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On Grand Strategy
A master class in strategic thinking, distilled from the legendary program the author has co-taught at Yale for decades
John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian of the Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught grand strategy at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he's never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.
John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian of the Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught grand strategy at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he's never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published April 3, 2018
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September 10, 2020
Q: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” …
Hedgehogs, Berlin explained, “relate everything to a single central vision” through which “all that they say and do has significance.” Foxes, in contrast, “pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way.” The distinction was simple but not frivolous: it offered “a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting point for genuine investigation.” It might even reflect “one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.” (c)
Those pesky Greeks and Romans and Chinese… they still manage to hijack every discourse on strategy where people dare to mention them. No, really, the Classic part was pretty much incredible. The Modern one - pretty shallow, self-congratulatory and disjointed.
I'm pretty sure that Gaddis as a lector is a delight to listen to. But this book seems to have challenged him beyond his ability of making it seem as if the US knew what it was doing at certain more challenging points of its practical strategy. I know full well when a person has to make up stuff: many people meet these moments in their careers. Some have great imaginations and seemingly can pull of any kind of con-thinking. The others - not so much and leave pretty much nothing to the imagination and belief of the opponents.
Maybe it's the fact that great things are best viewed at great distance? The sweeping overview and analysis of the historical figures and thinkers is wonderful. Octavian, Pericles, Sun Tzu, Cicero, Mark Antony, St. Augustine, Philip 2, Machiavelli, Elizabeth… all of them
Q:
I feel obliged now to try to say what I’ve learned. I’ve done so in a way that’s informal, impressionistic, and wholly idiosyncratic: my teachers bear no responsibility other than for setting me off on paths they couldn’t control. Because I seek patterns across time, space, and scale, I’ve felt free to suspend such constraints for comparative, even conversational purposes: St. Augustine and Machiavelli will occasionally talk with one another, as will Clausewitz and Tolstoy. Who is, in turn, the imaginer I’ve found most helpful; others include Virgil, Shakespeare, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Finally, I’ve returned often to the ideas of Sir Isaiah Berlin, whom I got to know slightly while visiting the University of Oxford in 1992–93. I hope he’d be pleased to be considered a grand strategist. I know he’d be amused. (c)
Q:
two of the very best ways to become intellectually indelible. The first is to be Delphic, a trick known to oracles throughout time. The second is to be Aesopian: turn your ideas into animals, and they’ll achieve immortality. (c)
Q:
… foxes were far more proficient predictors than hedgehogs, whose record approximated that of a dart-throwing (and presumably computer-simulated) chimpanzee. …
In short, foxes do it better. (c)
Q:
The simple answer is that Lincoln was a genius and most of us aren’t. Shakespeare, it appears, had no writing tutor. Does nobody else then need one?
It’s worth remembering also that Lincoln—and Shakespeare—had a lifetime to become who they were. Young people today don’t, because society so sharply segregates general education, professional training, ascent within an organization, responsibility for it, and then retirement. This worsens a problem Henry Kissinger identified long ago: that the “intellectual capital” leaders accumulate prior to reaching the top is all they’ll be able to draw on while at the top. There’s less time now than Lincoln had to learn anything new. (c)
Q:
The Greeks thought of culture as character. It was predictability across scale: the behavior of a city, a state, or a people in small things, big things, and those in between. Knowing who they were and what they wanted, the Spartans were wholly predictable. They saw no need to change themselves or anyone else. The Athenians’ strategy of walling their cities, however, had reshaped their character, obliging them restlessly to roam the world. Because they had changed, they would have to change others—that’s what having an empire means—but how many, to what extent, and by what means? No one, not even Pericles, could easily say. (c)
Q:
One way is to find flows you can go with. Having determined your destination, you set sails, motivate rowers, adjust for winds and currents, avoid shoals and rocks, allow for surprises, and expend finite energy efficiently. You control some things, but align yourself with others. You balance, while never forgetting that the reason you’re balancing is to get from where you are to where you want to go. You’re a fox and a hedgehog at the same time—even on water. That was the younger Pericles steering Athens: a polymath with a purpose.
Over time, though, Pericles began trying to control flows: the winds, the currents, the rowers, the rocks, the people, their enemies, and even fortune, he came to believe, would follow his orders. He could rely, therefore, on intricate causal chains: if A, then not only B, but inexorably C, D, and E. Plans, however complex, would go as planned. The older Pericles still steered Athens; now, however, he was a hedgehog trying to herd foxes, a different and more difficult enterprise. (c)
Q:
did the Athenians or the Spartans better adapt objectives to capabilities? And then analogies: did this tell us anything about the Cold War? And then democracies: did the one in Athens defeat itself? And then: what could the Athenians have been thinking when they sent an army to, of all places, Sicily? At which point there was silence, followed by a falling away of all constraints. Vietnam was not only up for discussion: it was for weeks all we talked about. We were doing post-traumatic stress therapy before it had a name. Thucydides trained us.
Q:
One day I asked what connection Prince Andrei, Natasha, and the bumbling Pierre could possibly have to their very different lives? There was, as at Newport, a moment of silence. Then three students simultaneously said the same thing: “They make us feel less lonely.”
Thucydides wouldn’t have put it in that way, but I suspect this is what he meant when he encouraged his readers to seek “knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it.” For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction. But to know the past only in static terms—as moments frozen in time and space—would be almost as disabling, because we’re the progeny of progressions across time and space that shift from small scales to big ones and back again. We know these through narratives, whether historical or fictional or a combination of both. Thucydides and Tolstoy are, therefore, closer than you might think, and we’re fortunate to be able to attend their seminars whenever we like.
Q:
For someone with so many names—Caius Octavius Thurinus, Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius, Imperator Caesar Augustus Divi Filius, Imperator Caesar Augustus Divi Filius Pater Patriae—he started out with relatively little. He was born into the family of a respectable but forgettable Roman senator in 63 B.C.E. By the time he was twenty, he was a third of a ruling triumvirate. He became at thirty-two the most powerful man in the “western” world. He died peacefully at seventy-six in a bed he’d selected, an extraordinary accomplishment for an emperor of that era—all the more so for his never having used that title. (c)
Q:
If Antony juggled mistresses, matrimony, and politics badly, the same was true of his military operations against the Parthians. He started too late to finish before winter, then accidentally revealed his plans to a spy, then failed to ensure the loyalty of allies along the way, and finally left his supply train so inadequately guarded that the Parthians destroyed it. He had no choice, at that point, but to order a costly retreat through snowstorms to the Syrian coast, where Cleopatra took her time re-equipping him. Antony reported to Rome, though, that all was well. (c)
Q:
After Actium, Octavian began controlling events, rather than letting them control him. He put off any new campaign against the Parthians. He placed local rulers—Herod in Judea was an example—in charge of difficult provinces. He settled veterans by giving them land and long-term support. He pleased Rome by accepting triumphs, staging games, and starting a building program meant to match Alexandria’s. But knowing the dangers of arrogance, he also affected modesty. He rushed through his triumphs instead of stretching them out, maintained less than luxurious living arrangements, and when returning from travel crept into the city to avoid elaborate welcomes. He secured authority by appearing to renounce it, most dramatically on the first day of 27 when he unexpectedly gave up all his responsibilities. The surprised senate had no choice but to forbid this and to award Octavian the title of princeps (“first citizen”)—as well as a new name: Augustus. (c) Sneaky.
Q:
by the strictest reckoning, the empire survived for four and a half centuries after Augustus’ death. Rome didn’t “fall” until 476. The Byzantine empire, founded by Constantine, would last for another thousand years; and his role in Christianizing the Roman empire would be at least as consequential as that of Augustus in establishing it. The Holy Roman empire, a European remnant of Roman rule, originated in 800 with Charlemagne—one of whose titles was “most serene Augustus”—and held itself together for its own thousand years, until Napoleon swept it aside. Even he knew better than to try that with the Roman Catholic Church, founded in the age of Augustus, which seems likely to endure for as far into our future as anyone can foresee, under the rule of a pontifex maximus, a position dating back to the ancient kings of Rome some six centuries before Octavian was born.
