H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 116: Preble on Brands, ed., The New Makers of Modern Strategy32 min read

In the 45^th and final chapter of The New Makers of Modern Strategy, John Lewis Gaddis notes that the first Makers of Modern Strategy “edited by Edward Mead Earle, came out in 1943, two years before the militarily foreseeable end of an era of ‘world’ wars that had begun twenty-nine years earlier. The second, under the editorship of Peter Paret, appeared in 1986, five years before the ideologically unforeseen conclusion of a four-and-a-half-decade ‘cold’ war.” Gaddis continues, “if the pattern holds, it portends a future distinctly dif­ferent, whether for better or for worse, from our own recent past.” And yet, what unites all three volumes is “an aspiration: that the long history of strategy may help us to anticipate what is to come.”^[1]

 

 

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In the 45^th and final chapter of The New Makers of Modern Strategy, John Lewis Gaddis notes that the first Makers of Modern Strategy “edited by Edward Mead Earle, came out in 1943, two years before the militarily foreseeable end of an era of ‘world’ wars that had begun twenty-nine years earlier. The second, under the editorship of Peter Paret, appeared in 1986, five years before the ideologically unforeseen conclusion of a four-and-a-half-decade ‘cold’ war.” Gaddis continues, “if the pattern holds, it portends a future distinctly dif­ferent, whether for better or for worse, from our own recent past.” And yet, what unites all three volumes is “an aspiration: that the long history of strategy may help us to anticipate what is to come.”^[1]

It is a noble and worthwhile undertaking. Editor Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was wise to seize the opportunity to take a fresh look.^[2] Weighing in at 1,184 pages—more than 200 pages longer than the previous edition by Peter Paret,^[3] and more than twice as long the original Makers edited by Edward Mead Earle—the volume covers a lot ground. Nearly half of Brands’s New Makers, for example, deals with the post-World War II period, which Earle could only imagine when he assembled his entries.^[4]

As to be expected in a volume of this scale and scope, there are wide variations both in tone and substance. Some overlap and redundancy between the various chapters is inevitable. The early nineteenth century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz is mentioned at least 50 times, not counting Hew Strachan’s chapter, appropriately titled “The Elusive Meaning and Enduring Relevance of Clausewitz.” Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin both get major parts of two chapters. When considering a volume of 46 chapters (including editor Brands’s introduction) by 46 contributors, a reviewer must pick and choose. This review includes brief commentaries on the most compelling contributions, while also considering the persistent themes or challenges that run throughout the volume, and throughout time: balancing means and ends, and taming ambition and avoiding overreach.

A historian and frequent commentator on contemporary international relations and US foreign policy, Brands argues that an understanding of history is essential to crafting successful strategy (12-13), but he leaves it up to the individual contributors to make the connection. In some instances, the relevance is apparent. Deciding who actually shapes strategy today, and should or will in the future, is, however, ultimately a judgement call. Individual readers will come to different conclusions about which vignettes present transferable lessons.

But all of the chapters must grapple, if even subliminally, with the concept of strategy itself. Sir Lawrence Freedman, the only scholar to have also contributed a chapter in the last Makers, provides a good overview. Strategy, Freedman notes, shifted from being mostly about how to fight and win wars to a much wider consideration of aligning national objectives (ends) with the resources necessary to achieve them (means). This also introduced the distinction between strategy and grand strategy.^[5]

For example, “the British maritime theorist Sir Julian Corbett” saw strategy as “the art of directing forces to the ends in view” whereas “major/grand strategy…involved the ‘whole resources of the nation for war’ and not just armed forces.” Thus “the ends of major or grand strategy were a matter for the statesman while minor strategy was the responsibility of the army and navy” (31). But, over time, strategists came to realize that “warfare had burst out of its boundaries.” The “incentives shifted to limiting wars or avoiding them altogether, and strategy had to adjust accordingly” (39).

