This chapter explores the long-term patterns of mainland south-east Asian strategic conduct and the variables behind it. In this region, the ancient Khmer Empire, the Tai polities and the Burmese, whose statecraft was influenced by Hindu and Buddhist belief, were warlike. The Hindu–Buddhist imperial concept of cakravati became the expansionistic norm shared among ambitious monarchs. Thereupon, the south-east Asian polities continually engaged in warfare to impose control over the population and tributaries. Wars were waged to displace the mass of the vanquished to enhance the victor’s economic capacity and prestige. The development of military strategy and war aims generally were geared towards the displacement and resettlement of the enemy population. Interestingly, territorial gains were minor objectives except for the crucial lines of communication and coastal areas vital for trade; polities would secure and expand their power spheres rather than dominating demarcated spaces. The fortification of the central polity also led to protracted siege warfare. In this war of attrition, stratagems, such as ruses and guerilla raids on enemy camps and supply lines, were widely employed against invading armies. There were continual shifts from forceful subjugation and vassalage to the strategic destruction of enemy polities from the twelfth to the nineteenth century in order to seize the centre. Failure to muster manpower and secure influences led to the decline and destruction of the state by more aggressive neighbors. Polities that survived or were revived then pursued a more expansionist policy and waged pre-emptive warfare against smaller states and peer competitors. The military means to achieve such strategic goals consisted of a mass of corvée forces that formed the main body. The core of the army consisted of skilled professional units comprising the aristocratic royal elite and foreign adventurer ‘specialist’ mercenaries. Gunpowder weapons became the crucial instruments to maintain tactical superiority on the battlefield and in siege warfare, as well as assuring control over the displaced population. War elephants and cavalry forces operated as shock units to smash and scatter enemy forces in set-piece battles. However, sieges were the majority of military conduct.

As in other world regions, warfare played an important role in shaping the sociopolitical landscape of pre-Columbian North America. In contrast with many of these, however, written records are lacking for all but the last few centuries following European contact. The history of indigenous North American warfare and war strategy must therefore be reconstructed largely from archaeological remains. One of the most accessible types of information available on war strategy from this source pertains to defence, as archaeological features such as rock walls, palisades and lookout towers tend to preserve in the archaeological record. The type of defensive measures used reveals people’s degree of concern with attack and shows how they employed attributes of their environment to protect themselves. The location of features may also provide insight into the direction and identity of the threat. Burned houses and unburied bodies, on the other hand, document strategies used by enemies when defences were breached. Stone weapons also preserve in the archaeological record and can reveal the arsenal available to combatants at different times and places, as well as forms of engagement: shock weapons imply hand-to-hand combat, for example, whereas projectile weapons can be deployed from a greater distance, suggesting ambush or open battle. The skeletal remains of the victims provide some of the most definitive evidence for the existence and nature of active conflict, including the demographic characteristics of victims, the spatial relationship between victim and attacker(s), and the scale and lethality of conflict (e.g. a few victims versus 500 in a mass grave). In combination with early European written accounts, which inform on aspects of Native American warfare not readily apparent in the archaeological record, the collective evidence yields a picture of war in pre-Columbian North America that is both unique and reminiscent of war in other world regions, and argues for the importance of including North America in global histories of human warfare.

While the First World War may not have been the first war to be global in scope, the development of European societies, economies and governance meant that combatant states were able to make effective use of the levers of national power in ways hitherto unseen. Capable of mobilising the resources of their own nations and their empires, the belligerents raise, equipped and sustained large forces in the field for four years. In the process of building their own power, they developed mechanisms to apply military, diplomatic and economic pressures on their enemies. The states best able to mobilise and deploy all the levers of national power – Britain and France – had the edge in the long war over Germany, which concentrated on building its military power at the expense of other levers. This chapter explores how the Entente was able to make deliberate use of its resources more effectively than the Central Powers to achieve its strategic goals.