Q:
Longevity, for empires, is by no means automatic. Most have risen, fallen, and been forgotten. Others may be remembered for the legends they inspired, the arts they produced, or the ruins they left behind, but not for much else: who today would model a state on Xerxes’ Persia, or Pericles’ Athens, or Alexander’s Macedonia? Rome, though, is different—as is China. Their legacies—in language, religious belief, political institutions, legal principles, technological innovation, and imperial administration—have survived …
Q:
… common sense, when confronting uncommon circumstances, may itself be another of the contradictions held simultaneously in the minds of first-rate intelligences. (c)
Q:
The ruler of a microstate who macromanaged, therefore, coexisted in time with the ruler of a macrostate who micromanaged. This made no sense in terms of geography, logistics, or communications. (c)
Hedgehogs, Berlin explained, “relate everything to a single central vision” through which “all that they say and do has significance.” Foxes, in contrast, “pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way.” The distinction was simple but not frivolous: it offered “a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting point for genuine investigation.” It might even reflect “one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.” (c)
Those pesky Greeks and Romans and Chinese… they still manage to hijack every discourse on strategy where people dare to mention them. No, really, the Classic part was pretty much incredible. The Modern one - pretty shallow, self-congratulatory and disjointed.
I'm pretty sure that Gaddis as a lector is a delight to listen to. But this book seems to have challenged him beyond his ability of making it seem as if the US knew what it was doing at certain more challenging points of its practical strategy. I know full well when a person has to make up stuff: many people meet these moments in their careers. Some have great imaginations and seemingly can pull of any kind of con-thinking. The others - not so much and leave pretty much nothing to the imagination and belief of the opponents.
Maybe it's the fact that great things are best viewed at great distance? The sweeping overview and analysis of the historical figures and thinkers is wonderful. Octavian, Pericles, Sun Tzu, Cicero, Mark Antony, St. Augustine, Philip 2, Machiavelli, Elizabeth… all of them
Q:
I feel obliged now to try to say what I’ve learned. I’ve done so in a way that’s informal, impressionistic, and wholly idiosyncratic: my teachers bear no responsibility other than for setting me off on paths they couldn’t control. Because I seek patterns across time, space, and scale, I’ve felt free to suspend such constraints for comparative, even conversational purposes: St. Augustine and Machiavelli will occasionally talk with one another, as will Clausewitz and Tolstoy. Who is, in turn, the imaginer I’ve found most helpful; others include Virgil, Shakespeare, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Finally, I’ve returned often to the ideas of Sir Isaiah Berlin, whom I got to know slightly while visiting the University of Oxford in 1992–93. I hope he’d be pleased to be considered a grand strategist. I know he’d be amused. (c)
Q:
two of the very best ways to become intellectually indelible. The first is to be Delphic, a trick known to oracles throughout time. The second is to be Aesopian: turn your ideas into animals, and they’ll achieve immortality. (c)
Q:
… foxes were far more proficient predictors than hedgehogs, whose record approximated that of a dart-throwing (and presumably computer-simulated) chimpanzee. …
In short, foxes do it better. (c)
Q:
The simple answer is that Lincoln was a genius and most of us aren’t. Shakespeare, it appears, had no writing tutor. Does nobody else then need one?
It’s worth remembering also that Lincoln—and Shakespeare—had a lifetime to become who they were. Young people today don’t, because society so sharply segregates general education, professional training, ascent within an organization, responsibility for it, and then retirement. This worsens a problem Henry Kissinger identified long ago: that the “intellectual capital” leaders accumulate prior to reaching the top is all they’ll be able to draw on while at the top. There’s less time now than Lincoln had to learn anything new. (c)
Q:
The Greeks thought of culture as character. It was predictability across scale: the behavior of a city, a state, or a people in small things, big things, and those in between. Knowing who they were and what they wanted, the Spartans were wholly predictable. They saw no need to change themselves or anyone else. The Athenians’ strategy of walling their cities, however, had reshaped their character, obliging them restlessly to roam the world. Because they had changed, they would have to change others—that’s what having an empire means—but how many, to what extent, and by what means? No one, not even Pericles, could easily say. (c)
Q:
One way is to find flows you can go with. Having determined your destination, you set sails, motivate rowers, adjust for winds and currents, avoid shoals and rocks, allow for surprises, and expend finite energy efficiently. You control some things, but align yourself with others. You balance, while never forgetting that the reason you’re balancing is to get from where you are to where you want to go. You’re a fox and a hedgehog at the same time—even on water. That was the younger Pericles steering Athens: a polymath with a purpose.
Over time, though, Pericles began trying to control flows: the winds, the currents, the rowers, the rocks, the people, their enemies, and even fortune, he came to believe, would follow his orders. He could rely, therefore, on intricate causal chains: if A, then not only B, but inexorably C, D, and E. Plans, however complex, would go as planned. The older Pericles still steered Athens; now, however, he was a hedgehog trying to herd foxes, a different and more difficult enterprise. (c)
Q:
did the Athenians or the Spartans better adapt objectives to capabilities? And then analogies: did this tell us anything about the Cold War? And then democracies: did the one in Athens defeat itself? And then: what could the Athenians have been thinking when they sent an army to, of all places, Sicily? At which point there was silence, followed by a falling away of all constraints. Vietnam was not only up for discussion: it was for weeks all we talked about. We were doing post-traumatic stress therapy before it had a name. Thucydides trained us.
Q:
One day I asked what connection Prince Andrei, Natasha, and the bumbling Pierre could possibly have to their very different lives? There was, as at Newport, a moment of silence. Then three students simultaneously said the same thing: “They make us feel less lonely.”
Thucydides wouldn’t have put it in that way, but I suspect this is what he meant when he encouraged his readers to seek “knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it.” For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction. But to know the past only in static terms—as moments frozen in time and space—would be almost as disabling, because we’re the progeny of progressions across time and space that shift from small scales to big ones and back again. We know these through narratives, whether historical or fictional or a combination of both. Thucydides and Tolstoy are, therefore, closer than you might think, and we’re fortunate to be able to attend their seminars whenever we like.
Q:
For someone with so many names—Caius Octavius Thurinus, Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius, Imperator Caesar Augustus Divi Filius, Imperator Caesar Augustus Divi Filius Pater Patriae—he started out with relatively little. He was born into the family of a respectable but forgettable Roman senator in 63 B.C.E. By the time he was twenty, he was a third of a ruling triumvirate. He became at thirty-two the most powerful man in the “western” world. He died peacefully at seventy-six in a bed he’d selected, an extraordinary accomplishment for an emperor of that era—all the more so for his never having used that title. (c)
Q:
If Antony juggled mistresses, matrimony, and politics badly, the same was true of his military operations against the Parthians. He started too late to finish before winter, then accidentally revealed his plans to a spy, then failed to ensure the loyalty of allies along the way, and finally left his supply train so inadequately guarded that the Parthians destroyed it. He had no choice, at that point, but to order a costly retreat through snowstorms to the Syrian coast, where Cleopatra took her time re-equipping him. Antony reported to Rome, though, that all was well. (c)
Q:
After Actium, Octavian began controlling events, rather than letting them control him. He put off any new campaign against the Parthians. He placed local rulers—Herod in Judea was an example—in charge of difficult provinces. He settled veterans by giving them land and long-term support. He pleased Rome by accepting triumphs, staging games, and starting a building program meant to match Alexandria’s. But knowing the dangers of arrogance, he also affected modesty. He rushed through his triumphs instead of stretching them out, maintained less than luxurious living arrangements, and when returning from travel crept into the city to avoid elaborate welcomes. He secured authority by appearing to renounce it, most dramatically on the first day of 27 when he unexpectedly gave up all his responsibilities. The surprised senate had no choice but to forbid this and to award Octavian the title of princeps (“first citizen”)—as well as a new name: Augustus. (c) Sneaky.
