The Evolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought
Lukas Milevski
Abstract
This book tracks the historical evolution of grand strategic thought. A conceptual history of grand strategy, it traces what people meant when they employed the term. The book refutes a number of commonly held beliefs or assumptions, including that Basil Liddell Hart first coined the term and developed the concept, and that grand strategy experienced only a single evolutionary path. Originally a product of nineteenth-century military thought, grand strategy acquired broader conceptual boundaries and wider popularity through adoption by maritime strategy by the early twentieth century. Between ... More
This book tracks the historical evolution of grand strategic thought. A conceptual history of grand strategy, it traces what people meant when they employed the term. The book refutes a number of commonly held beliefs or assumptions, including that Basil Liddell Hart first coined the term and developed the concept, and that grand strategy experienced only a single evolutionary path. Originally a product of nineteenth-century military thought, grand strategy acquired broader conceptual boundaries and wider popularity through adoption by maritime strategy by the early twentieth century. Between the World Wars, the Britons John Frederick Charles Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart wrote extensively about grand strategy, while in the United States a myriad of opinions concerning grand strategy emerged, including those of Edward Mead Earle. Grand strategy’s popularity waned during the first half of the Cold War as a result of the immediate importance of developing nuclear strategy and limited war theories. However, as a result of changing intellectual and geopolitical contexts by the early 1970s, grand strategy regained and surpassed its previous popularity, which to this day it has yet to lose even though the range of meanings the concept has attained through overuse has become wider and therefore more obscure.
Keywords:
Grand strategy,
national strategy,
conceptual history,
strategy,
military strategy,
international relations,
strategy evolution
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198779773 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198779773.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Lukas Milevski, author
Research Fellow, Changing Character of War Programme, University of Oxford
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