Strategy – A History

This book was acclaimed by the Washington Post as arguably the best book ever written on strategy. It is an extraordinary achievement that literally does cover the history of strategy from its origins in evolution to modern day sophistication. The word is now ubiquitous, as Freedman points out in his preface, beginning the book with the sentence: 'everyone needs a strategy.' Although there is no agreed overall definition of the word, it is about balancing ends and means, identifying objectives and methods, and judiciously using available resources. The context is often one of competition or conflict where coalitions may be advantageous and strategy itself must be flexible in response to unexpected events. The first part looks origins, with chapters on the Bible, the Greeks, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, and Satan. The story of David and Goliath epitomises the victory of the underdog, while the Greeks developed the key concepts of bie (strength) and metis (cunning) as alternative modalities. He sees Milton's Satan as lacking in prudence and wonders why he ever thought he could succeed against God (he nearly does with Job).

The subsequent parts deal with strategies of force, strategy from below, strategy from above, and theories on strategy. The scope of the book is truly encyclopedic but Freedman writes in a lucid style accessible to the general reader, who is carried along by the elegance and momentum of the narrative. Network readers will be interested in what he has to say about Tolstoy (there is also a section on Borodino). He uses the narrative of War and Peace to criticise Clausewitz's approach. He then reappears in a discussion of Weber and again as a key influence on Gandhi, who read his book The Kingdom of God is Within You and translated his article A Letter to a Hindu. The whole chapter on nonviolence is highly informative within the spectrum of approaches from below. Strategy from above mainly concerns management, while the limits of strategy become apparent with the emergence of dynamic complexity, which opens up a role for stories and scripts. It would have been interesting to have read some analysis of the political strategy of Vladimir Putin, who seems to be using a combination of denial, obfuscation and force - but maybe this is just another combination of the Greek strategies of strength and cunning. The book is a masterly and definitive account of strategy.