Q:
by the strictest reckoning, the empire survived for four and a half centuries after Augustus’ death. Rome didn’t “fall” until 476. The Byzantine empire, founded by Constantine, would last for another thousand years; and his role in Christianizing the Roman empire would be at least as consequential as that of Augustus in establishing it. The Holy Roman empire, a European remnant of Roman rule, originated in 800 with Charlemagne—one of whose titles was “most serene Augustus”—and held itself together for its own thousand years, until Napoleon swept it aside. Even he knew better than to try that with the Roman Catholic Church, founded in the age of Augustus, which seems likely to endure for as far into our future as anyone can foresee, under the rule of a pontifex maximus, a position dating back to the ancient kings of Rome some six centuries before Octavian was born.
Q:
Longevity, for empires, is by no means automatic. Most have risen, fallen, and been forgotten. Others may be remembered for the legends they inspired, the arts they produced, or the ruins they left behind, but not for much else: who today would model a state on Xerxes’ Persia, or Pericles’ Athens, or Alexander’s Macedonia? Rome, though, is different—as is China. Their legacies—in language, religious belief, political institutions, legal principles, technological innovation, and imperial administration—have survived …
Q:
… common sense, when confronting uncommon circumstances, may itself be another of the contradictions held simultaneously in the minds of first-rate intelligences. (c)
Q:
The ruler of a microstate who macromanaged, therefore, coexisted in time with the ruler of a macrostate who micromanaged. This made no sense in terms of geography, logistics, or communications. (c)
April 19, 2018
This book had a strong start and I got really excited about it. But then he started making theological claims--and doing it really, really poorly. He introduced St. Augustine as a strategy thinker--which I found really interesting. But then he started poking fun at his theology (literally, sarcastic jabs and snide remarks). And then he started making claims about what Augustine actually believed--which contradicted all the known theological scholarship on Augustine. Oh, then he endorsed Machiavelli--and included spiritual commentary on Machiavelli, too. And then the next two monarchs included more of his personal opinion on their spiritual lives.
It became clear that he believed anyone who took God or morality seriously when making strategic decisions was deluded and/or lying.
Again, great start with some rich writing. But the actual ideas in the book were confused and weakened by his continual commentary on spiritual matters. I'd be okay with this if he had mature and specific insights on theology's impact on strategy. I'd actually love that. But his sweeping condemnations with no explanation ruined his book.
It became clear that he believed anyone who took God or morality seriously when making strategic decisions was deluded and/or lying.
Again, great start with some rich writing. But the actual ideas in the book were confused and weakened by his continual commentary on spiritual matters. I'd be okay with this if he had mature and specific insights on theology's impact on strategy. I'd actually love that. But his sweeping condemnations with no explanation ruined his book.
May 20, 2018
John Gaddis is a great scholar. His biography of Kennan is a fine book. His books on the history of the Cold War are excellent. I have former colleagues who still remember their undergraduate classes with him. This is a book about “Grand Strategy” - the linkage of the very top levels of political and military direction. Gaddis views the best examples of grand strategy as very messy, mixing general strategic theories with attention to situational complexities, personal differences among leaders, bad luck, and other factors. I am persuaded on this, although I was generally persuaded on it before I started the book - the idea is not a new one. Unfortunately, there was no need for the book to mirror the contradictions and tensions of strategy. It is quite possible to write a well organized and clear book about something that is itself neither clear nor distinct. The author has more control over his/her presentation of abstract ideas that the political leader or top general has over what happens on the battlefield. A book about strategy does not need to read like the battle of Waterloo. A clearer argument - or perhaps another book would have helped a lot. This book turns out to be a set of written up class notes for his Yale seminar, but since I already knew the case studies, I was more interested in his general arguments about strategy rather than what he makes his undergraduates read at Yale.
I have a further related issue with the book. Many of the big ideas in the book - and the various theorists who are discussed in detail - have been motivated by the work of Isaiah Berlin, a British philosopher and historian of ideas who had a prolific career and rich life as a witness to the unfolding of WW1 and WW2 and a writer of memorable essays on intellectual history and on great political theorists. So what is so bad about having Berlin’s writings motivate a book? Nothing I guess. The trouble is one of truth in packaging - or at least clarity in packaging. I am not sure I would have picked up the book and jumped in had known its motivation ahead of time. I will give the book credit - it got me to think, but I wish I had been more focused on the ideas than on the book itself.
Let’s start with what Grand Strategy is. Well, that is not entirely clear. It has to do with military capabilities. It also has to do with a state or nation’s economic capabilities. The two are quite different. How do the military and economic capabilities fit together? How can they be used together by political leaders. How should they fit together? The answers depend, of course, on the nature of the threats facing the polity - and the timing of those threats.
Size and scale matter too, but how? The problems of grand strategy are different for large empires than for small nation states. They are different for water striding trading states than for land based empires. Some of the political units of interest to Gaddis are huge - the US under Wilson or Roosevelt, the British Empire in 1900, the Soviet Union under Stalin, or Nazi Germany. In other cases, the scale is reduced - Greeks versus Persions, Sparta and allies versus the Athenian Empire. So what constitutes grand strategy for Thucydides would only quality as a local theater strategy for Churchill? We still want to talk about Grand Strategy though, even if the invasion of Russia takes on different tones depending on whether you are Napoleon, Ludendorff, or Hitler, since each successive effort can recall the prior efforts, even though they are occurring at different times, with different technologies and national capabilities, and different patterns of strategic interactions.
But the people at the top matter too. The movements of millions of people and trillions of dollars are at stake but we also need to focus in on the key individuals who drive events - the interactions of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the great wartime conferences or the mix of personalities at the Paris Peace conference in 1919. OK, fair enough, but again this is hardly a new idea. But how do we think constructively about the interactions of a few dozen critical people with actions and events that far exceed the abilities of such a group to understand what is really happening? Isn’t there some sort of organizational overlay that will help explain how the people at the top get anything moral or useful done under the pressures of geopolitical crises? Of courses there is, and Gaddis hints at it in passing, through such ideas as social institutions, separation of powers, and the like. But the danger here is that if you do not mind your argumentative garden, you end up losing control and not covering much of anything well since things are sometimes just too complicated.
Given the varieties of strategic experiences in the cases that Gaddis discusses, it is to be expected that the arguments start including a series of decision process dimensions. How are decisions made in the political unit? Is the unit centralized or decentralized? Is the leader accountable to others or not? Does the leader have to answer to a legislature or to courts? Or does the leader make the law? How does information flow in the strategic situations? Battle is inherently foggy of course, but does the leader have better or worse information about the battlefield. Can the political leader interact constructively with military leaders during crises or does he dominate them - or get dominated in return? Is the top leader a good enough strategist? The examples that show how things can work out well (Lincoln, Roosevelt) are matched by examples where they do not (Napoleon, Hitler). But what is new here? I guess a lot if one is an undergraduate, but these intellectual riffs are well known.
At this point, I am willing to stipulate that Grand Strategy is complicated — but I already knew that. Gaddis goes into more discussion about issues of strategic theory - What is the abstract story that ties together what a leader wants to do politically, economically, and militarily in a given situation and does that theory permit the decision makers to focus productively during wartime? There is a tension here too - at one extreme, an overarching theory would lead to failure, since exceptions, unforeseen situations, and local noise will render any theory of limited value. See the French and Germans on the Marne in 1914. If one abandons theory, however, then decision makers will cease to lead and will respond to new developments and lose any initiative in the process. The tricky part, of course, is how to balance between the extremes of theory and the extremes of situational prompts. Gaddis discusses the need for leaders to hold contradictions together and continue to function and it is one of the more enlightening parts of the book.
Gaddis goes through a series of cases of Grand Strategy, in which these tensions are central, but ends up providing fairly simplified histories of each case with detailed arguments that have largely been make by others. I do not really mind this, especially given the role of Berlin’s ideas in the book, but it means that what Gaddis is actually arguing is the material that holds the chapters/examples together. So just what is Gaddis’s argument and what is the general rehash of the Grand Strategy questions of the US Civil War, the US Revolution, World War 1 and 2, and the Cold War. I generally know these other stories and so I was a bit frustrated in trying to isolate the Gaddis argument from the rest of the the book and then evaluate them.