This chapter turns to the accounts of the campaigns of the Spring and Autumn Period (771–476 BC), followed by those of the Warring States Period (475–221 BC) that ended with the creation of the first imperial state in China in 221 BCE, and finally the campaigns that created, maintained, lost, restored and then permanently lost the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). War for rulers, generals and statesmen required them to devise and execute strategies that were not ideal, often failed, and seldom accommodated higher moral values. This reality was portrayed clearly in most of the histories, even in the stylised and moralised anecdotes that are often all that is left to us.

This chapter discusses a number of events of Soviet military history, ranging from relatively minor conflicts with neighbouring states (mostly parts of the former Russian empire that collapsed in 1917) in the 1920s and mid-1930s to fully fledged participation in the Second World War. Wars with Finland in 1939–1940, Nazi Germany in 1941–1945 and Japan in 1945 are the main events that fully represent Soviet military strategy. There is still lack of access to some primary sources of key actors that shaped the Soviet military strategy in 1939–1945, so the most intensive debate in the literature has been about Stalin’s plans before and during the Second World War. Another point of discussion relates to the major failure of the Red Army during the initial phase of war with Nazi Germany, focusing on the purge of the Soviet officer corps between 1937 and 1939. In general, the war against Nazi Germany (commonly referred to in Soviet/Russian literature as the Great Patriotic War) was a struggle not only for the ‘life and death of the Soviet state’ and all the peoples of the USSR, but also for the liberation of Europe and the world from fascism.

Strategy is a not a word not often used in connection with early medieval warfare ,which is often seen as mere feud or the gathering of loot. This was strongly reinforced by the widespread attitude that military history was a fit subject only for military academies. Only recently has it been recognised that war in this period was the subject of thought, care and calculation. Moreover, early medieval sources are relatively scarce and often pose difficulties of interpretation. And armies had no continuous institutional life of the kind we associate with the formation of strategic ideas. Nor were kings able to impose a monopoly of violence on their followers, for early medieval states were fragile and highly dependent upon the accidents of individual ability. The armies which were gathered were not unitary, but assemblages of diverse elements whose political relation to the sovereign was problematic. But although writing about strategy poses challenges, it is evident that military commanders in this period were not mere bloodthirsty brutes. An army, even a small one, represented a huge financial and political investment whose raising could only be justified by some substantial purpose. But the nature of medieval strategy was conditioned by the political structures which created it. A world where dynastic continuity and political stability were closely intertwined, and where kings were rulers of peoples rather than territories, gave birth to a very different kind of strategic outlook from our own.

On 25 June 1950, North Korea launched a surprise attack on South Korea, commencing the Korean War and aiming to unify the country by forces. On 7 July, when the UN adopted a resolution calling for all possible means to aid South Korea, President Truman announced he was sending in US forces to stop the Communists and expanding his Cold War containment to East Asia. The Korean War became a conflict between China and the United States. To drive UNF out of Korea, Mao sent in 33 divisions, which was only the beginning of Chinese involvement. In April 1951, CPVF launched its spring offensive against UN troops, which put up a strong defence. After the Chinese failure in the battle, the war settled into a stalemate and a more conventional pattern of trench warfare along the 38th Parallel. The Korean stalemate became the longest positional warfare in world military history. This military impasse, from June 1951 to July 1953, has become the most forgotten phase of the ‘forgotten war’. About 45 per cent of all US casualties occurred after truce talks began in July 1951. By 1952, Chinese forces in Korea had grown to a record high of 1.45 million. Realising the huge gap between Chinese objectives and means, Mao became willing to accept a settlement without total victory.

This chapter examines the strategic history of the British seapower state, the last great power to rely on naval power as its primary strategic instrument in peace and war. Maritime strategies reflect the reality that seapower states need to control maritime communications for security and prosperity: that control allows them to attack the shipping, overseas possessions and, critically, the economies of their rivals as an alternative to a land invasion. Military great powers have responded to the maritime threat by building military navies to secure command of the sea, to facilitate the invasion and overthrow of a seapower rival. If that option fails they use naval resources to attack floating trade of a seapower adversary. The Navy become central to national identity.

