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The Shaping of Grand Strategy Policy Diplomacy and
War 1st Edition Williamson Murray Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Williamson Murray, Richard Hart Sinnreich, James Lacey
ISBN(s): 9780521761260, 0521761263
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 1.24 MB
Year: 2011
Language: english
This page intentionally left blank
 The shaping of grand strategy

Within a variety of historical contexts, The Shaping of Grand Strategy addresses the
most important tasks that states have confronted – namely, how to protect their citizens
against the short-range as well as the long-range dangers their polities confront in the
present and may confront in the future. To be successful, grand strategy demands that
governments and leaders chart a course that involves more than simply reacting to
immediate events. Above all, it demands that they adapt to sudden and major changes
in the international environment, which more often than not involve the outbreak
of great conflicts but at times demand recognition of major economic, political, or
diplomatic changes. This collection of essays explores the successes and failures of
great states attempting to create grand strategies that work and aims to achieve an
understanding of some of the extraordinary difficulties involved in casting, evolving,
and adapting grand strategy to the realities of the world.

Williamson Murray is Professor Emeritus of History at The Ohio State University. He

has been the Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, Secre-
tary of the Navy Fellow at the Navy War College, Horner Professor of Military Theory
at the Marine Corps University, and Harold Johnson Professor of Military History
at the Army War College. At present he is a defense consultant and commentator on
historical and military subjects in Washington, D.C. Murray is coeditor of The Making
of Peace (2009, with James Lacey); The Past as Prologue (2006, with Richard Hart
Sinnreich); The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (2001, with MacGregor
Knox); Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (1998, with Allan R. Millett); and
The Making of Strategy (1996, with Alvin Bernstein and MacGregor Knox).

Richard Hart Sinnreich retired from the U.S. Army in 1990. His active service included
field artillery commands from battery through division artillery; combat in Vietnam;
teaching at West Point and Fort Leavenworth; and assignments on the Army, Joint,
and National Security Council staffs as assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander
Europe and as the first Army Fellow of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. He helped establish and subsequently directed the Army’s School of Advanced
Military Studies and has published widely on military and foreign affairs. Since retiring
from the Army, he has worked as an independent defense consultant for both private
industry and government agencies and as the regular defense columnist for the Sunday
Constitution in Lawton, Oklahoma.

James Lacey has served for more than twelve years as an infantry officer on active
duty and is recently retired from the Army reserves. He is a widely published analyst
and Professor of Strategy at the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Virginia. He
has written several works on the war in Iraq and the global war on terrorism. He also
teaches graduate-level courses in military history and global issues at Johns Hopkins
University. Lacey was an embedded journalist with Time magazine during the Iraq
invasion, traveling with the 101st Airborne Division. He has written extensively for
many magazines, and his opinion columns have been published in the National Review,
The Weekly Standard, The New York Post, the New York Sun, Foreign Affairs, and
many other publications. He is the author of Takedown: The 3rd Infantry Division’s
21-Day Assault on Baghdad (2007), which has been hailed as “a major and successful
effort to fill in one of the major blank spots in our knowledge of Operation Iraqi
Freedom”; Pershing (2008); and Keep from All Thoughtful Men (forthcoming). He is
coeditor of The Making of Peace (2009).
The shaping of grand strategy
Policy, diplomacy, and war

Edited by
WILLIAMSON MURRAY
Ohio State University, Emeritus

RICHARD HART SINNREICH

Independent Scholar

JAMES LACEY
Marine Corps War College
 cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521156332


C Cambridge University Press 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2011

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

The shaping of grand strategy : policy, diplomacy, and war / edited by Williamson Murray,
Richard Hart Sinnreich, James Lacey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-76126-0 (Hardback)
1. World politics – 18th century. 2. World politics – 19th century. 3. World politics –
20th century. 4. Strategy – History – 18th century. 5. Strategy – History – 19th century.
6. Strategy – History – 20th century. 7. Strategic culture – Case studies. I. Murray,
Williamson. II. Sinnreich, Richard Hart. III. Lacey, Jim, 1958–
d217.s44 2011
327.1–dc22 2010037125

isbn 978-0-521-76126-0 Hardback

isbn 978-0-521-15633-2 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for
external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

