The Evolution of Strategy

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).

'This is a real masterpiece. As a history of strategic thinking, ancient and modern, it is comprehensive, learned and authoritative. Its discussion of contemporary issues is shrewd and illuminating. It is lucid, wise, often witty, and above all, deeply humane. It should be essential reading for all students and practitioners of strategy: indeed I doubt whether they will need any other for a long time to come.' Sir Michael Howard, former Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford

• Part I. Introduction: 1. What is strategy?; Part II. Long-Term Constants: 2. Warfare and mindsets from antiquity to the middle ages; 3. Warfare and mindsets in early modern Europe; 4. Themes in early thinking about strategy; Part III. The Napoleonic Paradigm and Total War: 5. The age and mindset of the Napoleonic paradigm; 6. The Napoleonic paradigm transformed: from total mobilisation to total war; 7. Challenges to the Napoleonic paradigm vs. the culmination of total war; Part IV. Naval and Maritime Strategy: 8. Long-term trends and early maritime strategy; 9. The age of steam to the First World War; 10. The World Wars and their lessons for maritime strategists; 11. Maritime strategy in the nuclear age; Part V. Air Power and Nuclear Strategy: 12. War in the third dimension; 13. Four schools of air power; 14. Nuclear strategy; Part VI. Asymmetric or 'Small' Wars: 15. From partisan war to people's war; 16. Counterinsurgency; Part VII. The Quest for New Paradigms after the World Wars: 17. Wars without victories, victories without peace; 18. No end of history: the dialectic continues; 19. Epilogue: strategy making vs. bureaucratic politics; 20. Summaries and conclusions.