It is also clear that these chapters are actually detailed essays that tie in classics in the strategy literature with the problems posed to some decision maker by a set of circumstances. I like reviewing the classics, but it changes the nature of the book. Instead of reading what Professor Gaddis is arguing about Grand Strategy, we instead are interested in how he riffs on the greatest hits in Grand Strategy across the ages. I found the discussion of how Thucydides could and did help US military command personnel in deconstructing the Vietnam experience (a process during which the idea of “after action review” developed) a worthwhile read, but I was left wondering just what Gaddis was attempting to accomplish in this book. There are also examples where some more recent work is worth reading along with Berlin’s essays, for example Erica Benner’s work on Machiavelli.
There is a broader question of policy analysis here. The cases discussed by Professor Gaddis are important and well known. These chapters do not present much that is new here. But is a focus on well known historical cases of much importance to decision makers going forward? If I am a policy maker, what do I do differently after having read this book? I may understand how Churchill led the British in 1940-1941 but what does the book say about helping to manage Britain in the present or going forward? The same could be said about the US. What does the analysis of the Korean War suggest about what the President should do about the military and political situation on the main pathways today? For example, what about current initiatives for addressing the longstanding stalemate on the Korean Peninsula today? This book is not detailed enough to be a good history book and in some ways it is too analytic to be a good history. If one wants to argue how strategy can be a tool to assist leaders, then it behooves the arguer to provide more details about how to use serious thinking about Grand Strategy as a way to improve one’s decision making.
I have a further related issue with the book. Many of the big ideas in the book - and the various theorists who are discussed in detail - have been motivated by the work of Isaiah Berlin, a British philosopher and historian of ideas who had a prolific career and rich life as a witness to the unfolding of WW1 and WW2 and a writer of memorable essays on intellectual history and on great political theorists. So what is so bad about having Berlin’s writings motivate a book? Nothing I guess. The trouble is one of truth in packaging - or at least clarity in packaging. I am not sure I would have picked up the book and jumped in had known its motivation ahead of time. I will give the book credit - it got me to think, but I wish I had been more focused on the ideas than on the book itself.
Let’s start with what Grand Strategy is. Well, that is not entirely clear. It has to do with military capabilities. It also has to do with a state or nation’s economic capabilities. The two are quite different. How do the military and economic capabilities fit together? How can they be used together by political leaders. How should they fit together? The answers depend, of course, on the nature of the threats facing the polity - and the timing of those threats.
Size and scale matter too, but how? The problems of grand strategy are different for large empires than for small nation states. They are different for water striding trading states than for land based empires. Some of the political units of interest to Gaddis are huge - the US under Wilson or Roosevelt, the British Empire in 1900, the Soviet Union under Stalin, or Nazi Germany. In other cases, the scale is reduced - Greeks versus Persions, Sparta and allies versus the Athenian Empire. So what constitutes grand strategy for Thucydides would only quality as a local theater strategy for Churchill? We still want to talk about Grand Strategy though, even if the invasion of Russia takes on different tones depending on whether you are Napoleon, Ludendorff, or Hitler, since each successive effort can recall the prior efforts, even though they are occurring at different times, with different technologies and national capabilities, and different patterns of strategic interactions.
But the people at the top matter too. The movements of millions of people and trillions of dollars are at stake but we also need to focus in on the key individuals who drive events - the interactions of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the great wartime conferences or the mix of personalities at the Paris Peace conference in 1919. OK, fair enough, but again this is hardly a new idea. But how do we think constructively about the interactions of a few dozen critical people with actions and events that far exceed the abilities of such a group to understand what is really happening? Isn’t there some sort of organizational overlay that will help explain how the people at the top get anything moral or useful done under the pressures of geopolitical crises? Of courses there is, and Gaddis hints at it in passing, through such ideas as social institutions, separation of powers, and the like. But the danger here is that if you do not mind your argumentative garden, you end up losing control and not covering much of anything well since things are sometimes just too complicated.
Given the varieties of strategic experiences in the cases that Gaddis discusses, it is to be expected that the arguments start including a series of decision process dimensions. How are decisions made in the political unit? Is the unit centralized or decentralized? Is the leader accountable to others or not? Does the leader have to answer to a legislature or to courts? Or does the leader make the law? How does information flow in the strategic situations? Battle is inherently foggy of course, but does the leader have better or worse information about the battlefield. Can the political leader interact constructively with military leaders during crises or does he dominate them - or get dominated in return? Is the top leader a good enough strategist? The examples that show how things can work out well (Lincoln, Roosevelt) are matched by examples where they do not (Napoleon, Hitler). But what is new here? I guess a lot if one is an undergraduate, but these intellectual riffs are well known.
At this point, I am willing to stipulate that Grand Strategy is complicated — but I already knew that. Gaddis goes into more discussion about issues of strategic theory - What is the abstract story that ties together what a leader wants to do politically, economically, and militarily in a given situation and does that theory permit the decision makers to focus productively during wartime? There is a tension here too - at one extreme, an overarching theory would lead to failure, since exceptions, unforeseen situations, and local noise will render any theory of limited value. See the French and Germans on the Marne in 1914. If one abandons theory, however, then decision makers will cease to lead and will respond to new developments and lose any initiative in the process. The tricky part, of course, is how to balance between the extremes of theory and the extremes of situational prompts. Gaddis discusses the need for leaders to hold contradictions together and continue to function and it is one of the more enlightening parts of the book.
Gaddis goes through a series of cases of Grand Strategy, in which these tensions are central, but ends up providing fairly simplified histories of each case with detailed arguments that have largely been make by others. I do not really mind this, especially given the role of Berlin’s ideas in the book, but it means that what Gaddis is actually arguing is the material that holds the chapters/examples together. So just what is Gaddis’s argument and what is the general rehash of the Grand Strategy questions of the US Civil War, the US Revolution, World War 1 and 2, and the Cold War. I generally know these other stories and so I was a bit frustrated in trying to isolate the Gaddis argument from the rest of the the book and then evaluate them.
It is also clear that these chapters are actually detailed essays that tie in classics in the strategy literature with the problems posed to some decision maker by a set of circumstances. I like reviewing the classics, but it changes the nature of the book. Instead of reading what Professor Gaddis is arguing about Grand Strategy, we instead are interested in how he riffs on the greatest hits in Grand Strategy across the ages. I found the discussion of how Thucydides could and did help US military command personnel in deconstructing the Vietnam experience (a process during which the idea of “after action review” developed) a worthwhile read, but I was left wondering just what Gaddis was attempting to accomplish in this book. There are also examples where some more recent work is worth reading along with Berlin’s essays, for example Erica Benner’s work on Machiavelli.
There is a broader question of policy analysis here. The cases discussed by Professor Gaddis are important and well known. These chapters do not present much that is new here. But is a focus on well known historical cases of much importance to decision makers going forward? If I am a policy maker, what do I do differently after having read this book? I may understand how Churchill led the British in 1940-1941 but what does the book say about helping to manage Britain in the present or going forward? The same could be said about the US. What does the analysis of the Korean War suggest about what the President should do about the military and political situation on the main pathways today? For example, what about current initiatives for addressing the longstanding stalemate on the Korean Peninsula today? This book is not detailed enough to be a good history book and in some ways it is too analytic to be a good history. If one wants to argue how strategy can be a tool to assist leaders, then it behooves the arguer to provide more details about how to use serious thinking about Grand Strategy as a way to improve one’s decision making.
September 30, 2018
Awfully disappointed. If you missed out on an Ivy League education, don’t feel deprived. The book is basically a series of lectures to our future leaders. The examples of bad strategy are easy and obvious—Xerxes invades Greece, the Syracusian expedition, Napoleon’s advance to Moscow, Wilson and the League. The good ones: Lincoln and slavery, FDR and WWII (though Gaddis goes awfully easily on the betrayal of the Poles). I wish Gaddis had tackled some tough choices like Churchill in 1940 or LBJ and Vietnam.
