Talking Strategy

Following World War I, air power promised a revolutionary transformation of war, and Italian General Giulio Douhet (1869-1930) was its first prophet. After the carnage of the First World War, strategists throughout Europe sought to devise new strategies and technologies that would prevent a repetition of the drawn-out trench warfare on the Western Front. Air power would be harnessed to this aim, and Douhet opined that “the purpose of an Independent air force is to inflict upon the enemy the greatest possible damage in the shortest possible time.” Only that this time the victims of such air attacks would be mainly civilians, but Douhet – and for that matter, JFC Fuller, Liddell Hart and others – expected such a war to be much shorter. They would be horribly mistaken, as the subsequent world war proved. Colonel Dr Stephen Renner, who holds the Chair of the Strategy Department of the US Air War College in Maxwell, Alabama joins Beatrice and Paul for this episode. He . A student of Sir Hew Strachan’s, he holds his DPhil from the University of Oxford. His career has encompassed being a pilot in the US Air Force and commanding a fighter wing.

Writing when the USA was becoming a great power, strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) drew on historical precedent in his talks and books to prepare America to pick up the baton from the United Kingdom. Unashamedly imperialist, Mahan wrote in his The Impact of Sea Power on History, ‘Naval strategy has for its end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace and in war, the sea power of a country.’ Yet as he pondered the instruments and their ways of application, blending geopolitical, economic and cultural considerations in his analysis, Mahan’s thinking was much more nuanced than many of his fans realised. Although naval battle was prominent, it was not the only tool of strategy in Mahan’s toolbox. Col. Dr Benjamin Armstrong, Permanent Military Professor at the United States Naval Academy, joins Paul and Beatrice to discuss Mahan and how naval leaders and educators the world over – including RUSI which awarded him its highest prize, the Chesney Gold Medal - fell under his spell, albeit in a caricatured rendering dictating the pre-eminence of the navy over the army, and with an undue fixation on naval battle. Col. Dr Armstrong’s publications include Small Boats and Daring Men: Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare, and the Early American Navy (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), and has edited a work on Innovation, Education, and Leadership for the Modern Era (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2015). He has received several awards for his publications.

In the first instalment of the new season of Talking Strategy, Paul and Beatrice are joined by Dr Peter Lorge, Associate Professor of Premodern Chinese and Military History at Vanderbilt University. The enigmatic Chinese text that took its definitive form in the third century BC was not discovered in Europe until shortly before the French Revolution and, significantly, by a French missionary. The document’s thoughts on strategy – such as the ideal of winning without giving battle – diverged strongly from those of the battle-obsessed West. Barely remembered for centuries, Sun Tzu’s ideas went through a staggering renaissance in the 20th century, inspiring Mao Zedong and strongly impacting Western thinkers who were struggling to come to terms with the Chinese Communist insurgency’s triumph in China and the US defeat in Vietnam. Sun Tzu’s approach is that of a rationalisation and planning of warfare. His text advocates evaluating a conflict ahead of time, supposing that one can know its dimensions with reasonable accuracy, and largely excluding contingency. Famously, it says that one should know oneself and one’s enemy, by implication also foreseeing the outcome of all military exchanges. The text thus falls into the category of those, like Christine de Pizan’s and Machiavelli’s works, that argue in favour of prudent planning in the belief that this can minimise risk and uncertainty. Dr Peter Lorge is an Associate Professor of Premodern Chinese and Military History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author or editor of nine books, most recently The Beginner’s Guide to Imperial China (2021), and perhaps most famously The Asian Military Revolution: from Gunpowder to the Bomb (CUP 2008). Dr Lorge has two forthcoming books: Documents From Early Chinese History, a sourcebook for premodern Chinese history written with Scott Pearce, and Sun Tzu in the West: The Anglo-American Art of War, which explores both the writings of Sun Tzu and the impact they have had on Western thinking, especially in the last half-century.

Strategy is an intensely practical consideration, and in this episode, we examine strategy from the perspective of a practitioner. Lord Peter Ricketts was the UK’s first National Security Adviser and joins us to share his experience of strategy-making at the highest levels of government. Lord Ricketts reflects on the difference between crafting a strategic concept for a state or alliance and drawing up a strategy for a conflict or for the management of a major crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic. His experience in government includes chairing the Joint Intelligence Committee, directing the formulation of the 2010 UK National Security Strategy, as well as holding top diplomatic posts including that of Permanent UK Representative to NATO and the EU, and Ambassador in Paris. Building on his book Hard Choices: What Britain Does Next (Atlantic Books: May 2022), Lord Ricketts explains the strategy-making process, both in the context of particular conflicts – he was involved in government decisions to intervene in Kosovo, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan, and mainly not to intervene in Syria – and in drawing up a wide-ranging National Security Strategy requiring an inter-ministerial approach. This inside perspective and explanation of processes and obstacles is an invaluable guide for practitioners and students of public policy alike.