Contributors page ix

1 Thoughts on grand strategy 1

Williamson Murray
2 The grand strategy of the grand siècle: Learning from the wars
of Louis XIV 34
John A. Lynn II
3 Strategic culture and the Seven Years’ War 63
Jeremy Black
4 Strategy as character: Bismarck and the Prusso-German
question, 1862–1878 79
Marcus Jones
5 About turn: British strategic transformation from Salisbury
to Grey 111
Richard Hart Sinnreich
6 British grand strategy, 1933–1942 147
Williamson Murray
7 Toward a strategy: Creating an American strategy for global
war, 1940–1943 182
James Lacey
8 Harry S. Truman and the forming of American grand strategy
in the Cold War, 1945–1953 210
Colin S. Gray

vii
viii Contents
9 Patterns of grand strategy 254
Richard Hart Sinnreich

Index 271
 Contributors

Jeremy Black John A. Lynn II

University of Exeter Northwestern University
Colin S. Gray
University of Reading Williamson Murray
Ohio State University,
Marcus Jones Emeritus
U.S. Naval Academy
James Lacey Richard Hart Sinnreich
Marine Corps War College Independent Scholar

ix
 1

Thoughts on grand strategy

williamson murray

What keeps big systems integrated? Can they go on getting bigger and bigger?
How much do communications media matter? How far can globalization go?
How does systems-failure begin to appear? From the reign of Hadrian, the
Roman empire, gigantic system that it was, stopped getting bigger, more inte-
grated, more complicated, stopped providing so many opportunities, stopped
improving the possibilities of change and innovation. Maybe it was enough
that the positive trends faltered; maybe they started to go into reverse. No one
noticed for generations, but the pace and nature of change had altered for ever.
The big labels, Greek, Roman, Christian, remained but concealed increasing
chaos.1

We might begin our examination of the issues involved in grand strategy

with an effort to describe what we mean by the term. Over the centuries,
some governments and their leaders have attempted to chart a course for
their nations that has involved more than simply reacting to the course of
events. In most cases they have confronted sudden and major changes in
the international environment, often resulting from the outbreak of great
conflicts, but at times involving economic, strategic, or political alterations
that threaten the stability or even existence of their polities.
Yet, grand strategy is a matter involving great states and great states alone.
No small states and few medium-size states possess the possibility of crafting
a grand strategy. For the most part, their circumstances condemn them to
suffer what Athenian negotiators suggested to their Melian counterparts in
416 bc about the nature of international relations: “The standard of justice
depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do

1 Danny Danziger and Nicholas Purcell, Hadrian’s Empire: When Rome Ruled the World
(London, 2005), pp. 287–288.

1
2 Williamson Murray
what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to
accept.”2
But if great states have choices that their smaller cousins do not, then
the concomitant burden they must bear is what one might best describe as
overstretch. Quite simply, overstretch is an inevitable part of the landscape
in which great states exist. They have no other avenue but to address a wide
variety of vital interests in the economic, political, and military spheres,
some of which are contradictory by their nature and demands. Those vital
interests will inevitably present threats either in the immediate present or to
the state’s long-term survival. General James Wolfe, victor on the Plains of
Abraham before Quebec City in 1759, described conflict best with the short
aphorism “War is an option of difficulties.”3
The same is even truer for grand strategy. In a world where great states
confront overstretch, they must make hard choices. Thus, in the end, grand
strategy is more often than not about the ability to adjust to the reality
that resources, will, and interests inevitably find themselves out of balance
in some areas. Strategy is about balancing risks. But above all, it is about
insuring that the balance is right in those areas that matter most. And in times
of great stress, it is also about adapting national focus on the international
environment to those areas of overstretch that threaten the polity to the
greatest extent.
What distinguishes leaders who have attempted to develop and execute a
grand strategy is their focus on acting beyond the demands of the present.
In other words, they have taken a longer view than simply reacting to the
events of the day. Nor have they concentrated on only one aspect of the
problem. Instead, in times of war, while they may have focused on the great
issue confronting them, such as Lincoln’s effort to maintain the Union in the
great Civil War that enveloped North America, that vision has recognized
the political, economic, and diplomatic framework within which the conflict
was taking place.4
There is, one must admit, considerable confusion of grand strategy with
policy, military strategy, and strategies to achieve this or that specific goal.