May 25, 2018
This book really disappointed me. I expected a discussion of, well, strategy. Instead, this was more of a self-help book with historical examples. Those historical examples were largely context-light, presented as simplistic archetypes of styles of thinking. (Gaddis particularly loves the device of pitting two historical figures against each other as opposing archetypes.) A reader wouldn't come away from this book with any deeper understanding of military strategy, international relations or politics. You could get some insight about how to think better about challenges in your own life, but I don't think it's particularly good at that, too. Mostly it's just a simplified collection of historical examples shoe-horned into the old metaphor of foxes and hedgehogs — the one where the fox knows many things and the hedgehog knows one big thing. (Gaddis argues for an optimal third way halfway in between, or maybe a little closer to the fox than the hedgehog.) It's a fun metaphor but doesn't really hold up at book length.
Others who enjoy self-improvement books more, or aren't as immersed in history as I am, might like this more. (If someone wants to buy my copy for $5 or $10, you're welcome to it!)
Others who enjoy self-improvement books more, or aren't as immersed in history as I am, might like this more. (If someone wants to buy my copy for $5 or $10, you're welcome to it!)
June 3, 2018
John L. Gaddis uses these pages to reflect on what his decades of study have revealed to him regarding grand strategy. He brings together an extremely wide and varied treasure of historical sketches to illustrate his thoughts. It might seem a bit ponderous and overwhelming to a reader who has not studied a lot of history (and possibly even to some who have), but Gaddis’s effort is effective. At the center of his argument is the management of intellectual contradictions as well as the need to differentiate between what a leader wants to do (aspirations) and what can be done (capabilities). It might sound simple but it is not. Not by a long shot.
I can see a lot of criticism of this book coming from that large swath of our society that desires clear-cut answers and black-and-white solutions to really big and complex questions. Unfortunately, such a tendency is common in our low-context and immediate gratification culture. However, “strategy” is one of the most elusive concepts in human experience. It defies a single definition - at least in part because so many scholars have offered innumerable variations. “Strategy” is possibly the most overused and misused term in our leadership lexicon. If nothing else, Gaddis’s book reaffirms that strategy is a difficult and messy business, filled with pitfalls and obstacles - many of which result from personal shortcomings such as intellectual rigidity, weakness of character, fear, and hubris. “Solutions” that are effective in one case are often not so in other circumstances. There is no blueprint that one can follow step-by-step to success.
The “fox or hedgehog” analogy that Gaddis co-opts into his argument is fantastic. In short, he argues that great strategists need to be both. The hedgehog mentality provides long term focus and the ability to persevere in pursuit of an overarching goal despite daunting challenges. The fox mentality is the adaptiveness that allows one to recognize when ends are beginning to outstrip available means. A “fox” recognizes the perils that endanger strategy and adjusts course accordingly - he picks his battles, sometimes giving the impression of moral compromise but preserving the ability to continue the struggle. The “hedgehog” ensures that the fox’s adjustments don’t take one too far off the guiding azimuth that began the journey in the first place. A great strategist must have both of these within himself - or, at the very least, must be able to harness both within an organization.
Gaddis’s prescription is not for the intellectually lazy nor the timid souls who seek reassurance in absolute consistency. In this way, Gaddis’s book might be one of the more useful and accurate descriptions of what it takes to navigate the strategic waters in which nations travel in global affairs.
I can see a lot of criticism of this book coming from that large swath of our society that desires clear-cut answers and black-and-white solutions to really big and complex questions. Unfortunately, such a tendency is common in our low-context and immediate gratification culture. However, “strategy” is one of the most elusive concepts in human experience. It defies a single definition - at least in part because so many scholars have offered innumerable variations. “Strategy” is possibly the most overused and misused term in our leadership lexicon. If nothing else, Gaddis’s book reaffirms that strategy is a difficult and messy business, filled with pitfalls and obstacles - many of which result from personal shortcomings such as intellectual rigidity, weakness of character, fear, and hubris. “Solutions” that are effective in one case are often not so in other circumstances. There is no blueprint that one can follow step-by-step to success.
The “fox or hedgehog” analogy that Gaddis co-opts into his argument is fantastic. In short, he argues that great strategists need to be both. The hedgehog mentality provides long term focus and the ability to persevere in pursuit of an overarching goal despite daunting challenges. The fox mentality is the adaptiveness that allows one to recognize when ends are beginning to outstrip available means. A “fox” recognizes the perils that endanger strategy and adjusts course accordingly - he picks his battles, sometimes giving the impression of moral compromise but preserving the ability to continue the struggle. The “hedgehog” ensures that the fox’s adjustments don’t take one too far off the guiding azimuth that began the journey in the first place. A great strategist must have both of these within himself - or, at the very least, must be able to harness both within an organization.
Gaddis’s prescription is not for the intellectually lazy nor the timid souls who seek reassurance in absolute consistency. In this way, Gaddis’s book might be one of the more useful and accurate descriptions of what it takes to navigate the strategic waters in which nations travel in global affairs.
May 5, 2018
The book is much drier and way less interesting than its title and intro make it out to be. Basically, it's a retelling of the peloponnesian wars and other wars and an explication of fox and hedgehog thinking in war and in life. The book was modeled on a class. I would imagine the class would be interesting and popular, but it's pretty war-focused and not all that broadly applicable.
April 23, 2018
Feels like you’re following Gaddis’ thought process. Best takeaway point: common sense is like oxygen: the higher you go the thinner it becomes.
August 6, 2018
On Grand Strategy, by John Lewis Gaddis, is an interesting book examining Grand Strategy from the perspective of various case studies. The book examines US strategies during its Civil War, and its Cold War struggle with the USSR. It looks at the British Empire in 1900, the collapse of Napoleon's short lived French Empire, and even strategy from the Peloponnesian War. Gaddis looks at the complexity of Grand Strategy, both from its political, military, and human dimensions. He does so by examining figures in history, strategies in battle, and outcomes of campaigns. He discusses the merits of the "Hedgehog" and the "Fox". That is, one who thinks in grand terms, and one who thinks on details, respectively. This is a theme common throughout the book, and he looks to marry these two types of thought together; one must focus both on a grander idea or objective, as well as the detail and minutia of day to day logistics to accomplish ones task. Grand thinkers like Xerxes, Napoleon and Hitler often failed due to there own hubris and inability to build supply lines, placate allies, or properly equip troops. There grand vision distorted the on the ground realities. One must dampen these visions and distill them down to reality.
Gaddis' book is interesting, but also a bit chaotic. The book felt like a series of lectures that were connected, but only marginally. There is a grand sweep of history here, but ironically the minutia seems to be ignored. I understand it would be difficult or lengthy to discuss historical detail in a book looking more at examining principles of Grand Strategy, but it also detracts from the books thesis, and often runs of on tangents not necessarily relevant to the narrative. This unfortunately makes the book a bit difficult to read, not only for its rapidly moving complexity, but also its seeming lack of focus. The principles of Grand Strategy touched on in this book seemed to be laid out sporadically, and in metaphor. There is no clear break down of what Gaddis is thinking, and it seems like he wants to make the reader think, more so than distilling or discussing the principles of Grand Strategy. Discussions on the subordination of war to policy, on the need for attention to both grand and small details, and the examination of crafty generals and politicians, like Clausewitz, Lincoln, and so on, are all interesting. However, the ruminations are unclear, and more thought provoking than useful.
As can be seen, this is a mixed bag for me, but a generally positive one. Although I have my reservations about this book, it is still a thoughtfully written text on grand strategy. Gaddis has certainly written a thought provoking text, and I would recommend a read for those interested in the subject. It is a rare occasion for a book on this subject to receive such wide interest, and therefore it should not be missed if you feel it is of interest.