All of the chapters must also reckon with the fact that strategy is often contingent on unique geographical, historical, or cultural factors. Mao’s successful strategy in China in the 1940s capitalized on a “multi-generational civil war,” amidst a “regional Sino-Japanese war,” embedded within “a global war,” explains S.C.M. Paine.^[6] But those conditions were unlikely to exist elsewhere. The United States appeared to have secured overwhelmingly decisive military victories in Afghanistan in 2001, and then Iraq in 2003, but its strategy for toppling governments, based on the “information technology revolution in military affairs (IT-RMA)” was ill-suited to deal with the aftermath. Indeed, notes Dmitry Adamsky, “The subsequent counterinsurgency campaigns turned into a fiasco and demonstrated the antithesis—the RMA of the other side.”^[7]

Recognizing strategy’s contingent nature calls for humility, in not drawing overly broad interpretations or misapplying poorly suited analogies to the present or future.^[8] After all, in assessing successful strategists (and strategies), who is to say that their wisdom and sagacity was the decisive element? Maybe they were fortunate to have been opposed by poor strategists on the other side? Or perhaps we should not be too quick to dismiss a strategy merely because it failed, knowing that it might succeed if tried in another place, or at another time?

In his chapter on Clausewitz, Strachan observes, “Clausewitz provides an object lesson on the use and abuse of theory. It should be neither a prescription nor an interpretation into which evidence must be either forced or excluded.” Nevertheless, Strachan continues, theory’s “value is unequivocal” as “a form of a shortcut, because it obviates the need,” as Clausewitz explained “to start afresh each time” and clarifies “concepts and ideas that have become confused and entangled.”^[9] One of the longer chapters, Strachan correctly identifies what matters most—Clausewitz’s emphasis on aligning goals and means.

In the chapter on the Swiss military writer Antoine-Henry Jomini, Antulio Echevarria II notes that some “limited-war theorists argued for rejecting Jomini’s core principles” given that “the Vietnam conflict, following the Jominian core principles yielded, at best, only tactical successes, not strategic ones.”^[10] Might the same be said of the counterinsurgency wars of the post-9/11 era? The mere fact, for example, that Jomini’s “principle of concentration” has “persisted through the ages” (165) does not mean that it should continue to. In an era where the “small, many, and smart” can hold the exquisite and few at risk, is concentration still an asset? Or should modern militaries prize the ability to disperse attritable assets, and avoid decisive battles when possible?^[11]

Alfred Thayer Mahan is another strategist from an earlier era who found his ideas challenged even during his lifetime; they have come under even greater scrutiny since.^[12] John Maurer acknowledges how much has changed, including technology that renders many of Mahan’s key insights inapplicable or even counterproductive. “While read in China,” Maurer laments, that “Mahan is no longer a prophet honored by his own country’s navy.”^[13]A close reading of how Mahan’s ideas fared in practice might reveal why. For Mahan, “concentration of force and offensive action,” Maurer writes, “served as the cardinal strategic principles for the conduct of war at sea.” The object was to “seek out the enemy’s fleets, bring them to battle, and destroy them in decisive action,” which “would typically require taking offensive action into the enemy’s home waters” (180).

But there were critics of such an approach even during Mahan’s time. “Sir Julian Corbett…sought to temper Mahan’s enthusiasm for offensive fleet operations,” cautioning “that strategic context matters and sometimes the risks of aggressive operations could outweigh the rewards” (181). Meanwhile, in France, the thinkers of the Jeune École “put their faith in the lethality of mines, small surface craft and submarines armed with torpedoes, and coastal artillery to execute what is today called an anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) strategy” (183). In the final analysis, “New technologies,” Maurer admits, “did change how war was fought at sea, as the Jeune École predicted” (184), and, since then, “modern weaponry has changed strategic geography and assessments of national power in ways that Mahan could not imagine” (188). In that vein, should US strategists be concerned that Mahan is read widely in modern China? Or pleased that the Chinese might be following a flawed strategic paradigm ill-suited to the present era?