2 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (London, 1954), p. 402.
There are two exceptions to the rule. Both the Swiss and the Finns were able to exercise
a certain independence that allowed them to maintain a grand strategic framework: the
former by balancing great powers off against each other; the latter, by creating the distinct
impression in the minds of the Soviets that they were willing to fight to the last man and
woman in defense of their independence.
3 Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British
North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000).
4 Thus, in discussing the goal of his grand strategy (namely, the preservation of the Union,
as he was about to issue the Emancipation Proclamation), Lincoln commented, “If I could
save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could do it by freeing all
the slaves I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone I
would also do that.” Quoted in Stephen W. Sears, The Landscape Turned Red: The Battle
of Antietam (New York, 1983), p. 166.
 Thoughts on grand strategy 3
Grand strategy is none of these, but to one extent or another, it consists of all
of them. It demands a recognition of and ability to react to the ever-shifting
environments of war and peace. Thus, the day-to-day decision making that
drives policy making must be involved in the execution of grand strategy. The
latter will envelop military strategy and diplomatic strategy. Nor must grand
strategy ignore the other issues that invariably confront leaders who are in a
position to develop and execute it. However, it also demands that statesmen
encompass within their view of the larger goal the pieces of bureaucratic
decision making, policy, and specific strategic approaches. Thus, those who
develop a successful grand strategy never lose sight of the long-term goal,
whatever that may be, but are willing to adapt to the difficulties of the
present in reaching toward the future. Above all, at the same time that they
have maintained a vision focused on the possibilities of the future, they have
adapted to the realities of the present.
Those who are interested in the subject of grand strategy must understand
that much of the flesh and muscle that went into its creation and maintenance
in its various forms is lost to the pages of history. To a considerable extent,
the past remains an unrecoverable land, where time has muted or obscured
the relationships, hatreds, and calculations of those who made decisions.
As one of the leading historians of the rise of Britain to mastery over the
world’s oceans has noted about the creation of Britain’s strategy during the
War of Spanish Succession:

[The proximity of the major military and political players in London during
the winter when strategy was made] makes the process of strategic formu-
lation almost unrecoverable for the historian, at least in its more interesting
aspects. Parliamentary debates and gossip remain, but thousands of other
informal discussions in saloons, taverns, dinner parties, balls, and random
encounters are lost. Unofficial correspondence exists only when key figures
retreated to their country estates or were otherwise absent, and official doc-
uments tend to reflect decisions rather than the processes that created them.
The compromises, trade-offs, and private deals characteristic of advanced
systems of clientage are often lost to recorded memory. Decisions were usu-
ally compromises, and those who dissented could only grumble and criticize
until victory dismissed their complaints or misfortune made them next year’s
policy.5

In fact, those who have developed successful grand strategies in the past
have been much the exception. The affairs of man as recorded by historians
seem nothing more than one long catalogue of crimes, follies, and egregious

