![]() As Bernard Brodie pointed out, “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. The ability to deliver unimaginable destruction in such a short period and from long distances transformed the use of force. The first big shift in the realities of war occurred only a few years after Makers of Modern Strategy appeared, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Instead of reflections on the best ways to deploy battleships or tanks, the latest analyses of grand strategy focus on new tools which are often non-kinetic, such as cyber-weapons and economic warfare. The interests of key states, however, and the means of securing those interests, appear quite different in 2020 than in 1943. In some ways, the issues today are quite similar - as a commentator on the original volume pointed out, the goal of the book was to reflect upon the “art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation or a coalition of nations, to promote and secure their interests against enemies, actual, potential, or presumed.” This is as good a definition of grand strategy as any, and is as applicable today as it was in 1943. ![]() Would these three themes - the role of individuals and leaders, the complete socio-economic mobilization by the nation-state to prosecute war, and the place of kinetic, physical conflict - serve as the organizing principles for a third edition of Makers of Modern Strategy? Or do we need to focus on different factors and forces that better reflect the nature of contemporary and future conflict? The outstanding articles in this issue have caused me to reflect upon what such a volume might look like today (an important task my esteemed Kissinger Center colleague Hal Brands is actually pursuing). the war of position the relationship between war and social institutions and between economic strength and military power psychology and morale as weapons of war the role of discipline in the army the question of the professional army vs. Certain themes appear over and over again, across centuries, national, and ideological lines:Īmong these are the concept of lightning war and the battle of annihilation the war of maneuver vs. Given the total mobilization of the World War II, when every element of the economy, political system, and even information was tightly controlled and exploited by the state, this frightening perspective was understandable: “When war comes it dominates our lives.” Third, the essays focus on the physical elements of war: the movement, clash, and material and human destruction between massed groups of men and machines fighting to destroy each other. ![]() The second is an understanding that conflict had become all-encompassing, dominating every aspect of society. First is the focus on individuals: leaders such as Frederick the Great and thinkers like naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. ![]() Three things in particular are notable about the 1943 volume, which included some of the best military and political historians working in the middle part of the 20th century. The book, which was updated in 1986 by Peter Paret, quickly became a classic. The seminar eventually produced a landmark collection of essays, Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler. Īs the world sunk deeper into a deadly global conflagration in 1941, Princeton University professor Edward Meade Earle gathered a group of eminent scholars to discuss the history and practice of military strategy. 3 of the Texas National Security Review, our sister publication. Editor’s Note: This article is the introductory essay for Vol.
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