The great facts of World War II include the Allied insistence on the declared unconditional surrender of the Axis powers and the American unleashing of atomic bombs to bring an end to the war in the Pacific. Some scholars charge that the demand for unconditional surrender lengthened the war, but this misinterprets the situation. Neither Hitler nor the Japanese leadership were open to a considering any surrender until the very end. German cities were reduced to rubble and Hitler’s armed forces destroyed before he recognized that the war was lost. Japanese leadership accepted surrender only in August 1945, with the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Russian invasion of Manchuria. The treatment of prisoners of war by the belligerents varied. On the European Western Front, it essentially conformed to the humane standards set by the 1929 Geneva Conventions. On the Russian front, it was a war of extermination. Of the 5.7 million Soviet military taken prisoner by the Germans, 3.3 million died. In the Pacific War after April 1942, the Japanese took few prisoners. Once Americans realized the murderous fate that awaited those whom the Japanese overcame in combat, the Americans gave no quarter to the Japanese.

The ultimate cause of the American Civil War was White supremacy, not simply slavery. That prejudice brought on war and also affected the treatment of prisoners of war and the consequences of Southern surrender. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the incorporation of Blacks into the Union army infuriated the Confederates and doomed the traditional practices of the cartels. When Black troops were recruited, Confederates refused to exchange captured Black soldiers, deeming them to be escaped slaves. The North responded by ending exchange and parole altogether. Now prisoners on both sides endured long-term confinement in prisoner of war camps, a practice that became the rule in Western warfare. The surrender of the Confederacy came through the surrender of its individual armies because the state was inoperative. But, although the conventional war ended in 1865, the fighting did not cease. Surrender transformed the conventional conflict into White supremacist terrorism and insurgency during Reconstruction, 1865–77. Ultimately, the will of the federal government and the Northern population tired of trying to establish racial equality in the South, and the occupation of the South ended. In an important sense, the South ultimately won by preserving White supremacy in its government, society, and culture.

The major European adversaries who fought World War I began by following offensive plans designed to win victory quickly, but all these failed. The war became one of grinding attrition, and by 1918, the European adversaries were exhausted. That year, the desperate Germans launched one last offensive to win the war on the Western Front, but it stalled. After the Allies drove the Germans back, fighting ended with the Armistice of November 11. This armistice was a German surrender in all but name. It disarmed German forces, demanded immediate withdrawal from all conquered territory, and imposed an Allied occupation of Germany west of the Rhine. The Treaty of Versailles elaborated the details, imposing staggering war reparations and German acceptance of guilt for the war itself. Much of the German population believed that German forces had not been defeated in battle, instead blaming German liberal politicians and Jews for undermining the war effort. This misconception contributed to the onset of World War II. World War I was the first war in which belligerents adhered to the Hague Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war. There were abuses, but nothing like those that occurred in World War II.

The Jewish–Arab conflict and the fighting it engenders began before the establishment of the state of Israel and has been a constant of Middle-Eastern politics for over a hundred years. The intensity of the fighting has fluctuated but the variations have been like a jazz tune that plays around a common constant central theme. Because of the continuity and longevity of the conflict, as well as various short-term issues affecting it, each strategic event is analysed by the rival decision makers according to three separate time factors: the immediate – how to achieve the best result and terminate the specific event as quickly as possible; the medium term – how the current event results from the trend of the past few years and will affect that trend favourably over the next few years; and lastly the long term – how the results of the specific current event and the current trend it belongs to fits into the overall conflict and will favourably affect its future direction. Of course, the ‘best strategic result’ and ‘favourable strategic effect’ are different for each participant. The purpose of this chapter is to explore and describe the characteristics of the conflict as a whole and the major theme of the Israeli strategic responses to them, while touching on various shifts in trends or specific events that required fundamental changes in the melodies or temporary improvisations.

All too often, the terms terrorism and insurgency are used interchangeably, just like tactics and strategy. But terrorism is indeed a tactic while insurgency is a strategy, and the two concepts are far from synonymous. This chapter details the differences between terrorism and insurgency, and hence, terrorists and insurgents, by tracing the evolution of each of these terms and placing them in the proper context, while providing numerous examples of terrorist chieftains and insurgent leaders, and how these individuals thought about strategy over time. The chapter will also investigate the considerable overlap between terrorism and insurgency. After all, militants pursuing an insurgent strategy may seek to use terrorism as a tactic toward achieving their objectives. Size can be a useful distinguishing characteristic, because terrorist groups often consist of a small number of individuals. By contrast, insurgent organisations, such as Lebanese Hizballah or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), number in the thousands. Indeed, many of the most important ‘terrorist’ groups in the world – including Lebanese Hizballah, LTTE, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – are better described as insurgencies that use terrorism than as typical terrorist movements.

