The Archidamian War was in Thucydides’ view caused mainly by Sparta wanting to ‘take down’ the power of Athens, while its course was shaped largely by Sparta’s reliance on conventional tactics and limited resources, compounded by its ‘slowness’ to act. This notion of a mismatch between highly ambitious strategic objectives and deeply inadequate tactical means remains pervasive in scholarship on the war. However, Thucydides’ record of Spartan actions is open to a different interpretation: Sparta’s main strategic goal was merely to preserve its hegemony over its allies, and accordingly it needed to support the military ambitions of the latter, especially Corinth and Thebes on whose military resources Sparta was dependent. Sparta initially did the minimum necessary to keep Corinth and Thebes onside but, in the face of Athens’ refusal to compromise, gradually developed more ambitious strategic goals of its own. When Sparta applied conventional tactics and limited resources it was in pursuit of specific, restricted strategic aims, but when Sparta pursued more ambitious strategies it developed new, complex and often daring tactics to match. Their ultimate lack of success was largely the result of Sparta having to make concessions to the mutually incompatible strategic interests of Corinth and Thebes.

This chapter focuses on the importance of circular business models and the synergies they create within circular economy liveable cities. Circular business models emphasise reducing waste, reusing resources, and recycling materials, promoting sustainable economic growth while addressing environmental challenges. By fostering innovation, resource efficiency, and collaboration across various sectors, these models help cities transition to a circular economy. The chapter highlights the role of leadership, imagination, and curiosity in driving this transformation. Leaders are key to setting ambitious goals and mobilising resources, while imaginative thinking and curiosity foster the development of innovative solutions to urban challenges. Examples from companies like Interface, Patagonia, and Philips Lighting demonstrate how visionary leadership and creative business models contribute to sustainability and circularity. The chapter explores the synergies between circular business models and urban systems, with case studies from cities like Amsterdam and Paris. These cities have adopted circular strategies that integrate sustainable waste management, renewable energy, and resource-efficient practices, showcasing the transformative potential of circular economies. Ultimately, the chapter argues that circular business models are essential for creating resilient, sustainable cities. By leveraging leadership, innovation, and cross-sector collaboration, cities can foster circular economies that promote environmental sustainability, economic growth, and improved quality of life.

Everyone creates influence during their lives. This may be consciously or unconsciously, through communication, actions or behaviours. A person can be influential through who they are or what they do, such as through their creativity, dependency, vulnerability, position and example. In complex health organisations, we need effective leadership that articulates vision, inspires, provides guidance and influences, and strong management to plan, organise, direct and control. Leaders and managers have different roles, functions and skill sets. These actions may be visionary, inspirational, task-focused, long or short term, through empowerment and supervision. These roles and responsibilities may be different but need to achieve impact in influencing.

The ratification rate of States parties in the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) ranks as the second lowest among the core UN human rights treaties. Addressing this issue necessitates a systematic approach rather than relying on ambiguous aspirations. Notably, the Asia-Pacific region warrants particular attention due to its relatively low ratification rate, which serves as a focal point of discussion in this chapter. To comprehensively examine the current landscape, this chapter adopts two key perspectives: the motives behind state ratification and the nexus with interpretative challenges concerning the ICPPED. Subsequently, it delves into a spectrum of strategies ranging from basic to nuanced specific approaches, encompassing targeted interventions and persuasive methodologies. Additionally, this chapter explores symptomatic treatments aimed at mitigating enforced disappearances, acknowledging the foreseeable stasis in the expansion of States Parties. Importantly, the broader argument presented in this paper extends beyond the confines of the Asia-Pacific region, underscoring its relevance on a global scale.

Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History was undoubtedly a quintessential by-product of an age that believed in universally applicable rules, in this case that a navy’s function was the same in the seventeenth as in the nineteenth century, the command of the sea its ultimate goal. Naturally enough, over the years Mahan’s sweeping theoretical framework has received its share of criticism. In his 1911 book Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Sir Julian Corbett argued that it was more important to deny to one’s opponent the command of the sea, rather than seize it for oneself, so that ‘the enemy can no longer attack our lines of passage and communication effectively, and that he cannot use or defend his own’. Taking a leaf from Corbett, John F. Guilmartin underscored how Mahan’s principles cannot be applied to the early modern Mediterranean, the physical conditions of the area defying the paradigms applied by Anglo-American naval historians to the oceanic world. Besides, even if Mahan did acknowledge the importance of weaponry, Geoffrey Parker has pointed out that The Influence of Sea Power upon History ‘contained no discussion of guns, sails or ship design, because the author did not believe that changes in these things could affect the application of strategic principles’.

Naval warfare changed out of all recognition from the late sixteenth century onwards through the rapid development of large square-rigged warships carrying heavy broadside gun batteries. A whole series of developments followed, with a long (if far from smooth) evolution in ships, equipment, strategy, and tactics continuing down to the last sailing navies of the early nineteenth century. It was clearly no accident that this naval revolution coincided with a great age of global European empires, which would have been impossible to create or maintain without effective naval power. Galleys and other oared craft became largely obsolete, except for some amphibious operations in the Mediterranean and for use in shallow waters around the innumerable Baltic islands. The crushing Dutch victory over a Spanish fleet at the battle of the Downs (1639) marked the first occasion when the full power of broadside gunnery became evident. Then the three Anglo-Dutch wars between the 1650s and 1670s saw a series of savage and bloody engagements between the fleets of two nations that were coming to be known as the Maritime Powers. The combination of imperial and trading ambitions, new financial arrangements, and relatively open societies enabled first the Dutch, and then the British, to develop naval power to new heights, in turn allowing them to punch well above their weight on the international stage. Under Louis XIV, France did mount a serious challenge to the Dutch and English, and for a time possessed the largest navy in the Western world. However, by the 1690s the French, and more gradually the Dutch, were finding the costs of maintaining this level of power at sea, as well as on land, to be too great.