Gaddis' book is interesting, but also a bit chaotic. The book felt like a series of lectures that were connected, but only marginally. There is a grand sweep of history here, but ironically the minutia seems to be ignored. I understand it would be difficult or lengthy to discuss historical detail in a book looking more at examining principles of Grand Strategy, but it also detracts from the books thesis, and often runs of on tangents not necessarily relevant to the narrative. This unfortunately makes the book a bit difficult to read, not only for its rapidly moving complexity, but also its seeming lack of focus. The principles of Grand Strategy touched on in this book seemed to be laid out sporadically, and in metaphor. There is no clear break down of what Gaddis is thinking, and it seems like he wants to make the reader think, more so than distilling or discussing the principles of Grand Strategy. Discussions on the subordination of war to policy, on the need for attention to both grand and small details, and the examination of crafty generals and politicians, like Clausewitz, Lincoln, and so on, are all interesting. However, the ruminations are unclear, and more thought provoking than useful.
As can be seen, this is a mixed bag for me, but a generally positive one. Although I have my reservations about this book, it is still a thoughtfully written text on grand strategy. Gaddis has certainly written a thought provoking text, and I would recommend a read for those interested in the subject. It is a rare occasion for a book on this subject to receive such wide interest, and therefore it should not be missed if you feel it is of interest.
December 9, 2018
John Lewis Gaddis's On Grand Strategy (2018) is a fascinating book, an erudite tour de force by an eminent historian on what it is to think successfully in an arena of human conflict, in this case, war. Based on lectures at the Naval War College and at a Yale seminar "Studies in Grand Strategy," it focuses on effective strategic thinking: how should one think in a strategic context such as going to war? What principles should apply to limiting strategic decisions? How does history inform us about these principles? Be prepared: Gaddis is polysyllabic and at times one needs a code sheet to unravel definitions.
Gaddis frequently repeats the mantra that effective strategies consider three dimensions: time, space, and scale. At the outset I thought I understood what these meant, but as I read on I found I wasn't sure. Not until the end of the book does he attempt definitions, and they didn't satisfy. So here's what I think he means. Time and Space are straightforward: the timing of events, (sort of like "Don't strike till the iron is hot;") and the location of events with consideration of irregularities like topography, rivers, and so on. Scale is more squishy—it seems to deal with the breadth of the front (local, national, regional, global level). Here I think Gaddis means logistical issues—the ability to sustain force.
The Fox and the Hedgehog: Balancing Aspirations and Capacities
The book opens with a fly-on-the-wall discussion in 480 BC between Xerxes and his chief advisor, Artabanas. Xerxes has an aspiration: the goal of invading Greece as did his father, Darius, a decade earlier—but this time successfully. He asks Artabanas' opinion and is told of the many pitfalls, particularly the logistical problems of sustaining a large fleet and army in enemy territory. Xerxes, intent on the goal and not the path, filled with hubris and heedless of impediments, invades Greece and is defeated at Thermopylae by a mere 300 Spartans. Why?
Gaddis begins his answer with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald defining a first-rate intelligence as:
To reinforce this idea, Gaddis introduces the 1953 story of The Fox and the Hedgehog told by the Oxford Don Isaiah Berlin. The fox and the hedgehog both want the same goal—they share an aspiration. The hedgehog's strategy is to keep his eye on the goal, ignoring the impediments and assuming that he will overcome all obstacles: his motto is, "Forge Ahead!" The fox also keeps his eye on the goal, but he anticipates the pitfalls before proceeding and is willing to adjust when circumstances require: his motto is "Plan carefully before forging ahead, then adapt!" The central difference is how the two balance aspirations and capacities when making strategic decisions: the go-for-it hedgehog ranks the aspiration above the capacity; the more thoughtful fox carefully assesses the impediments and then decides.
Success, then, says Gaddis, depends to a large extent on how the leaders think, not what they think! Both the fox and the hedgehog can share the same aspiration and see the same obstacles. Which, then is most likely to succeed? He reports that studies correlating the success of military ventures with the thinking style of the leaders support the fox over the hedgehog. In the example of Xerxes, whose large army was defeated by a few Spartans, the fox understood that the chief obstacle to success was logistical—the supply line from Persia would be too long and local provisions too scarce. The hedgehog downgraded the importance of logistics and paid the price.
Ethics, Justice, and God
Gaddis moves on to questions of ethics and justice in strategic decisions. He does this by contrasting Augustine, a saint, and Machiavelli, a devil to many. Both saw ethical principles like "justice" not as ideals to be reached but as a balance of tension between forces: the just was somewhere between the clearly good and the clearly evil. For Augustine, the Prince (i.e., the state) was the arbiter of earthly justice and God was the proper judge of the Prince. Augustine was fully aware that decisions made on earth would be reflections of earthly realities. This did not mean that anything goes on Planet Earth. Rather, Augustine recommended that the Prince draw up a checklist to determine whether his actions reflect the principles of a just action: "Is this action necessary to the survival of the state?" "Is the harm of action less than the harm of inaction?" "Is the action proportional to the offense?" Before choosing war, he argued, complete that checklist to determine that your action meets the requirements of a "just action." Then let God determine whether you were right on the Judgement Day.
In contrast, Machiavelli dispensed with God as a factor in man's condition and focused directly on the responsibilities and actions of the Prince. He saw Man as a failed experiment—brutal, venal, and self-serving; a realistic insight but not well received by idealists. Machiavelli and Augustine agreed that the ideal is the enemy of the real, and that no balance existed between the real and the ideal—the ideal was simply unattainable on earth and the only balance that could be considered was between different realities.
For Machiavelli, the affairs of government were stabilized not by God's intervention or by the Prince's adherence to an ideal. Rather, both within and between states there must be a stable system balancing competing tensions: if a group or a state acted outside of the agreed-upon rules, other groups or states would intervene to restore balance. Machiavelli would have applauded the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that ended the destructive Thirty Years War, a treaty that implemented this notion of balance of power. Thus, when 150 years later Napoleon's aggressions created imbalance, Russia, Great Britain, and other European countries countered him and France was forced back into the fold.
The Prince, thought Machiavelli, had a primary responsibility: survival and stability of the state. Here Gaddis compares the monarchies of Elizabeth I and Spain's Philip II. Philip, a hedgehog, felt that his aspirations were a mandate from God and his headlong effort to equate his own inclinations with God's wishes frequently led him to get in his own way, failing to compare aspirations and capacities ("God will provide!") and dogmatically proceeding on collision courses.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, had no sense of a mandate from God, nor did she feel that a course once chosen could not be modified. Her approach to every problem was light-hearted delay, a refusal to be pinned down, an unwillingness to commit to a single course. Under Elizabeth wise dithering, delay and dissembling defeated Philip's Armada—first by storm and then by cleverly employing fireships against Philip's fleet. Elizabeth was the fox, a perfect Machiavellian devoted to the security of her state and willing to take any means to achieve it, God be hanged! Philip, the hedgehog, took direction from God and embarked on ventures he was incapable of winning.
American Presidents
Gaddis sees Abraham Lincoln the most able of foxes. Lincoln had many goals: the maintenance of the rule of law and the elimination of slavery were high among them, but he had one primary goal—the preservation of the Union, without which the individual states would become a bickering rabble. He was willing to balance these objectives by choosing moments when support of each sec0ndary goal would serve the primary goal—he used his poorly defined "war powers" to ignore the Supreme Court on matters of habeas corpus and the rights of slave owners (Dred Scott), he signed an antislavery proclamation but keep it in his desk until it was the right time to wave it. Understanding that the North had the greater resources but that the South had the greater mobility, he held his Proclamation back until McClelland's "victory" at Antietam indicated a balance between resources and mobility.
Gaddis places Woodrow Wilson at the other end of the Presidential Pantheon. Though foxlike in some ways, as in choosing the timing of the U. S. entry into WWI, his emphasis on ideals in management of the Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles carried little recognition of the issues that remained between the once-warring states; what was needed was not idealism but foxy realism. Thus, Gaddis seems to endorse John Maynard Keynes’s criticism that Wilson came to Versailles waving a page of platitudes to which he had given little thought, and he left leaving little behind but troubles.
Five Stars.