Between 1688 and 1945 Britain developed and used a unique maritime strategic model that linked strategic decision-making to policy aims, political structures, and economic realities. This strategy enabled Britain, a small offshore island, to act as great power in the European, and later global systems, but it was a fragile asset. Naval power had limited strategic impact, even the purely naval Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century were settled by economics, not sea battles. The combination of insularity and powerful financial instruments enabled Britain to wage long wars of limited mobilisation, but it needed allies to defeat great power rivals. Securing such allies cost money, and restricted war aims. The key strategic concerns were naval dominance, the security of the Low Countries and the legal basis of economic warfare. Whenever possible the Navy was used to maintain peace through deterrence and suasion, war with other great powers was always unwelcome because it would be long, costly and bad for business. There was no short-war strategic option. In war the British Army supported maritime strategy, it was not a ‘continental’ force, and was never committed to that role in peacetime while Britain remained a great power. Britain’s rivals employed a variety of naval strategies to counter or limit the impact of this maritime strategy, an invasion of Britain, arms racing, fleets in being, coastal defences and commerce raiding, but the only method that succeeded was the United States attack that broke the British economy between 1939 and 1945, backed by the construction of an immense fleet. Although no longer a great power after 1945 Britain’s global maritime interests and insular location remained critical aspects of national security.

The strategy of the Mongol Empire underwent four basic phases. The first centered on the rise and creation of the Yeke Monggol Ulus (Great Mongol State/Nation) by Chinggis Khan and the Mongols’ irruption from the steppes. The second phase was the formulation of a coherent strategy of conquest during the reign of Ögödei Qa’an. While this was derived from the campaigns of Chinggis Khan, it sought to maximise the deployment of the empire’s military on multiple fronts while simultaneously not overextending the resources of the empire. This further evolved into a third phase during the reign of Möngke Qa’an, who, through a series of reforms, allowed the Mongols to marshal more resources. In doing so, the Mongol strategy altered as they no longer had concerns of overextending themselves. During Möngke’s reign, the Mongols truly became a juggernaut. The final phase of strategy came into formulation with the dissolution of the Mongol Empire after Möngke’s death in late 1259. As the empire split into rival states often embroiled in internecine conflict, each new state had to develop its own coherent strategy, but without the massive resources of a united empire. The Mongols conceived of pragmatic grand strategy that was viable, if not always successful, rather than simply theoretical plans.

King Frederick II (‘the Great’) of Prussia (r. 1740–1786) led his armies personally into a series of wars that doubled the size of his state during his reign. Frederick’s invasion of Silesia, and his subsequent attempts to hold onto it and expand his dominions further, reflected his risk-taking personality. Frederick enjoyed a much greater variety of strategic options than his predecessors because of the large army and well-stocked treasury bequeathed to him by his father, and this reflected the steady growth of states in this period and their increasing capacity to mobilise resources for war. The Hohenzollerns had for generations operated within a strategic context defined by the Holy Roman Empire, which covered all the German lands and within which a variety of princely dynasties competed for prominence under the overall hegemony of the Austrian Habsburgs. Successful Hohenzollern mobilisation of resources, however, made Frederick II the first German ruler in the early modern period to challenge the Habsburgs from a position of relative military parity. His successful gamble created a bipolar Germany, in which the two great powers of Austria and Prussia raised ever greater resources for their struggle against each other, far outstripping the other German states.

"This chapter will examine the practice of strategy – the relationship between available resources, competing aims and geopolitical realities – by focusing on the Habsburg dynasty in the period from 1500 to 1650. The Habsburg monarchies brought together a diverse series of different concerns focused on dynasty, geopolitics and religion, within a framework of planning, prioritisation and opportunism. I will also seek to examine changes in practice over time. How do strategic conceptions and the pursuit of strategic aims shift in the century between the reign of Charles V and the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg rulers at the time of the Thirty Years War? How did changing political and military circumstances over this century alter the aims and dynamics of strategy? Or were there fundamental continuities in, for example, the constraints on mobilising financial and human resources, sustaining warfare or achieving desired outcomes through war or diplomacy?

