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Successful Strategies Successful Strategies
Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present
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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

By
Williamson Murray
Edited by
Williamson Murray  and
Richard Hart Sinnreich
Williamson Murray
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Williamson Murray
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Summary

Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean that everything is very easy. Once it has been determined . . . it is easy to chart its course. But great strength of character, as well as great lucidity and firmness of mind, is required in order to follow through steadily, to carry out the plan, and not to be thrown off course by thousands of diversions.

In my career as a military historian, the subject of strategy has come to play an increasingly important role in the topics that I have examined. This has to a considerable extent been the result of the realization expressed by my colleague Allan Millett and myself in an article dealing with the lessons from our study on military effectiveness in the first half of the twentieth century:

Whether policy shaped strategy or strategic imperatives drove policy was irrelevant. Miscalculations in both led to defeat, and any combination of politico-strategic error had disastrous results even for some nations that ended the war as members of the victorious coalition . . . This is because it is more important to make correct decisions at the political and strategic level than it is at the operational and tactical level. Mistakes in operations and tactics can be corrected, but political and strategic mistakes live forever.

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Successful Strategies
Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present
 , pp. 1 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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References

von Clausewitz, Carl, On War, ed. and trans. by Howard, Michael and Paret, Peter (Princeton, NJ, 1976), p. 178.Google Scholar
Murray, Williamson, Knox, MacGregor, and Bernstein, Alvin, eds., The Making of Strategy, Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar
Murray, Williamson, Sinnreich, Richard Hart, and Lacey, James, eds., The Shaping of Grand Strategy, Policy, Diplomacy, and War (Cambridge, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millett, Allan R. and Murray, Williamson, “Lessons of War,” The National Interest, Winter 1988–1989.
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Thucydides, , History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Warner, Rex (London, 1956), p. 48.Google Scholar
Rumelt, Richard P., Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (New York, 2011), pp. 36–37.Google Scholar
Murray, Williamson, “History and the Future,” in Murray, Williamson, War, Strategy, and Military Effectiveness (Cambridge, 2011), p. 16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, Williamson, “Thoughts on Military History and the Profession of Arms,” in Murray, Williamson and Sinnreich, Richard Hart, eds., The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kissinger, Henry, The White House Years (New York, 1979), p. 561.Google Scholar
Joint Forces Command, The Joint Operational Environment (Norfolk, 2008).Google Scholar
Murray, Williamson and Lacey, James, eds., The Making of Peace: Rulers, States, and the Aftermath of War (Cambridge, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horne, John and Kramer, Alan, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT, 2001).Google Scholar
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