Recommended: On Grand Strategy

Back in February I recommend Paul Kennedy’s book Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War, and I pointed out that besides introducing us to the engineers who helped win World War II, it also taught the reader a great deal about grand strategy, and about the issues strategists need to deal with. Kennedy co-teaches a course on Grand Strategy at Yale with several other people, one of whom is John Lewis Gaddis, Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale.

Gaddis has just published a new book On Grand Strategy, which is a distillation of his work in the course over many years, and it is well worth reading.  It deals with grand strategy by examining historical conflicts, beginning with the Persian wars with the Greek city states, and with the conflicts between Athens and Sparta, and moving on to the maneuvering between England’s Elizabeth I and Philip II of Spain (she provides examples of  good strategy and he provides examples of flawed strategy), and the American Civil war. The lessons about strategy from these historical events are as applicable today as they were back then.

This is a book well worth reading.