This chapter offers an overview of the strategic environment and grand strategies employed by the Ming and Qing dynasties. It discusses how they built upon pre-existing strategic traditions while also incorporating new technologies and tactics to expand the empire, creating a sophisticated state capable of responding to a dazzling array of challenges. The chapter not only delineates the nature of the strategic threats faced by the last Chinese empires, but also covers the extensive primary source materials demonstrating how imperial leadership and personal networks operated alongside institutions to create an effective grand-strategy paradigm allowing the Ming and Qing to retain their superiority in east Asia for some five centuries. Finally, this overview of late imperial grand strategy offers clues into how China still perceives the world and its strategic goals in Asia.

In the nineteenth century, it is difficult to discern anything in an age-old form of warfare that was not almost instinctive reaction on the part of those opposing conquest, occupation or the legitimacy of authority. Nineteenth-century guerrilla warfare was highly diverse but always the resort of the weak in face of the strong. There could be little expectation that a guerrilla strategy of itself could result in victory in such circumstances unless guerrillas could transform themselves to meet regular forces conventionally or co-operate with regular forces in a partisan role. There are few examples where setting objectives, priorities and allocating resources can be readily identified among those who led guerrillas in the nineteenth century. Four case studies are chosen to illustrate contrasting circumstances pertaining to how far strategic analysis can be applied to nineteenth-century guerrilla warfare. These are the attempt to control Spanish resistance to Napoleon after 1808, the decision of the Southern Confederacy not to pursue a guerrilla strategy at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, Burmese resistance to British annexation between 1885 and 1895, and the decision of the Boer leadership to undertake guerrilla warfare in 1900 during the South African War.

The advent of Islam in Arabia created a new regional actor: the Rashidun Caliphate. Later caliphates inherited the vast territories of expansion accrued under the Rashidun. The ordeal of civil war was the crucible from which the Umayyad Caliphate arose. Civil crisis had a lasting influence on both the strategic setting and then environment within which successive Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs had to contend. Unity and unification of the caliphate was a necessary political objective for the duration of all caliphates. The Umayyads fused their right to political legitimacy with their military prowess and notions of divine providence. The ideological dependency of the Umayyad Caliphate to an aggressive policy of security-maximising expansionism was predicated upon a politically legitimating doctrine of perpetual war which constantly directed strategic decision making. The dependency upon war serving as the only strategic instrument subordinated to the political ends of security, the Umayyad leadership was distracted from managing growing internal dissent and covert factions brewing rebellion and eventual revolution. The Abbasid Revolution of AD 750 not only ended the Umayyad House, but effectively sheathed the doctrine of perpetual war that the Umayyad Caliphate had wielded for nearly a century. The Abbasids squandered the vast territorial and strategic inheritance within decades of wrestling power. The early course of the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, was consistently one of political and territorial expansion followed by structural fragmentation, civil strife and subsequent collapse.

The warfare of the Greek city states was limited by their means, lacking military academies, professional officers and standing forces. Small communities fought local wars with levies of citizens, often highly motivated, but precious to the polity, which could not be kept in the field for long. Fruits of victory were modest, and defeat could put the survival of the whole state at risk. Fortification as a passive defensive policy was essential. In offensive warfare, states and coalitions mostly pursued a strategy of opportunism, in which the desirable was subordinated to the attainable. Commanders typically tried to avoid decisive engagements due to the risks involved; they focused their attacks on exposed targets like farmland, small towns, isolated garrisons and unprepared enemy troops. They relied heavily on local dissenters and deserters to guide and facilitate operations. When wealthier states like Corinth, Athens and Syracuse found themselves able to invest in warfare, we clearly see their dissatisfaction with this strategic straitjacket. The rapid development of fleets, extensive fortification networks, standing corps of specialist troops and siege technology allowed these states to dominate their less fortunate neighbours. This gives the lie to old notions that the Greeks preferred their wars to be limited in scope. A state that had much more than the others could disrupt the entire system, as Macedon would eventually show.

