)
“primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural
force”; (2) “the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to
roam”; and (3) “its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it
subject to reason alone.”
* one must calculate how the people, the military, and the government interact in the
enemy’s state and in one’s own.
*To Clausewitz, war was a continuation of the political competition between states by
military means.
* Clausewitz calls “centers of gravity” - include the enemy’s army, its capital, its main
ally, or in the case of popular uprisings, its people.
* Clausewitz’s thoughts on the proper relationship between politicians and military
leaders in the making of strategy are among the most 73 brilliant ever penned:
“Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd, for it is policy
that has created war. … No other possibility exists, then, than to subordinate the military
point of view to the political.”
Jomini and Clausewitz through the Ages Lecture 11
*One of the reasons that Jomini tends to be more popular than Clausewitz among
military officers is that Clausewitz demands a high degree of political oversight in the
conduct of war: “Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice
versa. 77 … No other possibility exists, then, than to subordinate the military point of
view to the political.”
*Jomini seems to lean more toward the Sunzi, with the professional’s hostility toward
the meddling of the amateurs back in the capital: “A general whose genius and hands
are tied by a [Ruling] Council five hundred miles distant cannot be a match for one who
has liberty of action ….”
*Jomini is emblematic of what has come to be called the “normal theory” of civil-military
relations. This theory accepts that war serves a political end, but it falls to the
professional military to determine the best way to fight a war in pursuit of those political
ends.
*Cohen calls the “unequal dialogue.” - every significant decision can and should be
subject to political oversight.
*In crafting his argument, Cohen takes his marching orders from Clausewitz: “Political
considerations do not determine the posting of guards or the employment of patrols. But
they are influential in the planning of war, of the campaign, and often even of the battle.”
*Clausewitz is most relevant to understanding the nexus of policy and strategy, while
Jomini’s interest in eternal principles of warfare best suits the tactical and operational
levels of war.
*Jomini, the Enlightenment theorist, believes that even with all of war’s complexity,
practical prescriptions for action are still possible. Clausewitz, the German romantic 80
Lecture 11: Jomini and Clausewitz through the Ages pessimist, is ever mindful that even
though one side might win all the battles, it can still lose the war.