Strategy

STRATEGY. The term in its original and literal sense means "the art of the general" (Greek ar pareyos). But no military term, perhaps no technical term of any kind, has undergone more changes of meaning, suffered more attempts to reach a standard definition, or been more diversely interpreted. And rarely has a difficulty of definition had such an effect on the course of history. For the vagueness which has surrounded the term has influenced the issue of wars and the destiny of nations by encouraging doubt and dissension as to the respective spheres of the military com mand and the government in time of war.

Change of Meaning.

The word "strategy" as a technical term appears in European military literature early in the 18th century, when the great impetus to military studies given by the wars of the 17th was crystallizing into the formation of academic, and often pedantic schools of thought and theory. The conditions of warfare at that period helped to preserve to the term its strict sense, even a straitened sense. These conditions comprised the uniformity of armaments; the superior development of fortifica tion (q.v.) to weapons; the professionalization of armies—which complicated their systems of supply and made them instruments too expensive to be employed carelessly or wastefully; the fact that wars were often waged for limited political objects, aiming at extension of territory or power, and controlled by shrewd calculation of the price worth paying, rather than national life and death struggles with passion dominating reason. Last, and above all, the indivisibility of armies—which usually fought and moved as a solid block, making temporary detachments to carry out special missions and to hold strategic points, but not organized in permanently self-contained fractions.

These conditions tended to produce an equilibrium in the theatre of war, and on the battlefield, which easily settled into a stalemate unless upset by some ruse or stratagem on the part of one of the commanders. But the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars brought about an enlargement of the meaning of "strategy"—at first called strategique in French or "strategics" in English. The fractioning of the army into permanent divisions

and Napoleon's development of this new organization, applied in his vast strategic manoeuvres, caused a great acceleration and enlargement of operations. To regulate and co-ordinate the movements of a number of widely separated columns to a com mon end was a task which both enlarged the power of generalship and the demands made upon the general's attention. Hence this "logistical" meaning, that of directing the movements of an army, came to be added to the term strategy, and even to overshadow the older meaning. One effect, not a happy one, can be traced in the growing 19th century tendency for the idea of the applica tion of force, as rapidly and concentratedly as possible, to obsess military thought and leadership to the undue neglect of the subtler art of surprise by ruse and stratagem.

But the term was to undergo still further expansion of meaning in the 19th century. Clausewitz in his monumental work "On War" defined it as "the art of the employment of battles as a means to gain the object of the war. In other words, strategy forms the plan of the war, maps out the proposed course of the different campaigns which compose the war, and regulates the battles to be fought in each." This definition intruded on the sphere of policy, or the higher conduct of the war, which must necessarily be the responsibility of the government and not of the military leaders it employs as its agents in the executive con trol of operations. At the same time the definition narrowed the meaning of "strategy" to the pure utilization of battle, thus con veying the idea that battle was the only means to the strategical end. It was an easy step for his less profound disciples to confuse the means with the end and to reach the conclusion that in war every other interest and consideration should be subordinated to the aim of fighting a decisive battle.