The chapter will be based on two case studies. The first of these examines the strategic implications of the transformation to the dynasty enabled by the extraordinary inheritance of Charles V, and the vast European monarchía that this brought into existence. It will look at Charles’s strategic aims and goals; the resources, both material and ideological, that could be mobilised in pursuit of these goals; the enemies that he faced; and the way in which they forced him to prioritise and compromise. Ultimately the largest compromise was the decision to divide his inheritance between two branches of the family. The account will pass over the later sixteenth century and resume with the strategies, priorities and resource mobilisation of the Austrian and Spanish branches of the family during the Thirty Years War. The account will look at the way in which they sought to re-create a strategy based on close family co-operation, and mobilising resources that were significantly different from those of Charles V. The comparison raises a number of themes, both structural and contingent, that I hope will contribute to the larger discussion of the volume.

As noted by Richard Reid, African military history remains ‘perhaps the last bastion of the kind of distorted Eurocentric scholarship that characterised African studies before the 1960s’. This is especially true of the pre-colonial period, on account of both the dearth and the inherent limitations and biases of the sources available for study. The purpose of this contribution is to show that, in both tactical and strategic terms, African pre-colonial warfare was as complex as warfare in any other historical setting. We propose to substantiate our argument by exploring a number of regional case studies organised in a loose chronological order: warfare in the medieval empires of the Sahel, Asante warfare in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, Zulu and Ngoni warfare in southern Africa and east-central African warfare in the age of warlords. The driving questions that the collection proposes to address will be briefly explored in these different contexts, each of which highlights specific strategic dynamics and priorities.

This chapter describes the origin of the idea of an American way of war. That idea began with the publication of historian Russell Weigley’s classic, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, in 1973. For Weigley, a way of war essentially came down to habits of thought. America’s way of war, thus, had to do with the habits of thought of Americans with respect to armed conflict. This chapter also provides a brief survey of America’s armed conflicts, from its War of Independence to its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. This survey describes the major war aims in each of these conflicts as well as the type of military strategy employed.

Napoleon is widely admired as a military strategist who embraced the violence of modern war and understood the potential of mass armies. Yet he wrote little about the practice of strategy beyond a few rather bland maxims, claiming to rely on offence and opportunism on the battlefield. But these offensive tactics had a strategic purpose. He sought to crush his opponents in decisive battles, not just to destroy enemy armies but to impose his will in the peace talks that followed. As First Consul and later as Emperor he channelled the resources of the state to the cause of military success and imperial expansion. His goal was political as much as it was military, mobilising all the resources of the Empire in its pursuit. Napoleon conscripted mass armies in the lands he conquered, imposed French-style administrative systems, and imposed taxes and customs duties. He was focused on Europe, where the other powers developed their own strategies to counter him, repeatedly forging alliances to defend their sovereignty and to thwart his imperial ambitions. Each country had its own war aims. Russia looked to expand into the Balkans, Prussia to conquer Poland, and Britain to consolidate its colonial presence overseas.

In this chapter Soviet strategy in practice is viewed through the lens of Soviet interventions within the Soviet bloc: East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Kremlin’s struggle for justifying interventions within the socialist bloc provides an interesting analysis of the decision making, objectives, priorities and means of Soviet intervention, while also allowing an examination of the extent to which the Soviet leadership learnt from previous mistakes. The interventions illustrate an interesting kind of progression from unilateral decision making in 1953 to consultation of Soviet allies within the Warsaw Pact, and beyond in 1956 to a so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ of five Warsaw Pact countries, which collectively intervened in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Concerns for the security and integrity of the Soviet bloc as well as fears for a domino-effect of unrest spilling over into neighbouring Warsaw Pact countries informed Soviet decision making. This chapter accordingly also argues that the Kremlin was increasingly reluctant to intervene, as shown in the Solidarnosc trade union crisis in Poland in 1980–1981. The chapter concludes with a brief comparison with the motives and methods of Russian president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine in 24 February 2022.