Antiquity The principles of military strategy emerged at least as far back as 500 BC in the works of
Sun Tzu and
Chanakya. The campaigns of
Alexander the Great,
Chandragupta Maurya,
Hannibal,
Qin Shi Huang,
Julius Caesar,
Zhuge Liang,
Khalid ibn al-Walid and, in particular,
Cyrus the Great demonstrate strategic planning and movement. Early strategies included the strategy of annihilation, exhaustion,
attrition warfare,
scorched earth action,
blockade,
guerrilla campaign,
deception and
feint. Ingenuity and adeptness were limited only by imagination, accord, and technology. Strategists continually exploited ever-advancing technology. The word "strategy" itself derives from the
Greek "στρατηγία" (
strategia), "office of general, command, generalship", in turn from "στρατηγός" (
strategos), "leader or commander of an army, general", a
compound of "στρατός" (
stratos), "army, host" + "ἀγός" (
agos), "leader, chief", in turn from "ἄγω" (
ago), "to lead".
Middle Ages Through maneuver and continuous assault, Chinese,
Persian,
Arab and
Eastern European armies were stressed by the
Mongols until they collapsed, and were then annihilated in pursuit and encirclement.
Early Modern era In 1520
Niccolò Machiavelli's ''Dell'arte della guerra'' (Art of War) dealt with the relationship between civil and military matters and the formation of grand strategy. In the
Thirty Years' War (1618-1648),
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden demonstrated advanced operational strategy that led to his victories on the soil of the
Holy Roman Empire. It was not until the 18th century that military strategy was subjected to serious study in Europe. The word was first used in German as "
Strategie" in a translation of Leo VI's
Tactica in 1777 by Johann von Bourscheid. From then onwards, the use of the word spread throughout the West.
Napoleonic Waterloo Clausewitz and Jomini Clausewitz's
On War has become a famous reference for strategy, dealing with political, as well as military,
leadership, his most famous assertion being: :"War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of policy by other means." Clausewitz saw war first and foremost as a political act, and thus maintained that the purpose of all strategy was to achieve the political goal that the state was seeking to accomplish. As such, Clausewitz famously argued that war was the "continuation of politics by other means". Clausewitz and Jomini are widely read by US military personnel.
World War I Interwar Technological change had an enormous effect on strategy, but little effect on
leadership. The use of
telegraph and later radio, along with improved
transport, enabled the rapid movement of large numbers of men. One of Germany's key enablers in mobile warfare was the use of radios, where these were put into every tank. However, the number of men that one officer could effectively control had, if anything, declined. The increases in the size of the armies led to an increase in the number of officers. Although the officer ranks in the US Army did swell, in the German army the ratio of officers to total men remained steady.
World War II Interwar Germany had as its main strategic goals the reestablishment of Germany as a European great power and the complete annulment of the
Versailles treaty of 1919. After
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party
took power in 1933, Germany's political goals also included the accumulation of
Lebensraum ("Living space") for the Germanic "race" and the elimination of
communism as a political rival to
Nazism. The destruction of European Jewry, while not strictly a strategic objective, was a political goal of the Nazi regime linked to the vision of a German-dominated Europe, and especially to the
Generalplan Ost for a depopulated east which Germany could colonize.
Cold War Soviet strategy in the Cold War was dominated by the desire to prevent, at all costs, the recurrence of an invasion of Russian soil. The Soviet Union nominally adopted a policy of
no first use, which in fact was a posture of launch on warning. Other than that, the USSR adapted to some degree to the prevailing changes in the NATO strategic policies that are divided by periods as: • Strategy of massive retaliation (1950s) () • Strategy of flexible reaction (1960s) () • Strategies of realistic threat and containment (1970s) () • Strategy of direct confrontation (1980s) () one of the elements of which became the new highly effective high-precision targeting weapons. • Strategic Defense Initiative (also known as "Star Wars") during its 1980s development () which became a core part of the strategic doctrine based on Defense containment. All-out nuclear World War III between NATO and the Warsaw Pact did not take place. The United States recently (April 2010) acknowledged a new approach to its nuclear policy which describes the weapons' purpose as "primarily" or "fundamentally" to deter or respond to a nuclear attack.
Post–Cold War Strategy in the post Cold War is shaped by the global geopolitical situation: a number of potent powers in a
multipolar array which has arguably come to be dominated by the hyperpower status of the United States. Parties to conflict which see themselves as vastly or temporarily inferior may adopt a strategy of
"hunkering down" – witness
Iraq in 1991 or
Yugoslavia in 1999. The major militaries of today are usually built to fight the "last war" (previous war) and hence have huge armored and conventionally configured infantry formations backed up by air forces and navies designed to support or prepare for these forces.
Netwar A main point in asymmetric warfare is the nature of paramilitary organizations such as
Al-Qaeda which are involved in guerrilla military actions but which are not traditional organizations with a central authority defining their military and political strategies. Organizations such as Al-Qaeda may exist as a sparse network of groups lacking central coordination, making them more difficult to confront following standard strategic approaches. This new field of strategic thinking is tackled by what is now defined as
netwar. ==See also==