5 William S. Maltby, “The Origins of a Global Strategy: England from 1558 to 1713,” in
Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein, eds., The Making of Strategy,
Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge, 1992), p. 163.
4 Williamson Murray
errors.6 Wars begun with little or no thought of their consequences, assump-
tions unchallenged in the face of harsh reality, the possibility of second- or
third-order effects casually dismissed with the shrug of a shoulder, and idle
ignorance substituted for serious considerations have bedeviled the actions
of statesmen and generals over the course of recorded history. During much
of the past, a strategic framework, much less a grand strategy, has rarely
guided those responsible for the long-term survival of polities either in a
political or military sense.
And so the inevitable question that should concern American policy mak-
ers and military leaders – much less the polity as a whole – is simply put:
is there even the possibility of charting a grand strategy for a United States
that at present confronts monumental challenges to its security?7 Is there
a strategic path that would protect the United States, its interests, and its
values more effectively than simply reacting to the next great crisis? If so,
what does history suggest about how those few in the past who have done
so have thought clearly and coherently in setting out a course to the future?
In other words, how have first-rate statesmen and their military and diplo-
matic advisers developed effective approaches to grand strategy in meeting
the demands of the present as well as those of the future?
The history of the past century certainly underlines the importance of a
coherent approach to grand strategy, one that is flexible, realistic, and above
all connects means to ends. It warns, however, that this has rarely been the
case. In an article examining military effectiveness and the impact – or lack
thereof – of a coherent strategic approach over the years from 1914 to 1945,
this author and his colleague Allan Millett argued:

No amount of operational virtuosity . . . redeemed fundamental flaws in polit-

ical judgment. Whether policy shaped strategy or strategic imperatives drove
policy was irrelevant. Miscalculation in both led to defeat, and any combina-
tion of politico-strategic error had disastrous results, even for some nations
that ended the war as members of the victorious coalition. Even the effective
mobilization of national will, manpower, industrial might, national wealth, and
technological know-how did not save the belligerents from reaping the bitter
fruit of severe mistakes [at this level]. This is because it is more important to
make correct decisions at the political and strategic level than it is at the oper-
ational and tactical level. Mistakes in operations and tactics can be corrected,
but political and strategic mistakes live forever.8

6 The title of Barbara Tuchman’s book, The March of Folly, encapsulates much of mankind’s
historical record.
7 For a general examination of strategy as a process over the course of human history, see
Murray et al., The Making of Strategy.
8 Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, “Lessons of War,” The National Interest, Winter
1988–1989.
 Thoughts on grand strategy 5

understanding grand strategy

No simple, clear definition of grand strategy can ever be fully satisfactory.
The closer one comes to understanding what it entails, the more one sees how
complex and uncertain in historical terms are the aspects that encompass its
making and use. One might adapt a comment by Clausewitz to our purpose
of developing a theoretical understanding of grand strategy:

The second way out of this difficulty is to argue that a theory need not be a
positive doctrine, a sort of manual for action. . . . It is an analytical investigation
leading to a close acquaintance with the subject; applied to experience – in our
case [strategy] – it leads to thorough familiarity with it. The closer it comes
to that goal, the more it proceeds from the objective form of a science to the
subjective form of a skill.9

Grand strategy involves some willingness and ability to think about the
future in terms of the goals of a political entity. Yet, those who have been
most successful at its practice have also recognized that the “future is not
foreseeable” and consequently have been willing to adapt to political, eco-
nomic, and military conditions as they are rather than as they wish them to
be. Above all, grand strategy demands an intertwining of political, social,
and economic realities with military power as well as a recognition that pol-
itics must, in nearly all cases, drive military necessity.10 It must also rest on a
realistic assessment and understanding not only of one’s opponents but also
of oneself.11 There is rarely clarity in the effective casting of grand strategy
because, by its nature, it exists in an environment of constant change, where
chance and the unexpected are inherent.12 Thus, simply thinking about
developing a concept of grand strategy demands not only a deep under-
standing of the past but also a comprehensive and realistic understanding of
the present.

