The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present

Is there a 'Western way of war' which pursues battles of annihilation and single-minded military victory? Is warfare on a path to ever greater destructive force? This magisterial new account answers these questions by tracing the history of Western thinking about strategy - the employment of military force as a political instrument - from antiquity to the present day. Assessing sources from Vegetius to contemporary America, and with a particular focus on strategy since the Napoleonic Wars, Beatrice Heuser explores the evolution of strategic thought, the social institutions, norms and patterns of behaviour within which it operates, the policies that guide it and the cultures that influence it. Ranging across technology and warfare, total warfare and small wars as well as land, sea, air and nuclear warfare, she demonstrates that warfare and strategic thinking have fluctuated wildly in their aims, intensity, limitations and excesses over the past two millennia.

Author: Beatrice Heuser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/14/2010
Pages: 594
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.30lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780521199681

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2011

About the Author
Heuser, Beatrice: - Beatrice Heuser is Chair of International History at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading. Her widely-translated publications include Reading Clausewitz (2002) and The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons in their Historical, Strategic and Ethical Context (1999).

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