Talking Strategy

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”.

For 3000 years, China’s overall strategy was to defend against invaders from the West and the North, but to turn its back on the Pacific. In the early 1990s, Admiral Liu Huaqing changed this almost overnight. In this episode of Talking Strategy, Professor Christopher Yung will tell us how this has revolutionized China’s grand strategy, and what this new naval orientation means for the rest of the world. America’s performance in the Iraq War of 1991, unchecked by the imploding Soviet Union, led to a profound reassessment in Beijing of China’s strategic interests and position in the world. The Chief of China’s Naval Staff, Admiral Liu Huaqing, advocated a complete turnaround in China’s military posture to take on the world’s only superpower, with a long-term naval armament programme. The progressive realization of a new grand strategy is planned in three steps, involving the assertion of China’s predominance over the three island chains in the Pacific, progressively rolling back the position the US has established here since the mid-19th century. Paul O’Neill and Beatrice Heuser are joined in this episode of Talking Strategy by Christopher Yung who holds the Donald Bren Chair of Non-Western Strategic Thought and is the Director of East Asian Studies at Marine Corps University and author of several books and articles on the expansion of China’s navy and its expansionist naval strategy.

In this episode, we discuss the reign of Leo VI (the Wise), Byzantine emperor and strategist (r. 866–912), with Dr Georgios Chatzelis from the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia (CAS).Leo VI predates the 18th century flourishing of Western thinking about strategy by almost 900 years – although it is the translation of the Greek word strategía in his treatise (confusingly called The Tactic) that became the word ‘strategy’ in modern Western languages. Occupying a unique position between East and West, Leo VI’s empire was shaped by its Roman heritage and the Arab threats it faced. Leo differentiated between tactics, which were about conduct on the battlefield, and strategy, which was about how other skills required of a commander could be combined for defence. Emperor Leo’s book was regarded by Byzantine generals as a sort of law of war. It places war within a political context, describes how wars should be fought – including matters of ethics – and comments on the way the Byzantine Empire’s enemies fought, seeking to ensure that his commanders kept the moral high ground. Therefore, and despite the passing of more than a millennium, Leo’s contribution and understanding of strategy remain recognisable to a modern audience.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars profoundly affected all of Europe and became watersheds in the history of strategy. Until then, French thinking on war had dominated European discourse for a good two centuries, even though the word ‘strategy’ had not yet been imported into European languages from the Greek. Crucial among the French thinkers of this period was Comte de Guibert (1743–1790), who has been called the prophet of the wars of the French Revolution, foreseeing the transformation of war into the people’s cause, rather than merely that of their monarchs. In a republican spirit, Guibert dedicated his first work, the General Essay on Tactics, ‘to my fatherland’ – reason enough to publish it anonymously, even though he noted that the king was part of his fatherland! Guibert – like Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz – changed some of his fundamental views during his lifetime. In his youth, Guibert wrote what would become a bestseller throughout the Western world, in which he made the case for an army of citizen-soldiers who would be unbeatable. However, after fighting in the French conquest of Corsica and then serving in the French War Ministry, he decided that overseas campaigns required a professional army. The arguments he put forward still stand up to scrutiny today. To discuss Guibert and his works, we are joined by Dr Jonathan Abel, Assistant Professor of Military History, US Army Command and General Staff College, the author of Guibert: Father of Napoleon’s Grande Armée (2016) and translator of Guibert’s General Essay on Tactics (2021).

At the turn of the 20th century, Imperial Germany was a dominant force in thinking about military strategy with a focus on land warfare commensurate with its geography. Prussian strategists agreed with most of their French colleagues that war would involve mass armies, and that their strategy had to be offensive. Three Prussian strategists of land warfare were particularly influential in shaping the thinking that guided the Imperial German Army’s conduct in the First World War: Colmar von der Goltz, Alfred von Schlieffen and Friedrich von Bernhardi. Controversial in different ways and rivals with one another, they nevertheless exerted a strong influence on the conduct of land warfare, and on thinking about harnessing society in total war in which anything was permitted (the primordial violence and hatred in Clausewitz’s terms). In this episode of Talking Strategy, Professor Stig Förster from the University of Bern joins hosts Professor Beatrice Heuser and Paul O'Neill. Professor Förster discusses the controversies surrounding the German strategists, the horrors spawned by the ideas of von der Goltz and Bernhardi, and how war does not work to the timetable envisaged by von Schlieffen in his ‘Schlieffen Plan’, which set out how Imperial Germany would fight in the First World War.

Professor Andrew Lambert, the John Knox Lawton Professor of Naval History at King's College London, dives into the world of Sir Julian Corbett, a key figure in maritime strategy before and after WWI. They discuss Corbett's synthesis of naval and land warfare, emphasizing a distinctly British approach to military strategy. Key topics include the importance of maritime blockades, Britain's historical vulnerabilities, and the unique contrasts between Corbett's theories and Clausewitz's battle-centric views. Lambert illustrates Corbett's relevance to modern strategic thought.