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H.R. McMaster
To cite this article: H.R. McMaster (2015) The Uncertainties of Strategy, Survival, 57:1, 197-208,
DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2015.1008323
Strategy: A History
Lawrence Freedman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
25.00. 751pp.
H.R. McMaster is IISS Consulting Senior Fellow and a Survival Contributing Editor.
Elements of strategy
Armed with a definition of the core concept and an appreciation for vari-
ables that affect success or failure, readers will be prepared for Freedmans
discussion of strategys elemental factors. Freedman begins as Quincy
Wright began his 1942 magnum opus, A Study of War, with warfare between
animals. His analysis of that topic as well as strategy depicted in the Bible,
John Miltons epic poem Paradise Lost and the writings of ancient Sun Tzu
and Niccol Machiavelli leads him to observe that deception, coalition for-
mation and the instrumental use of violence are features endemic to strategy.
For Freedman the point about Sun Tsu was not that he offered a winning
formula for all situations but that he offered an ideal type of a particular
The Uncertainties of Strategy | 199
need for strategy to be grounded in wars political nature and to regard war
fundamentally as the continuation of policy by other means. A grounding in
clear political objectives is essential if strategy is to impose a semblance of
rationality on war (p. 86). But Freedman also acknowledges wars resistance to
rationality, and its tendency towards uncertainty. Uncertainty in war is based
on interactions between opposing wills that, when combined with violence,
chance and emotion, make the future course of events impossible to predict.
Strategy, therefore, must adapt to changing conditions. His point is consist-
ent with Strachans observation in a 2008 Survival essay that what begins as
one sort of war can turn into another.5 Although Freedmans Clausewitzian
emphasis on politics and uncertainty in war is not novel, his argument is
important because it serves as a corrective to a contemporary failing spe-
cifically, the tendency to assume that enemies and adversaries will cooperate
with plans and thereby ensure linear progress toward strategic objectives.
The book gains contemporary policy relevance in revealing how a neglect
of these factors can undermine both strategy in war and defence planning for
future armed conflict. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, gaps between
prior visions of future warfare and the nature of the eventual wars themselves
complicated efforts to adapt strategy over time. Minimalist, linear plans in
place at the outset of both wars were disconnected from the ambition of
broader policy objectives and the complexity of the operating environment.
Indeed, recent war plans have, at times, been essentially narcissistic, failing
to account for interactions with determined enemies and other complicating
variables. In extreme cases, plans were based on the assumption that a war
would end with the disengagement of one party to the conflict.
Neglecting the political dimension of war ignores the need to consolidate
military gains and reduces war to a targeting exercise. It also undermines
defence planning, building vulnerabilities into future armed forces such
that those forces are unable to either prevent conflict or respond to threats
to national security. As Colin Gray has argued, only after embracing the
political nature of armed conflict as well as the lack of evidence about the
future from the future can planners begin to plan defence intelligently.6 In
short, Freedmans analysis builds on Clausewitzs advice that strategists not
try to turn war into something that is alien to its nature.7
The Uncertainties of Strategy | 201
Since men live on the land and not upon the sea, great issues between
nations at war have always been decided except in the rarest cases
either by what your army can do against your enemys territory and
national life, or else by fear of what the fleet makes possible for your
army to do.
that the weak could adopt against the strong: concentrating on imposing
pain rather than winning battles, gaining time rather than moving to
closure, targeting the enemys domestic political base as much as his
forward military capabilities, and relying on an unwillingness to accept
extreme pain and a weaker stake in the resolution of the conflict. In short,
whereas stronger military powers had a natural preference for decisive
battlefield victories, the weaker were more ready to draw the civilian
sphere into the conflict while avoiding open battle (p. 220).
* * *
Notes
1 Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Press, 2014), p. 191.
Contemporary Strategy in Historical 7 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited
Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge and translated by Michael Howard and
University Press, 2013), p. 28. See also Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Hew Strachan, The Lost Meaning University Press, 1976), p. 89.
of Strategy, Survival, vol. 47, no. 3, 8 Christopher Coker, The Warrior Ethos:
Autumn 2005. Military Culture and the War on Terror
2 Henry Kissinger, World Order: (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 15.
Reflections on the Character of Nations 9 Richard K. Betts, Is Strategy an
and the Course of History (London: Illusion?, International Security, vol.
Penguin, 2014). 25, no. 2, Fall 2000, p. 5.
3 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of 10 Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality
Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British
to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge and American Ideas about Strategic
University Press, 2010), p. 17. Bombing, 19141945 (Princeton, NJ:
4 Tami Davis Biddle, Strategy and Princeton University Press, 2002).
Grand Strategy: What the National 11 Williamson Murray and Macgregor
Security Professional Must Know, Knox (eds), The Dynamics of Military
unpublished paper. Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge:
5 Hew Strachan, Strategy and the Cambridge University Press, 2001),
Limitation of War, Survival, vol. 50, p. 192.
no.1, FebruaryMarch 2008, p. 50. 12 Colin S. Gray, The Strategy Bridge:
6 Colin S. Gray, Strategy and Defense Theory for Practice (Oxford: Oxford
Planning (Oxford: Oxford University University Press, 2010), p. 58.
208 | H.R. McMaster