James Lacey’s chapter on Alexander Hamilton, the United States’ first secretary of the treasury, and the importance of sound finance is meant as a celebration of this particular Founding Father’s enduring influence.^[14] A careful read, however, suggests that some of Hamilton’s most important warnings have been ignored in recent times. “A national debt if it is not excessive,” Hamilton predicted, “will be to us a national blessing” and the “cement of our union” (223). It might have been “a blessing” in Hamilton’s time, or in the first 200 years of the Republic’s existence. Today, however, the distinction between how much debt is excessive and how much is merely tolerable has broken down. The amount of debt held by the public now exceeds US GDP; interest payments rose above $1 trillion in 2024.^[15] Undeterred, some strategists today call for multi-trillion dollar increases in US military spending with no politically viable plan for paying for them, a prescription that can only exacerbate the nation’s perilous fiscal standing.^[16] Nevertheless, Lacey maintains that “the essentials of what Hamilton created remain with us, and its impact on strategy in peace and war remains immense.” He continues, “Before the financial revolution, states were always bankrupted long before they ran out of productive capacity or manpower” (238). But that may have been a benefit of the old system, as opposed to the flaw that Lacey suggests. Current US wars last forever and are rarely questioned because the money does not run out (not yet, at least). A bit of fiscal discipline might also discipline US leaders’ strategic thinking.

Charles Edel makes a reasonable case for why the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, should be counted among strategy’s modern makers. By “attempting to translate the Founders’ vision into actual policies that rendered the country not only powerful, but also prosperous and just,” Edel writes, “Adams showed what a democratic strategy could mean, and exposed what challenges it would encounter.”^[17] Edel cites certain founders selectively, however. For example, he quotes Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in Federalist 8, “Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct.” Be that as it may, the Federalists sought to construct a state powerful enough to be able to resist foreign interference or invasion, but not so powerful that it threatened domestic liberties.^[18] James Madison, for example, warned the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that “the means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”^[19] Similarly, George Washington’s Farewell Address advised that the new nation “avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which…are inauspicious to liberty.”^[20]

The modern-day strategic lessons from Margaret MacMillan’s survey of the various actors jockeying for position in Europe prior to the outbreak of World War I are both obvious, and, alas, disconcerting. “The prolonged period of peace in Europe before 1914,” MacMillan writes, “when the military could carry out maneuvers or war games under controlled conditions,…allowed them to minimize the growing difficulties faced by the attack.”^[21] “The very professionalism of general staffs,” she continues, “served to blind them to what Clausewitz called ‘friction’ in actual war: the uncertainty, confusion, accidents, or mistakes, ‘the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult’” (475). In other words, group-think and confirmation bias were hard at work. With a nod to MIT’s Barry Posen and Columbia University’s Jack Snyder, who espied a similar phenomenon,^[22] MacMillan documents how British, French, and Russian military planners adopted offensive strategies—at times actively suppressing contrary evidence that would have recommended a defensive posture instead. One wonders whether strategists are not in a similar situation today.

Robert Kagan allows that “Not many historians or international relations theorists would list [President] Woodrow Wilson as the first grand strategist”^[23] of the early twentieth century—and, in the end, Kagan does not prove that Wilson should be included among the list of grand strategists of the modern era, either. His survey of the relevant history is incomplete and misleading. He claims, for example, that “the ‘Large Policy’ that Massachusetts Senator [Henry Cabot] Lodge and New York politician (later US President) [Theodore] Roosevelt had pursued in 1898 was not a new departure in American imperialism, but rather the fulfillment of nineteenth-century ambitions” (549) and that “few Americans…regarded the acquisition of the Philippines as a significant aberration from America’s general abstention from world affairs” (550). But this ignores the unique coalition that did, in fact, object to Lodge and Roosevelt’s “Large Policy” and US President William McKinley’s annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines. The Anti-Imperialist League, for example, counted among its members many current and former senior government officials, including two former presidents (Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison), leading industrialists like Andrew Carnegie, and writers and intellectuals such as Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce.^[24]

Curiously, Stalin and Mao are among the makers of modern strategy who get parts of two chapters. Stalin’s grand plans, including his disastrous alliance with Hitler’s Germany under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, led to the near-ruin of his country, including a world war which killed an estimated 27 million people living in the Soviet Union. Similarly, Mao deserves some credit for placing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on a sound footing, but at enormous cost. And Mao’s policies once he took power were even more disastrous for the Chinese than Stalin’s were for the Soviets. They were also entirely self-imposed. One wonders what modern-day strategist would willingly follow their ruinous example, though the chapters in this volume might have highlighted how the costs exceeded the benefits as a cautionary tale.

