Description
Successful Strategies is a fascinating new study of the key factors that have contributed to the development and execution of successful strategies throughout history. With a team of leading historians, Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich examine how, and to what effect states, individuals and military organizations have found a solution to complex and seemingly insoluble strategic problems to reach success. Bringing together grand, political and military strategy, the book features thirteen essays which each explores a unique case or aspect of strategy. The focus ranges from individuals such as Themistocles, Bismarck and Roosevelt to organizations and bureaucratic responses. Whether discussing grand strategy in peacetime or that of war or politics, these case studies are unified by their common goal of identifying in each case the key factors that contributed to success as well as providing insights essential to any understanding of the strategic challenges of the future.
Chapter
2 The grand strategy of the Roman Empire
Did Rome have a grand strategy?
Roman grand strategy - an overview
Grand strategy - its practical application
Strategy through the centuries: the first and second centuries
The third century - crisis and recovery
3 Giraldus Cambrensis, Edward I, and the conquest of Wales
The offensives of Henry II
Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) and the strategic problem
Gerald's
plan for the conquest of Wales
Between Gerald and Edward
Prince Edward and Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd
The importance of strategy
4 Creating the British way of war: English strategy in the War of the Spanish Succession
The Williamite strategic revolution
England's
expanding strategic commitments and the making of strategy
Mobilizing allied resources
War exhaustion and a separate peace
5 Failed, broken, or galvanized? Prussia and 1806
Civil and military reform
Reform and state strategy in the age of Metternich
6 Victory by trial and error: Britain's
struggle against Napoleon
British strategic decision making
A most astonishing plan: Buenos Aires, 1806
A long agony: Walcheren, 1809
One supreme blow: Spain, 1813
7 The strategy of Lincoln and Grant
8 Bismarckian strategic policy, 1871-1890
9 Dowding and the British strategy of air defense 1936-1940
Understanding British air defense strategy, 1915-1940
Master narrative: the argument
From Ashmore to Dowding: forging the air defense weapon, 1915-1936
Examination under fire: the long summer, from Dunkirk to the night Blitz
Explaining Dowding's
strategic victory
10 US naval strategy and Japan
The tyranny of distance and war planning
The treaty regime, unintended effects, and the navy
The treaty regime, unintended effects, and the creation of amphibious warfare
War gaming, innovation, and the navy's
culture
The imperatives of innovation: Newport and fleet exercises
The General Board: organizing for war
Putting the bits and pieces together: the making of military strategy in the Pacific
11 US grand strategy in the Second World War
12 American grand strategy and the unfolding of the Cold War 1945-1961
Strategic concepts and strategic assessments
Instruments of power and influence
13 The Reagan administration's strategy toward the Soviet
Union
Understanding the nature of the competition
Developing political objectives
Matching strategy to policy: strategy formulation
Implementing the strategy, 1983-1988