Gaddis frequently repeats the mantra that effective strategies consider three dimensions: time, space, and scale. At the outset I thought I understood what these meant, but as I read on I found I wasn't sure. Not until the end of the book does he attempt definitions, and they didn't satisfy. So here's what I think he means. Time and Space are straightforward: the timing of events, (sort of like "Don't strike till the iron is hot;") and the location of events with consideration of irregularities like topography, rivers, and so on. Scale is more squishy—it seems to deal with the breadth of the front (local, national, regional, global level). Here I think Gaddis means logistical issues—the ability to sustain force.
The Fox and the Hedgehog: Balancing Aspirations and Capacities
The book opens with a fly-on-the-wall discussion in 480 BC between Xerxes and his chief advisor, Artabanas. Xerxes has an aspiration: the goal of invading Greece as did his father, Darius, a decade earlier—but this time successfully. He asks Artabanas' opinion and is told of the many pitfalls, particularly the logistical problems of sustaining a large fleet and army in enemy territory. Xerxes, intent on the goal and not the path, filled with hubris and heedless of impediments, invades Greece and is defeated at Thermopylae by a mere 300 Spartans. Why?
Gaddis begins his answer with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald defining a first-rate intelligence as:
One that has the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to functionIn short, the ability to make decisions when you there is a balance of opposing choices like "stand pat" or "go or it"?
To reinforce this idea, Gaddis introduces the 1953 story of The Fox and the Hedgehog told by the Oxford Don Isaiah Berlin. The fox and the hedgehog both want the same goal—they share an aspiration. The hedgehog's strategy is to keep his eye on the goal, ignoring the impediments and assuming that he will overcome all obstacles: his motto is, "Forge Ahead!" The fox also keeps his eye on the goal, but he anticipates the pitfalls before proceeding and is willing to adjust when circumstances require: his motto is "Plan carefully before forging ahead, then adapt!" The central difference is how the two balance aspirations and capacities when making strategic decisions: the go-for-it hedgehog ranks the aspiration above the capacity; the more thoughtful fox carefully assesses the impediments and then decides.
Success, then, says Gaddis, depends to a large extent on how the leaders think, not what they think! Both the fox and the hedgehog can share the same aspiration and see the same obstacles. Which, then is most likely to succeed? He reports that studies correlating the success of military ventures with the thinking style of the leaders support the fox over the hedgehog. In the example of Xerxes, whose large army was defeated by a few Spartans, the fox understood that the chief obstacle to success was logistical—the supply line from Persia would be too long and local provisions too scarce. The hedgehog downgraded the importance of logistics and paid the price.
Ethics, Justice, and God
Gaddis moves on to questions of ethics and justice in strategic decisions. He does this by contrasting Augustine, a saint, and Machiavelli, a devil to many. Both saw ethical principles like "justice" not as ideals to be reached but as a balance of tension between forces: the just was somewhere between the clearly good and the clearly evil. For Augustine, the Prince (i.e., the state) was the arbiter of earthly justice and God was the proper judge of the Prince. Augustine was fully aware that decisions made on earth would be reflections of earthly realities. This did not mean that anything goes on Planet Earth. Rather, Augustine recommended that the Prince draw up a checklist to determine whether his actions reflect the principles of a just action: "Is this action necessary to the survival of the state?" "Is the harm of action less than the harm of inaction?" "Is the action proportional to the offense?" Before choosing war, he argued, complete that checklist to determine that your action meets the requirements of a "just action." Then let God determine whether you were right on the Judgement Day.
In contrast, Machiavelli dispensed with God as a factor in man's condition and focused directly on the responsibilities and actions of the Prince. He saw Man as a failed experiment—brutal, venal, and self-serving; a realistic insight but not well received by idealists. Machiavelli and Augustine agreed that the ideal is the enemy of the real, and that no balance existed between the real and the ideal—the ideal was simply unattainable on earth and the only balance that could be considered was between different realities.
For Machiavelli, the affairs of government were stabilized not by God's intervention or by the Prince's adherence to an ideal. Rather, both within and between states there must be a stable system balancing competing tensions: if a group or a state acted outside of the agreed-upon rules, other groups or states would intervene to restore balance. Machiavelli would have applauded the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that ended the destructive Thirty Years War, a treaty that implemented this notion of balance of power. Thus, when 150 years later Napoleon's aggressions created imbalance, Russia, Great Britain, and other European countries countered him and France was forced back into the fold.
The Prince, thought Machiavelli, had a primary responsibility: survival and stability of the state. Here Gaddis compares the monarchies of Elizabeth I and Spain's Philip II. Philip, a hedgehog, felt that his aspirations were a mandate from God and his headlong effort to equate his own inclinations with God's wishes frequently led him to get in his own way, failing to compare aspirations and capacities ("God will provide!") and dogmatically proceeding on collision courses.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, had no sense of a mandate from God, nor did she feel that a course once chosen could not be modified. Her approach to every problem was light-hearted delay, a refusal to be pinned down, an unwillingness to commit to a single course. Under Elizabeth wise dithering, delay and dissembling defeated Philip's Armada—first by storm and then by cleverly employing fireships against Philip's fleet. Elizabeth was the fox, a perfect Machiavellian devoted to the security of her state and willing to take any means to achieve it, God be hanged! Philip, the hedgehog, took direction from God and embarked on ventures he was incapable of winning.
American Presidents
Gaddis sees Abraham Lincoln the most able of foxes. Lincoln had many goals: the maintenance of the rule of law and the elimination of slavery were high among them, but he had one primary goal—the preservation of the Union, without which the individual states would become a bickering rabble. He was willing to balance these objectives by choosing moments when support of each sec0ndary goal would serve the primary goal—he used his poorly defined "war powers" to ignore the Supreme Court on matters of habeas corpus and the rights of slave owners (Dred Scott), he signed an antislavery proclamation but keep it in his desk until it was the right time to wave it. Understanding that the North had the greater resources but that the South had the greater mobility, he held his Proclamation back until McClelland's "victory" at Antietam indicated a balance between resources and mobility.
Gaddis places Woodrow Wilson at the other end of the Presidential Pantheon. Though foxlike in some ways, as in choosing the timing of the U. S. entry into WWI, his emphasis on ideals in management of the Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles carried little recognition of the issues that remained between the once-warring states; what was needed was not idealism but foxy realism. Thus, Gaddis seems to endorse John Maynard Keynes’s criticism that Wilson came to Versailles waving a page of platitudes to which he had given little thought, and he left leaving little behind but troubles.
Five Stars.
January 18, 2024
Gaddis is an excellent historian and his emphasis on the primacy of liberal arts over social sciences in international relations is certainly a view that stands a broader test of time. At times freewheeling and sweeping, Gaddis’ reach occasionally exceeds his grasp (the Tolstoy chapter). But there are moments of brilliant insight into grand strategy that Gaddis can only reach through pushing the envelop with his subject matter and risk editorializing. But overall, a very worthy treatment of a conceptually elusive topic, in stark contrast to the antiseptic treatment of Hal Brands or the buzzword salad of Joseph Nye. Gaddis remains the high-minded Yale historian throughout, and that is both the book’s charm and its indulgence.
March 31, 2019
Read my full review here: https://medium.com/@nahua/on-grand-st...
John Lewis Gaddis’ book aims to train a new generation of leaders not with high-tech wizardry, theoretical frameworks, or ideologies. There are no 3-step formulae or life hacks promising you 10x success rate. Instead, it offers the kind of training that draws on principles extending across time and space, i.e. history, so a leader intuitively senses what has worked before or not and then re-apply the principles to the present situation at scale. A true modern classic.
Should On Grand Strategy be summarized in one sentence, it would tether two simple tenets: great leaders must be both a hedgehog and a fox, comfortable in juggling combinations, contradictions, and contrasts; remember that your aspiration is limitless but your capabilities are constrained, so balance your ends and means.
Be a fox and a hedgehog simultaneously.