Instead, Brendan Simms’s chapter on Hitler and Stalin focuses mostly on what they achieved, even if only temporarily. For example, he claims that “Stalin was the great victor in Europe in 1945, securing most of the borders he had long sought,” but makes no mention of the price Russia paid.^[25] Perhaps Stalin “won,” but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Related, while Simms notes that “One way or the other, the new Europe—and certainly its eastern half—bore Stalin’s imprint” as “did the post-World War II international system” (633), one might ask how could it not? The Soviet Red Army was responsible for “more than ninety percent of the combat losses inflicted on Germany between June 1941 and June 1944,” notes Tami Davis Biddle in her chapter on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and “strategies of coalition warfare.” “Stalin,” Biddle writes, “believed this sacrifice justified a major voice in the peace.”^[26] And, on balance, “the Anglo-Americans actually got most of what its leaders wanted” at the Yalta conference though, “on the question of Poland’s fate…the result was much less than satisfactory” (590). The results of war rarely are, even for the victors.

In the two chapters on nuclear strategy, Eric Edelman and Francis Gavin both point to Lawrence Freedman’s chapter in the previous edition of Makers.^[27] Calling “the study of nuclear strategy” “the study of the nonuse of these weapons,” Freedman wrote in 1986 that scholars were left to suppose, “about their actual employment in combat” or their possible “peacetime role, but historical experience provides minimal guidance.”^[28] That is still the case, nearly 40 years later, though the risk of nuclear use is ever-present.

Gavin approaches the problem of studying nuclear strategy with a refreshing humility and modesty. “The unique characteristics of nuclear weapons,” Gavin writes, “make both identifying the makers and assessing the content of nuclear strategy far dif­ferent, and more difficult, than other elements of strategy” (695). Would that other thinkers felt the same way. The nuclear weapons states have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and will spend hundreds of billions more, based on the confident predictions of a very small number of “Wizards of Armageddon.”^[29] Much uncertainty remains. “After the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Gavin notes, “the shared sense of responsibility and national interest caused the superpowers to put aside their geopolitical and ideological competition to collude on nuclear nonproliferation” (708). It is unclear that a similar understanding guides the attitudes and behaviors of Chinese and American policymakers today.

Tanvi Madan contributes an important and timely chapter on India and non-alignment, covering a broad sweep of history from the immediate aftermath of World War II to the present day.^[30] Madan explains that Indian non-alignment did not always work, but worked well enough that present-day Indian leaders are likely to keep it. “In 2021,” Madan notes, “the Indian foreign secretary, while not using the term non-alignment, noted that a key pillar of Indian foreign policy has been to maintain ‘comprehensive strategic relations with major powers while maintaining strategic autonomy’” (786). She concludes that “despite the drawbacks of non-alignment and the fact that it was very much a product of its time, its underlying strategy of diversification at least outlasted the Cold War” (787). Indeed, this topic is newly relevant given the rise of the Global South (aka the global majority) which is similarly keen to avoid too close an alignment with either the United States or China.^[31]

In his chapter on the US war in Vietnam, Mark Moyar argues that President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara “made too many decisions without considering the views of the military, and too often ignored the military’s insights.”^[32] Johnson was fearful of war with China and had domestic priorities. Moyar contends that these fears and priorities were misplaced. That is a judgement call, but few argue that the war should have been fought harder, and that domestic concerns should have been shelved in the service of foreign policy. Moyar’s arguments on the importance of the domino theory and on mostly settled debates about the efficacy, to say nothing of the morality, of strategic bombing to inflict pain on civilian populations are unconvincing. His article does not refer to several excellent books pointing to the limits of air power, including in Vietnam.^[33] Moyar similarly leaves undiscussed some of the most important works of the past decade that shed new light on Vietnamese perspectives on the war.^[34]

By contrast, Sergey Radchenko contributes an essential assessment of Soviet grand strategy in the waning days of its crumbling empire. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, Radchenko explains, “for much of the Cold War, the Soviet leaders sought to reach accommodation with the West.”^[35] “Unfortunately for the Soviets,” Radchenko continues, “détente would not—and could not—work.” He argues that “the Soviet-American relationship remained fundamentally competitive,” but not primarily on ideological grounds. Instead, the problem was one of a “rivalry between two centers of power in an essentially hierarchical global order.” Whether “this rivalry [could] have reached an equilibrium,” notes Radchenko, “isn’t simply a matter of historical interest. It has broader relevance for our understanding of strategy and rivalry.” Radchenko drills down on the issues “that can make it difficult for rivals to achieve mutually acceptable terms of coexistence” including differing “perceptions of status,” and the need to reach agreement on “each side’s sphere of legitimate interests.” In addition, an accommodation between two dominant states hinges on the willingness of allies and partners and “entrenched bureaucratic interests” to go along (819). Every one of these factors is at play in the rivalry between the United States and China. This well-written and well-sourced chapters is one of the best in the volume.