Traditionally there has been much cheap sniping at Italy’s strategic planning in 1915: unduly ambitious, naïve, megalomaniacal. Staff plans for warfare were undeniably disconcerting. The prime peculiarity was a lack of precise planning or analysis. In the first draft of plans for war against Austria-Hungary, a mere 8-page summary that Cadorna presented in August 1914, the strategic objectives of the future campaign were sketchily alluded to; there was no trace of any precise schedule. In other respects, Cadorna was much more acute. He rightly predicted a long and expensive war and did his utmost to persuade ministers to mobilize Italian industry forthwith and bring it under state control. His intuitions were frustrated, however, by the civilians’ total aloofness from military matters. Never as in the period of Italy’s neutrality was the absence of a coordination mechanism between politicians and generals felt so disastrously. Roberto Bencivenga, at that time already attached to Cadorna’s secretariat, eloquently testified to the lack of any collaboration between cabinet and army Staff. Worse, the top military brass were deliberately kept in the dark about political decisions.

In October 1947, just more than two years after the Japanese Empire officially surrendered to the Allies and the most destructive conflict in human history finally ended, the veteran American statesman Henry L. Stimson published an article in Foreign Affairs.1 As the flagship journal of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, it was a natural forum for someone such as Stimson, a former secretary of state and (twice) secretary of war with over four decades of experience at the highest levels of American government, to share some of their ideas.2 In his piece, entitled “The Challenge to Americans,” Stimson outlined what he felt were the opportunities and struggles the United States faced in the aftermath of World War II.3 He opened with a declaration: Americans faced “a challenging opportunity, perhaps the greatest ever offered to a single nation. It is nothing less than a chance to use our full strength for the peace and freedom of the world.”

This chapter examines how the War Department approached planning for the postwar world. It specifically focuses on the future of Soviet-American relations and how that relationship impacted preparations for the defeat and eventual occupation of the Axis powers. The War Department often adopted ambiguous and confusing stances toward the Soviet Union when it came to postwar planning issues. Stimson, his senior advisers, and Marshall primarily felt a durable postwar peace required a cooperative Washington–Moscow relationship while Army planners and mid-level War Department officials expressed strong concerns about Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe and what that meant for the future. Given Army planners’ central role in the strategic planning and policy process, these divisions helped blur and muddle Washington’s broader Russia policy and helped reinforce American hawks’ views that the future Soviet–American relationship would be dominated by conflict and superpower rivalry. The hawks’ increasingly strong beliefs made confrontational US policies more likely and helped construct the foundations for the pugnacious atmosphere in the developing superpower relationship and the Cold War.

In the last few years, the issue of mobilisation for war has, in Australia at any rate, shifted from the arcane to the highly pertinent. Concerns publicly manifested in the government’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update, which asserted that the long-held notion of up to 10 years’ warning for a possible conventional attack on Australia had – as 10-year rules tend to eventually do – evaporated. Moreover, it alluded to what was thought to be a remote, but nevertheless alarming, possibility of a ‘high-intensity conflict’ in Australia’s region. Suddenly, generating combat power, perhaps more than what was readily to hand, has taken on some urgency.

After the Second World War, ambitions to develop a collective security arrangement among Western allies for the defence of the South-East Asia region started to emerge from many quarters. Australia and New Zealand began planning for a security alliance that would include regional nations as well as foreign powers, and Britain’s attention returned to supporting the defence of its colonial possessions. Australia and New Zealand did not achieve a security alliance initially, and defence planning in the immediate postwar years rested on a negotiated agreement focused on the British Commonwealth.

We are currently in the era of great power competition, and many states are grappling with how the future may unfold. Coalition warfare will be a key consideration in any flare-up. This chapter analyses the complexity of coalition warfare in the twenty-first century through the prism of the British Army’s experiences in the United Kingdom–led Multi-National Division (South East) and in Basra in the Iraq War. Any future wars in which Australia participates will most likely be as part of a coalition effort. Australia is unlikely to be the leading partner and will need to assess how best it will serve as a supporting participant in future coalitions.

Chapter 6 offers a a retrospective view of inpainting methods described in the book and it summarizes key findings with some take home messages.

The preface introduces the reader to the enduring fascination with Moshe Dayan, a prominent figure in Israeli history. Dayan’s legacy has been the subject of much debate and controversy among historians, and the purpose of the book is to present both the debates and the author’s own interpretation of Dayan’s life and career. It also highlights the importance of studying Dayan’s legacy, both for understanding Israeli history and for gaining insights into leadership and strategy more broadly. Dayan was a complex figure, with both strengths and weaknesses as a leader and strategist. However, his singular mental abilities, wisdom, experience, and insights continue to make him a compelling figure for study. The chapter also touches on the challenges of studying history, particularly when it comes to interpreting historical events and figures: historical facts are one thing, but interpretation is another. The book attempts to present a comprehensive and accurate historical assessment of Dayan’s life and career.