Thomas Schelling brought a cross-disciplinary approach to nuclear strategy and the understanding of conflict. Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, joins us to discuss Schelling’s pioneering work and reluctance to be seen as a game theorist. Thomas Schelling (1921–2016), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for ‘having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis’. Despite a reluctance to be seen as a game theorist and a distrust of pure mathematical modelling, he brought to the analysis of strategy concepts borrowed from economics, a discipline that had not previously played a role in military strategy-making. In the 1950s and 1960s, a revolution took place in the US strategic community: in the wake of the Second World War, systems analysis and operational research on the strategic bombing effort, civilians gained influence on defence policymaking. This was particularly true for nuclear strategy and international crisis management, on which Schelling focused his attention in the 1960s. Earlier, he had worked on the US Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe, while later he would take a great interest in arms control. An advisor to successive UK governments, Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman was only in his early 30s when he published his Evolution of Strategy in 1981, and he was subsequently appointed Head of the then small Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Under Sir Lawrence’s leadership, the Department of War Studies grew to become a centre of excellence of worldwide renown that would educate future military leaders, civil servants, journalists and interested generalists from all parts of the globe.

We’re joined by Emeritus Professor Françoise Le Saux to discuss the unique work of Christine de Pizan. An Italian by origin, de Pizan was charged with writing manuals on good governance and the conduct of war for the medieval French crown prince who became Charles VI. Her main concern in a time of civil and foreign wars was to reduce civilian suffering, and to make the decision to go to war truly a last resort. Exceedingly well-read, building on the writings of Aristotle, Vegetius and the French cleric Honoré Bovet, de Pizan created benchmarks for good governance in peace and conflict. Unusually for her time, she saw insurgencies as functions of poor governance and provided advice on how to govern wisely and justly. She promoted conflict mediation by bringing together princes and experts to listen to disputing parties and identify possible resolutions short of war. If war was nevertheless required, she reiterated rules to prevent the conflict from degenerating into unnecessary destruction. The only known female strategic theorist from the time, and highly regarded by the Dukes of Burgundy Philip the Bold and John the Fearless, she was something like the French Courts, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, and the Institute for Public Policy Research all rolled into one. Professor Françoise Le Saux, our expert consultant on de Pizan, was formerly Professor of French at the University of Reading. She has worked extensively on issues of translation and cultural adaptation in the Middle Ages.

Dr Jeannie Johnson, Director of the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence, discusses Colin S Gray's influential thinking on strategic culture. Gray challenged abstract International Relations theory, emphasizing the importance of understanding an enemy's organizational culture and thinking patterns. Johnson explores the impact of cultural factors on strategic decision-making, the dangers of American self-perception, the importance of a balanced view of American history, and the need for resilience in defense against uncertainty.

Where do Russian military strategists seek their inspiration now that the Soviet authorities are no longer in fashion? In this episode, we will discuss Genrikh Leer and Evgeny Messner, key authors who have now been rediscovered by Russian military strategists. Most of the Russian strategists of the 19th and 20th centuries fell into the ‘Realist’ school of thinking about the world: they saw it as an anarchic system, in which might is right, and where the cost of defeat is devastation. The imperial Russian General of the Infantry Genrikh Antonovich Leer and the Colonel of the Imperial Army and later émigré Evgeny Eduardovich Messner are good examples of the holistic view that to some extent distinguished – and still distinguishes – Russian thinking from the more compartmentalising approach in the West. Dr Ofer Fridman, now a lecturer at King’s College London, came to academia after an active career in the army . His book on what the Russians mean by hybrid war is today the authoritative work on the subject. Of most interest for us today are the excerpts from the works of key Russian imperial and émigré strategists that he has edited in English, called Strategiya.

There is more to military strategist John Boyd than the OODA Loop! This analytical tool of identifying a decision-making cycle – starting with observation, moving on to orientation, then to decision, then to action, to return to observation of what has been achieved by action and what now has to be done – has been exported to many realms of social activity, from the military to grand strategy, industry and economic competition. We are joined by Professor Frans Osinga, originally a fighter pilot, who is an Air Commodore in the Royal Netherlands Air Force and Professor of Military Operational Sciences at the Netherlands Defence Academy, as well as Professor of War Studies at Leiden University. Osinga has written the authoritative biography of John Boyd, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, which has sold 15,000 copies since its publication in 2007. Professor Osinga explains how Boyd took a view of war as a battle between two complex systems in which one side seeks to isolate the other and deny their ability to react. At a tactical level, this gives rise to the OODA loop – for which Boyd is most known – that allowed pilots to think about how to get into the decision-making loop of a hostile pilot with whom one was engaged in a dogfight. But it also translates into an approach in many other domains on how to outsmart an adversary, by manipulating the opponent’s organisational cohesion, the state, the trust between the state and its population, and the cohesion between units prior to actually starting the kinetic parts of war.

Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz created a new way of thinking about war in the West: a study of the phenomenon and its complex social nature, where previous authors had produced prescriptive manuals or homed in on ethics or the laws of war. Thus, Clausewitz is challenging to engage with and richer and rewarding in the insights he provides. Clausewitz can be considered the father of Strategic Studies as a discipline. Occasionally, somebody comes along and pronounces Clausewitz obsolete – to the tremendous relief of students who think that obviates reading the big fat book he left us - On War. But those who have done so have read him narrowly or to have been proved wrong by subsequent evolutions of warfare. The good news for students is that, ironically, On War is easier to read in the modern English translation than in its original obsolescent German, although scholars will argue endlessly over nuance of meaning. Clausewitz’s approach has brought him loyal and prominent followers such as Bernard Brodie and Colin S. Gray in the US, Corbett and Sir Michael Howard in the UK, Svechin in Russia, and Mao in China. In this episode, Beatrice Heuser discusses Clausewitz and his intellectual legacy with Paul O’Neill, Director, Military Sciences, RUSI, homing in on the long-term legacy of this most famous of the “dead Prussians”.