Thomas Mahnken explores cost imposition strategies, arguing that “the Anglo-German naval arms race prior to World War I offers an outstanding case study of the strategic use of an arms competition” to achieve a state’s objectives.^[36] Admiral Sir John (“Jackie”) Fisher “sought to control…the competition by continuously increasing the displacement and improving the design of the Royal Navy’s warships through a process he referred to as ‘plunging’” (845). But Mahnken concedes that “All this came at considerable expense….The strategy of plunging saw the British naval budget grow by over twenty-five percent between 1904 and 1914” (846). More to the point, such spending did not prevent—nor was it decisive in enabling Britain to ultimately prevail in—a ruinous war.^[37] In the later context of the Reagan defense buildup of the early 1980s, Mahnken writes that “the United States was able to dictate the scope and pace of the competition to the Soviets, forcing the latter to respond to American moves while also retaining the initiative.” “Such an approach inflicted a variety of costs upon the Soviet Union” (851), though whether those costs were the decisive factor in the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse is a matter of speculation. Cost imposition, however, is usually costly for both sides. Embedded within assessments of the wisdom or folly of such strategies is a debate over whether the diversion of some share of a nation’s economy to defense industry does not come at the expense of a state’s overall economic growth and the well-being of its citizens.^[38] Mahnken’s contribution would have been strengthened by an acknowledgment of these tradeoffs.

In a chapter on US grand strategy after the end of the Cold War, Christopher Griffin contends that it “was, in many respects, remarkably successful.”^[39] He notes, however, that it “fell short” “in two critical regards”: First, it suffered from “a strategy-resources mismatch during the relatively peaceful 1990s that metastasized into a dangerous strategic insolvency as new threats emerged,” and, “Second, the US approach did not grapple with the inevitability that the unipolar moment would end” (870). The warning signs were building soon after the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Following, the “swift and surprising success in Afghanistan,” Griffin writes, “where a combination of US special operations forces, rebel fighters, and precision airstrikes routed the Taliban from all major cities by early December 2001,” President George W. “Bush used a series of speeches to explore the larger meaning of the global war on terror,” but in ways that that “would both reflect and extend strategic concepts expressed by previous administrations” (884). Griffin notes that “the Afghan conflict suggested that it might be possible to achieve similar success without [a] large-scale commitment of troops,” but, he admits, “The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 put these hopes to the test” (886).

This merits more than a paragraph. For one thing, the US victory in Afghanistan was less complete than it appeared at first glance.^[40] But there were ample reasons for doubting that the Iraq invasion would go as easily, and not just with the benefit of hindsight. Critics at the time noted these concerns and were mostly ignored.^[41] In the end, Griffin concludes that “the Bush strategy ultimately revealed the limitations of American power” (888). Griffin also acknowledges that “the reemergence of great power competition marked the conclusion of the unipolar moment” (893), which necessitates a strategic rethink. “In the unipolar era,” he explains, “the persistent gap between America’s strategy and its resources had been problematic but manageable. In the far more contested world that emerged as that era ended, strategic insolvency threatened to carry a far higher price” (894).

Carter Malkasian’s chapter on counterinsurgency (COIN) correctly fixes on its limitations: the high costs relative to the expected gains.^[42] That is precisely what President Barack Obama did upon assuming the presidency in January 2009. He approved sending 21,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan, but paused before sending more. “On a trip to Afghanistan shortly before the election,” Malkasian writes, “Obama had told [US General David Petraeus, a leading COIN advocate within the US Army] that it is ‘the job of the president to think broadly, not narrowly, and to weigh the costs and benefits of military action against everything else that went into making the country strong.’ In the big picture,” Malkasian observes, “foreign policy was secondary to domestic policy” (928).

