The Making of Strategy
Rulers, States, and War

This volume focuses on the processes by which rulers and states have framed strategy from the fifth century BC to the present.

Williamson Murray (Edited by), Alvin Bernstein (Edited by), MacGregor Knox (Edited by)

9780521566278, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 May 1996

704 pages, 24 maps 3 tables
22.7 x 14.9 x 3.6 cm, 0.925 kg

"The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War offers an important collection of essays which examines the process of strategic decision-making from the Peloponnesian Wars to the nuclear age." The International History Review

Most writing about strategy has focused on individual strategic theorists or great military leaders. This book focuses instead on the messy processes by which rulers and states have framed strategy in the past - a subject of vital practical importance to strategists, and of great interest to students of strategy and statecraft. It consists of 17 case studies that range from fifth-century Athens and Ming China to Hitler's Germany, Israel, and the post-1945 United States. The studies analyse, within a common interpretive framework, precisely how rulers and states have made strategy. The introduction emphasises the constants in the rapidly shifting world of the strategist; the concluding essay tries to understand the forces that have driven the transformation of strategy since 400 BC and seem likely to continue to transform it in the future.

Introduction: on strategy Williamson Murray and Mark Grimsley
1. Athenian strategy in the Peloponnesian War Donald Kagan
2. The strategy of a warrior state: Rome and the wars against Carthage, 264–201 BC Alvin H. Bernstein
3. Chinese strategy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries Arthur Waldron
4. The making of strategy in Habsburg Spain: Philip II's 'bid for mastery', 1556–1598 Geoffrey Parker
5. The origins of a global strategy: England to 1713 William S. Maltby
6. A quest for glory: the formation of strategy under Louis XIV, 1661–1715 John A. Lynn
7. To the edge of greatness: the United States, 1783–1865 Peter Maslowski
8. Strategic uncertainties of a nation state: Prussia-Germany, 1871–1918 Holger H. Herwig
9. The weary titan: strategy and policy in Great Britain, 1890–1918 John Gooch
10. The strategy of the decisive weight: Italy, 1882–1992 Brian R. Sullivan
11. The road to ideological war: Germany, 1918–1945 Wilhelm Deist
12. The collapse of empire: British strategy, 1919–1945 Williamson Murray
13. The strategy of innocence? The United States, 1920–1945 Eliot A. Cohen
14. The illusion of security: France, 1919–1940 Robert A. Doughty
15. Strategy for class war: the Soviet Union, 1917–1941 Earl F. Ziemke
16. The evolution of Israeli strategy: the psychology of insecurity and the quest for absolute security Michael I. Handel
17. Strategy in the Nuclear Age: the United States, 1945–1991 Colin S. Gray
Conclusion: continuity and revolution in the making of strategy MacGregor Knox.

Subject Areas: Defence strategy, planning & research [JWK], General & world history [HBG]