The development of Russian strategy over a near forty-year period from 1877 to 1914 was characterised by gradual movement towards the formation of modern military forces based on a massive army and developed industry. The foundation for this path was laid out by radical military reforms in the 1860–1870s.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 were fundamentally different from each other in many respects. The first was fought in a thoroughly studied theatre and against a well-known adversary, with whom Russia had fought regularly for approximately 200 years. The second was conducted in a remote and underexplored location against an enemy whose strength was severely underestimated. The land and naval forces involved in the two wars significantly differed as well.

Preparations for a large-scale European war have always remained the basis of strategic planning. An important milestone was the formation of the Russian-French alliance. A possible coalition war against Germany required the adoption of an offensive strategy from the onset of the possible conflict. The First World War was the final test that measured the effectiveness of the efforts undertaken by the Russian government since the period of military reforms.

For over 400 years, Sassanid Persia was the greatest state in Asia. To the east, the Kushan Empire was already in decline. The only strong opponent of Iran was the Roman Empire in the west. Military competition for influence in northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and the Caucasus region dominated Iranian–Roman relations, orienting the strategic activities of the early Sassanids to the western fringes of the empire. The breakthrough came in the mid-fourth century, with the emergence of the Kidara Huns in the east. Iran faced a ‘strategic dilemma’: it was crucial to avoid wars on multiple fronts. The Hephthalites or White Huns, became the most important enemy of the Sassanians until the end of the following century; the adoption of such a strategic paradigm enforced the maintenance of peace with the Roman Empire in the west. However, the Sassanian ruler, having secured the eastern territories, was able to move against Iran’s age-old enemy, Rome, this way beginning a period of wars in the west that, with few interruptions, lasted almost until the collapse of the Persian state. Defending such an enormous area was a challenge, as was preventing it from centrifugal tendencies, typical for multi-ethnic states. Despite these factors, the Iranian state managed to assure the territorial integrity of its core areas for four centuries. The tool to achieve this was the army – mobile, efficient, disciplined and motivated.

The Mughals tried their hand at empire building twice in early modern south Asia. The first attempt in the early sixteenth century was thwarted by a resurgence of Afghan power in north India. Following a brief hiatus, the second – and more successful – attempt ensued in the mid-sixteenth century under the rule of the third emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). During the half-century of his rule, Mughal armies conquered most of north India and started expanding fur-ther towards the south, north-west and east. The war in the south consumed much of Mughal energy under his successors for the next hundred years and brought most of the Indian pen-insula under imperial control by the early eighteenth century. In contrast, several wars in the north-west and the east consumed many imperial resources without bringing much lasting ter-ritorial gain. The present chapter focuses on the evolving nature of strategy that went into the making of this vast empire. It discusses the ways in which imperial armies negotiated various types of adversary, the different motivations behind military expeditions, the methods of mili-tary planning and mobilisation, and finally the kind of political expansion all of this brought about. Reflecting on contemporary imperial texts that serve as our main historical sources today, it also seeks to understand their cultural politics as well as the nature of strategic objectives they fulfilled within the political milieu where they were written and circulated. The chapter especially seeks to understand the role of strategy both in the military success that Mughal armies met with in most of south Asia and in the multiple failures that they encountered, especially on its north-western and eastern frontiers. In the process, it shows how Mughal strategy was neither frozen in time nor isolated in its existence. Rather, the c hapter highlights the changing nature of Mughal strategy and how it constantly evolved through its interactions with diplomacy, warfare, ideology, environment, culture and resource mobilisation.

The Forty-Years War in Afghanistan has defied many expectations. Approaching the war as a forty-year strategic interaction, this chapter illustrates the interdependence of the strategic practices – using, creating and controlling force – and show how practising strategy in one way influences the strategic interaction of the ensuing phase of the war. The war in Afghanistan can be divided into a Soviet phase, a civil war phase and a Western phase. During each of these phases of the war, the use of force varied across changing political ends as well as the flux of circumstance and opportunity. Actors sided with former enemies, loyalties shifted, but the fighting continued as generations of young, mainly Afghan men were introduced to the hardship of war. War as a constant companion to everyday Afghan life for the past four decades also illustrates the old strategic adage that it is easier to start a war than to end it.

The Serbian strategy of war crimes to achieve a new state project formed the core of the Yugoslav War. Neighbourhood adversaries also committed atrocities in response. International engagement and humanitarian concern had to find ways to oppose both the aims and the means of the Serbian project and, in a subsidiary way, the worst of the local adversaries’ actions. International operations were as far apart in character from those of the Serbian project as could be. In the end, the strategy of war crimes backfired, as it prompted significant engagement to stop the Serbian project and led to the creation of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, where many senior figures were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.