War advocates often assumed that their preferred strategy would be adequately resourced, and often counseled that US leaders should send “more troops.”^[43] Political leaders had other ideas about what adequate entailed, and, in the end, they decided to cut their losses. In a different context, Moyar castigates Lyndon Johnson for trying to limit the Vietnam War. By contrast, Malkasian faults COIN advocates for thinking there were no limits. For the sake of crafting a coherent strategy that can properly align ends and means, to say nothing of modern principles of civilian control over the military, Malkasian gets this right.

Joshua Rovner contributes an excellent chapter on how the opening-up of new warfighting domains invites competition, but shows how dreams of dramatic breakthroughs that will deliver a decisive advantage are almost always dashed.^[44] For example, in the naval domain, “The ability to operate and fight at great distances encouraged dreams of massive fleet-on-fleet engagements with clear results, but…Important battles usually occurred within sight of shore, and the outcomes were rarely decisive” (1072). Technological advancements like steam power and wireless communication helped solve some problems, but created new ones. “Increasingly sophisticated warships,” Rovner notes, “the kind that might deliver on promises of decisive battles—were also increasingly expensive. This created a kind of paradox: the technologically advanced ships required to overcome the inherent constraints of the sea were too precious to risk” (1073).

A similar pattern played out in the air. Early efforts to exploit this domain were based on early twentieth-century Italian air power enthusiast Giulio Douhet’s assertion that “Nothing man can do on the surface of the earth can interfere with a plane in flight” (1073). “But the experience of the Second World War,” Rovner notes, “did not live up to expectations. Technology limitations and motivated defenders combined to limit the effectiveness of air campaigns. Hopes of rapid victory were replaced by grinding operations in which aircrews were often at greater risk than their targets” (1074).^[45] Plans to exploit cyberspace for decisive advantage have followed “the familiar pattern of hope, fear, and resignation” (1077). Rovner predicts that “hope, fear, and resignation also describe the evolution of grand strategic thinking” when it comes to the possible exploitation of new domains (1081). In other words, the tendency to imagine great strategic breakthroughs must confront messy reality. Clausewitz—who famously spoke of friction, and of how, “everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult”—would understand.^[46]

In the final chapter of the volume, John Lewis Gaddis sets out standards for strategic success or failure. These include maintaining credibility, while avoiding “credibility creep”—“the slow broadening of what’s seen to be necessary to make commitments believable” (1127). “When whatever might happen becomes a test of credibility,” Gaddis notes, “then capabilities must become infinite, or bluffs must become routine. Neither is sustainable” (1128).^[47] To guard against this, Gaddis recommends “self-correction” and “stabilization,” which amounts to finding the middle path between doing too much and too little (1128). Gaddis suggests that this middle ground can be found “with the passage of time” and by avoiding unnecessary haste. He also urges diversity and toleration. “Builders of empires lacked the administrative and military means to impose uniformity in all their territories,” he writes, and “diversity offered an alternative,” employing different means of control as the circumstances warranted. “Toleration, in these instances, became co-optation, a means of retaining power. Withdrawals of toleration, as in North America, could lead to revolutionary resistance” (1129). What this boils down to, he concludes, is in “making balances of power themselves objectives of strategy” (1129).

It is sound advice; strategy must seek balance.

 

Christopher Preble is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. His work focuses on the history of US foreign policy, contemporary US grand strategy and military force posture, and the intersection of trade and national security. He is the founding co-host of the “Net Assessment” podcast on the War on the Rocks network. Preble is the author of four books, including Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding US Foreign Policy (Cato Institute, 2019); and The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Cornell University Press, 2009).

[1] John Lewis Gaddis, “Grammar, Logic, and Grant Strategy,” in Hal Brands, ed., The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age [hereafter NMMS] (Princeton University Press, 2023): 1119-1140, 1119.

[2] Hal Brands, “Introduction,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 1-13.

[3] Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton University Press, 1986).

[4] Edward Mead Earle, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton University Press, 1943).

[5] Lawrence Freedman, “Strategy: The History of an Idea,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 17-40.

[6] S.C.M. Paine, “Mao Zedong and Strategies of Nested Warfare,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 638-662. See also Stuart R. Schram, ed., Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912–1949, vol. 2 (Sharpe, 1994).