9 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton,
NJ, 1976), p. 163.
10 The German military in the First World War consistently rejected strategic and political
concerns in what its leaders consistently posited as “military necessity” – a concept they
used to override all political and strategic concerns. In this regard, see Isabel V. Hull,
Absolute Destruction, Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany
(Ithaca, NY, 2005).
11 Sun Tzu’s most justly famous aphorism is that “if you know the enemy and you know
yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War,
trans. and ed. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford, 1963), p. 84.
12 One of the most important contributions to our understanding of international relations,
diplomatic and strategic history, and the conduct of war has been the impact of non-
linearity. For its implications for history and political science, see John Lewis Gaddis,
“International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War,” International Security 17,
no. 3, Winter 1992/93.
6 Williamson Murray
Grand strategy may be as concerned with avoiding war as with fighting
it, although there are times when there is no alternative to conflict.13 War
avoidance was certainly a basic principle of Byzantium’s approach to grand
strategy, at least from the death of Justinian in 565 ad.14 Thus, one should
not assume that grand strategy is only a matter of war; some of the greatest
successes of grand strategy have been wars not fought, the most obvious
of which was the Cold War.15 Moreover, miscalculations of grand strategy
in peacetime, such as Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and its
execution, can lead to catastrophic results not only in peace but in the initial
conduct of military operations, although the latter, not surprisingly, are far
easier to see with historical perspective than the former.16
History is essential to any understanding of the present; only the past
can clarify and elucidate the factors, trends, and political and economic
frameworks that have made the present and will certainly drive the future.
Moreover, grand strategy demands a recognition of unpleasant realities and
a willingness to challenge one’s own assumptions and the myths and truisms
of one’s own culture – normally not characteristics of the human race in
general or of its political or military leaders in particular, who generally
prefer pleasant and comfortable illusions to the stark truths of reality.
Given their importance, one might suppose that grand strategy and strat-
egy would be the subjects of innumerable books and studies. In fact, they
have not been. The greatest book on war, Thucydides’ History of the Pelo-
ponnesian War, presents a deep and thorough examination of grand strategy,
among a number of other crucial issues.17 However, the Western historical
canon is largely silent on the subject until Machiavelli, and even he is largely
focused on stratagems for the individual ruler to follow in the pursuit of
internal and external power. Jomini concerns himself mostly with the geom-
etry of war, although he was finally forced to admit that Clausewitz was

13 This was the case with the response of the Western Powers in dealing with Hitler’s Nazi
Germany in the 1930s.
14 This is the main theme in Edward Luttwak’s book on the grand strategy of the Eastern
Roman Empire.
15 See, among others, John Gaddis, Now We Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New
York, 1998); and The Cold War: A New History (New York, 2006).
16 Neville Chamberlain’s decisions to surrender Czechoslovakia in September and October
1938, while maintaining Britain’s leisurely pace of rearmament, underlines how crucial
decisions of grand strategy in peacetime can be. For further discussion of the military
and strategic results of Munich, see, among others, Williamson Murray, The Change in
the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984), chaps. 7 and 8.
17 One of the more bizarre aspects of modern historiography is the argument among ancient
historians that there was no understanding of strategy in the Greco-Roman world.
For a refutation of such nonsense, simply refer to the speech given by King Archi-
damnus in Book 1 of Thucydides’ great history: The History of the Peloponnesian War,
pp. 82–86.
 Thoughts on grand strategy 7
right that war is a matter of “the continuation of politics by other means.”18
The great Prussian theorist himself admits, at the beginning of On War, that
policy and strategy represent the crucial drivers and determinants of human
conflict; however, because his subject is the phenomenon of war, his work
discusses these subjects only peripherally.
Nor is grand strategy described better by more recent theoretical
approaches such as Alfred Thayer Mahan’s work on sea power; Guiliho
Douhet’s work on air power; or British pundits Basil H. Liddell Hart’s and
J. F. C. Fuller’s theories of the indirect approach and armored warfare.19
Each of these authors focused his attention on specific aspects of the techno-
logical attributes of war, although Mahan and Liddell Hart were willing to
use historical examples effectively to support their arguments. Only Julian
Corbett, the great British naval thinker, was willing to draw on Clausewitz
for understanding the fundamental nature of war as a means to understand
the role of naval conflict in grand strategy.20
In the twentieth century, the subject of grand strategy as a topic for rigor-
ous historical examination first appears in serious form in Edward Meade
Earle’s classic Makers of Modern Strategy, which, not surprisingly, appeared
at the midpoint of America’s participation in the Second World War.21 Of
the voluminous official studies of the two world wars commissioned by the
various governments involved, only the British undertook a deep study of
their performance at the level of grand strategy.22 America’s official histo-
ries were far less coherent and, in the end, less satisfactory in their efforts to
discuss U.S. grand strategy.23 Their examination of the war was more about
military strategy and decisions involving the employment of military forces
than about American grand strategy.24