[7] Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky, “The Two Marshals: Nikolai Orgakov, Andrew Marshall, and the Revolution in Military Affairs,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 895-917, 902, fn18.

[8] This is always good advice. History can misinform as easily as it informs, a point made most eloquently by Margaret McMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (Modern Library, 2009); Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (Free Press, 1986); and Ernest R. May, “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 1973).

[9] Hew Strachan, “The Elusive Meaning and Enduring Relevance of Clausewitz,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 116-144, 141. On Clausewitz, see also Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State (Clarendon Press, 1976); Paret, Essays on Clausewitz and the History of Military Power (Princeton University Press, 1992); and Michael Howard, ed., Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002).

[10] Antulio Echevarria II, “Jomini, Modern War, and Strategy: The Triumph of the Essential,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 145-168, 166.

[11] See T.X. Hammes, “The Future of Warfare: Small, Many, Smart vs. Few & Exquisite,” War on the Rocks, 16 July 2014.

[12] Mahan’s best-known work is The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Little Brown, 1890). For an accessible collection of Mahan’s writings, see John B. Hattendorf, ed., Mahan on Naval Strategy (Naval Institute Press, 1991).

[13] John H. Maurer, “Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Strategy of Sea Power,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 169-192, 192.

[14] James Lacey, “Alexander Hamilton and the Financial Sinews of Strategy,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 218-240.

[15] Jeff Cox, “Interest Payments on the National Debt Top $1 Trillion as Deficit Swells,” CNBC, 12 September 2024, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/12/interest-payments-on-the-national-debt-top-1-trillion-as-deficit-swells.html.

[16] See, for example, “Report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy,” 29 July 2024, Rand Corporation; and Sen. Roger Wicker, “21^st Century Peace through Strength: A Generational Investment in the US Military,” 29 May 2024, https://www.wicker.senate.gov/services/files/BC957888-0A93-432F-A49E-6202768A9CE0. For critiques, see Jennifer Kavanagh, “American Will Be More Secure If It Does Less,” Breaking Defense, 14 August 2024, https://breakingdefense.com/2024/08/america-will-be-more-secure-if-it-does-less/; and William Hartung, “New Strategy Commission Reflects Conflicts-of-Interest and Outmoded Thinking,” Forbes, 30 July 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2024/07/30/new-strategy-commission-reflects-conflicts-of-interest-and-outmoded-thinking/.

[17] Charles Edel, “John Quincy Adams and the Challenges of a Democratic Strategy,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 344-368, 348.

[18] Christopher Preble, “The Founders, Executive Power, and Military Intervention,” Pace Law Review 30:2 (Winter 2010): 688-719; Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State (Free Press, 1994): 243-254; and Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776 (Houghton Mifflin, 1997): 26-28.

[19] James Madison, “Madison Debates,” 29 June 1787, Yale Law School’s Avalon

Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_629.asp.

[20] George Washington, “Washington’s Farewell Address,” 17 September 1796, Yale Law

School’s Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp.

[21] Margaret MacMillan, “Strategy, War Plans, and the First World War,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 471-494, 475.

[22] See Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Conduct: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Cornell University Press, 1984); and Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Cornell University Press, 1989).

[23] Robert Kagan, “Woodrow Wilson and the Rise of Modern American Grand Strategy,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 545-568, 545.

[24] On the anti-imperial movement, see Robert Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (McGraw-Hill, 1968); Stephen Kinzer, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire (Henry Holt, 2017); and David Mayers, Dissenting Voices in America’s Rise to Power (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

[25] Brendan Simms, “Strategies of Geopolitical Revolution: Hitler and Stalin,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 616-637,

[26] Tami Davis Biddle, “Democratic Leaders and Strategies of Coalition Warfare: Churchill and Roosevelt in World War II,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 569-592, 589.

[27] Eric Edelman, “Nuclear Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Great Divergence,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 665-691; Francis J. Gavin, “The Elusive Nature of Nuclear Strategy,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 692-716.

[28] Lawrence Freedman, “The First Two Generations of Nuclear Strategists,” in Paret ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, 735.

[29] On the history of the development of nuclear weapons and doctrine, see Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Simon and Schuster, 1983). On US plans for modernizing and expanding the nuclear arsenal, see Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2023–2032, Congressional Budget Office, July 2023; and Geoff Wilson, “America’s Nuclear Weapons Quagmire,” Stimson Center, 7 August, 2024, https://www.stimson.org/2024/americas-nuclear-weapons-quagmire/. For a chilling and realistic account of the implications for continued nuclear weapons development, see Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario (Dutton, 2024).

[30] Tanvi Madan, “Nehru and the Strategy of Non-Alignment,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 765-788.

[31] Brands expressed doubts about the Global South’s demands for recognition, claiming that the countries belonging to this loose agglomeration owed “America some thanks.” Hal Brands, “The Global South Owes America Some Thanks,” Bloomberg, 27 April 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-27/the-global-south-owes-america-some-thanks. For a response, see Aude Darnal, “The US Is Asking the Wrong Questions about the Global South,” World Politics Review, 24 May 2023, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/foreign-policy-us-diplomacy-multilateralism-global-south-biden/.

[32] Mark Moyar, “Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara: Theory Over History and Expertise,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 789-816, 790.

[33] See, for example, Robert Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell University Press, 1996); and Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (Bison Books, 2006).

[34] See, for example, Pierre Asselin, Vietnam’s American War: A New History (Cambridge University Press, 2024); and Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (University of California Press, 2013); Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (University of North Carolina Press, 2012); and Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Harvard University Press, 2013).

[35] Sergey Radchenko, “Strategies of Détente and Competition: Brezhnev and Moscow’s Cold War,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 817-840, 817.

[36] Thomas G. Mahnken, “Arms Competition, Arms Control, and Strategies of Peacetime Competition from Fisher to Reagan,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 841-865, 844.

[37] See, for example, Christopher M. Bell, “Contested Waters: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era,” War in History 23:1 (2016): 115-126. On how World War I devastated Britain’s economy, see Nicholas Crafts, “Walking Wounded: The British Economy in the Aftermath of World War I,” Centre for Economic Policy Research, 27 August 2014.

[38] See, for example, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, “War Spending and Lost Opportunities,” Costs of War Project, Watson Institute, Brown University, 14 March 2019; Giorgio d’Agostino, John Dunne, and Luca Pieroni, “Does Military Spending Matter for Long Run Growth?” Defense and Peace Economics 28:4 (2017): 429-436; and Economic Consequences of War on the U.S. Economy (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2011).

[39] Christopher J. Griffin, “Dilemmas of Dominance: American Strategy from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 869-894, 870.

[40] By refusing to consider Taliban offers of surrender, the Bush administration set the stage for a twenty-year-long war. See Michael A. Cohen, Christopher Preble, and Monica Duffy Toft, “America’s Missed Chance in Afghanistan,” Foreign Affairs, 15 August 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-missed-chance-afghanistan.

[41] See, for example, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy, January-February 2003; Jeffrey Record, “The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq,” Parameters, Spring 2003; and “War with Iraq Is Not in America’s National Interest,” The New York Times, 26 September 2002.

[42] Carter Malkasian, “Strategies of Counterinsurgency and Counter-Terrorism after 9/11,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 918-945. See also the US Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (University of Chicago, 2007); and John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (University of Chicago Press, 2005). On the debate within the US military over the widescale adoption of COIN doctrine, see Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (Simon and Schuster, 2014). For a critique of COIN doctrine, see Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn: America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency (New Press, 2013).

[43] Robert Kagan, “Why Iraq Needs More U.S. Troops,” The Washington Post, 1 September 2003; Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol, “More Troops,” The Weekly Standard, 2 October 2006; and Frederick W. Kagan, “The U.S. Military Needs to Invest in Troops, not Technology,” The Washington Post, 26 January 2012.

[44] Joshua Rovner, “Strategy and Grand Strategy in New Domains,” in Brands, ed., NMMS: 1067-1091.

[45] According to Col. Maximilian K. Bremer, USAF, and Kelly Grieco, the notion that the air domain is uniquely suited for offense has always been a myth. See “Assumption Testing: Airpower Is Inherently Offensive,” Stimson Center, 23 January 2023, https://www.stimson.org/2023/assumption-testing-is-airpower-inherently-offensive/.

[46] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. (Princeton University Press, 1989), 119.

[47] See also Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Cornell University Press, 2005); and Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Cornell University Press, 2010).