18 “We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a
continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means. What remains peculiar
to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.” Clausewitz, On War, p. 99.
19 Douhet’s major works were not translated into English until after the Second World War,
although translations of his articles were available at the Air Corps Tactical School in the
1930s. For Basil Liddell Hart’s views on the subject, see Strategy (London, 1929).
20 See Julian Corbett, Principles of Maritime Strategy (Mineola, NY, reprint, 2004).
21 Edward Meade Earle, ed., The Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, NJ, 1943). It was
reedited by Peter Paret in 1984 in a far less satisfactory volume, The Makers of Modern
Strategy (Princeton, NJ, 1984).
22 See the outstanding six-volume series dealing with British grand strategy in the Second
World War, published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office from 1957 to 1972. The most
outstanding volume in the series is Michael Howard, Grand Strategy, vol. 4, August
1942–September 1943 (London, 1972).
23 For examples of the American approach to the analysis of grand strategy, see Maurice
Matloff, The United States Army in World War II – The War Department: Strategic
Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944 (Washington, DC, 1959).
24 In fact, many of the discussions in the Green Books, as the Army’s official histories are
known, are flawed by faulty assumptions and sloppy research. The clearest example is
their almost complete silence on the strategic debates that took place in late 1942 over
8 Williamson Murray
Why then, considering the importance of the topic, has the subject of
grand strategy proven so peripheral in the literature of war and peace?
There appear to be several explanations, none of them entirely satisfactory
but useful nevertheless. Grand strategy lies at the nexus of politics and
military strategy and thus contains important elements of both. Moreover,
it exists in a world of constant flux, one in which uncertainty and ambiguity
dominate. And the international environment will more often than not have
its say, as national opponents take the most inopportune moments to change
their policies, while internal and ideological factors also have a vote.
Thus, the Weltanschauungen (worldviews) of statesmen and military lead-
ers alike – a major determinant in the formation of any grand strategy – will
come under constant assault from the ever-changing environment within
which they work. One does not make effective grand strategy entirely as one
would like but rather according to the circumstances in which a national
polity finds itself. Finally, as noted earlier, great states possess considerable
wiggle room in the casting of grand strategy, but small states have virtually
none.25
A part of the problem in understanding grand strategy – or for that matter
strategy of any kind – lies in the belief of most historians and commenta-
tors that it represents an enunciated set of goals and principles to which
statesmen and military leaders adhere in a consistent fashion. However, his-
torical examples of marches toward clear goals are less than enlightening,
one example being the disastrous trajectory of the Third Reich. From his
beginnings as a street agitator in Munich to his dismal end in a bunker
in Berlin, Hitler possessed a coherent, carefully thought-through, long-term
grand strategy from which he rarely deviated in the course of his rise and
fall – although in his early years in power, he was willing to make temporary
adjustments such as with his signing of the Non-Aggression Pact with Poland
in 1934. Initially, Hitler’s strategy brought Nazi Germany great military and
diplomatic triumphs, but within those successes lay the seeds of catastrophe,
because Hitler’s conception of grand strategy and the assumptions on which
it rested led straight to the invasion of the Soviet Union and his declaration of
war on the United States.26 In fact, although the goals of grand strategy may

American mobilization and the nation’s ability to support the buildup of ground forces
as well as the argument, entirely fallacious, that George Marshall argued for a landing
on the coast of northwest France in 1943 at the Casablanca conference. For a refutation
of such views, see James Lacey, “Economic Foundations of American Military Strategy,
1940–1943,” Ph.D diss. University of Leeds, 2009.
25 In the cold, dark words of the Athenian negotiators on the island of Melos in 416 bc, “in
fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to
accept.” Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, p. 402.
26 Far and away the best books on Hitler’s grand strategy – its origins, its development, and
its end – are Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
(Cambridge, 1994); and MacGregor Knox, To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33, vol. 1,
Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist Dictatorships (Cambridge,
2007).
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