Isaiah Berlin, a Latvian-born British philosopher, describes two categories of leaders in Aesopian term: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” A hedgehog relates everything to a central vision but a fox pursues many unrelated or contradictory ends. Political psychologist Philip E. Tetlock’s 15-year studies showed that foxes do better at predicting the future of world politics. But too fox-like also paralyzes a leader from uncertainties, who must appear to know what they do even when they don’t.
So the book opens with the Persian King Xerxes’ hedgehog vision to invade Greece and his fox-like uncle Artabanus’ hesitation to follow suit. The former suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Greeks, his defeat forever sealed in Herodotus’ The Histories, the latter quickly forgotten by the world. The poignant lesson from Xerxes lies in the fact that both he and his uncle failed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s test of first-rate intelligence, that of “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” The book is filled with such polar exemplars: the old Pericles, Julius Caesar, Augustine, Philip II, George III, Napoleon, Wilson, all hedgehogs trying to herd foxes; the younger Pericles, Augusutus, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, all foxes with compasses.
Leaders should to be both a fox and a hedgehog. Go with the flow, “[h]aving determined your destination, you set sails, motivate rowers, adjust for winds and currents, avoid shoals and rocks, allow for surprises, and expend finite energy efficiently.” For, quoting Spielberg’s film Lincoln, “[i]f in pursuit of your destination, you...achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp...what’s the use of knowing true north?” Woodrow Wilson, the builder with a grand vision, disappointed his generation in the aftermath of WWI, but FDR, the “juggler”, surpassed his generation’s expectation during the depression and WWII. FDR once said: “I may be entirely inconsistent if it will help win the war.” According to some, FDR has “a second-class intellect”, but by Fitzgerald’s standard he definitely possessed a first-rate intelligence.
Align means with ends.
Gaddis also reminds leaders to match their aspirations with capabilities through time and space, adjusted for scale. Both Clausewitz and Tolstoy, two of Gaddis’ favorite authors in the book, understand that “ends, potentially infinite, can never be means, which are poignantly finite.” To go to Mars, you need to have the technology to build long-distance rockets. To build a billion-dollar smartphone app, phones and wifi must be widely adopted. Sounds simple, pretty much like common sense?
Unfortunately, Gaddis observes that common sense is like oxygen, the higher leaders climb, the less common sense they get. “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult,” otherwise how could we explain the recurring military miscalculations overstretched by ambitious leaders? Xerxes’ grand army crossing into Greece, the Athenians sailed to fight in Sicily, the Romans marched into the Teutoburg forest, the Spanish Armada destroyed in the English Channel, the British struggle in the American revolution, and Napoleon on the river Niemen to invade Russia. What were they thinking? What had they forgotten? But history is easier read than made.
Clausewitz would suggest that they all failed to perceive “truth at every point”, which in these military instances meant climates, landscapes, logistics, their troops’ morale, and the enemies’ strategies. To see truth at every point, the leader must live among contradictions through what Machiavelli calls “sketching”, assessing the “knowns”, such as geography, climate, your own capabilities, the “probabilities”, as in the goals of adversaries, the reliability of allies, and your country’s capability to endure adversity, and finally “unknowns”, which lurk in the intersections of the first two. And so Napoleon lost his war by confusing aspirations with capabilities while Lincoln, a true master of common sense, preserved his Union by balancing ends with means.
John Lewis Gaddis’ book aims to train a new generation of leaders not with high-tech wizardry, theoretical frameworks, or ideologies. There are no 3-step formulae or life hacks promising you 10x success rate. Instead, it offers the kind of training that draws on principles extending across time and space, i.e. history, so a leader intuitively senses what has worked before or not and then re-apply the principles to the present situation at scale. A true modern classic.
Should On Grand Strategy be summarized in one sentence, it would tether two simple tenets: great leaders must be both a hedgehog and a fox, comfortable in juggling combinations, contradictions, and contrasts; remember that your aspiration is limitless but your capabilities are constrained, so balance your ends and means.
Be a fox and a hedgehog simultaneously.
Isaiah Berlin, a Latvian-born British philosopher, describes two categories of leaders in Aesopian term: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” A hedgehog relates everything to a central vision but a fox pursues many unrelated or contradictory ends. Political psychologist Philip E. Tetlock’s 15-year studies showed that foxes do better at predicting the future of world politics. But too fox-like also paralyzes a leader from uncertainties, who must appear to know what they do even when they don’t.
So the book opens with the Persian King Xerxes’ hedgehog vision to invade Greece and his fox-like uncle Artabanus’ hesitation to follow suit. The former suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Greeks, his defeat forever sealed in Herodotus’ The Histories, the latter quickly forgotten by the world. The poignant lesson from Xerxes lies in the fact that both he and his uncle failed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s test of first-rate intelligence, that of “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” The book is filled with such polar exemplars: the old Pericles, Julius Caesar, Augustine, Philip II, George III, Napoleon, Wilson, all hedgehogs trying to herd foxes; the younger Pericles, Augusutus, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, all foxes with compasses.
Leaders should to be both a fox and a hedgehog. Go with the flow, “[h]aving determined your destination, you set sails, motivate rowers, adjust for winds and currents, avoid shoals and rocks, allow for surprises, and expend finite energy efficiently.” For, quoting Spielberg’s film Lincoln, “[i]f in pursuit of your destination, you...achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp...what’s the use of knowing true north?” Woodrow Wilson, the builder with a grand vision, disappointed his generation in the aftermath of WWI, but FDR, the “juggler”, surpassed his generation’s expectation during the depression and WWII. FDR once said: “I may be entirely inconsistent if it will help win the war.” According to some, FDR has “a second-class intellect”, but by Fitzgerald’s standard he definitely possessed a first-rate intelligence.
Align means with ends.
Gaddis also reminds leaders to match their aspirations with capabilities through time and space, adjusted for scale. Both Clausewitz and Tolstoy, two of Gaddis’ favorite authors in the book, understand that “ends, potentially infinite, can never be means, which are poignantly finite.” To go to Mars, you need to have the technology to build long-distance rockets. To build a billion-dollar smartphone app, phones and wifi must be widely adopted. Sounds simple, pretty much like common sense?
Unfortunately, Gaddis observes that common sense is like oxygen, the higher leaders climb, the less common sense they get. “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult,” otherwise how could we explain the recurring military miscalculations overstretched by ambitious leaders? Xerxes’ grand army crossing into Greece, the Athenians sailed to fight in Sicily, the Romans marched into the Teutoburg forest, the Spanish Armada destroyed in the English Channel, the British struggle in the American revolution, and Napoleon on the river Niemen to invade Russia. What were they thinking? What had they forgotten? But history is easier read than made.
Clausewitz would suggest that they all failed to perceive “truth at every point”, which in these military instances meant climates, landscapes, logistics, their troops’ morale, and the enemies’ strategies. To see truth at every point, the leader must live among contradictions through what Machiavelli calls “sketching”, assessing the “knowns”, such as geography, climate, your own capabilities, the “probabilities”, as in the goals of adversaries, the reliability of allies, and your country’s capability to endure adversity, and finally “unknowns”, which lurk in the intersections of the first two. And so Napoleon lost his war by confusing aspirations with capabilities while Lincoln, a true master of common sense, preserved his Union by balancing ends with means.
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December 7, 2018A number of not-so-closely-related lessons from history of leaders.
* Oxford professor Isaiah Berlin once categorized writers into two groups: “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. Plato and Dostoevsky are hedgehogs while Shakespeare and Joyce foxes. It turns on, this can be used to describe leaders too. A good one should blend both. (The foxes, BTW, are far better in predicting outcomes of world politics.)
* Having realistic assessment of one’s own skill is highly useful. Augustus knew his limited military skills, and chose to align himself with Marc Antony and Lepidus and dividing the power. Napoleon on the other hand, overestimated his strength in invading Russia. Common sense is like oxygen: the higher you get the thinner it becomes.
* Adaptability is important. Philip II of Spain was not adaptable. He ran his colonies in a strictly uniform manner. Elizabeth I was far more relaxed in her American colonies and willing to delegate. This is why the Americans can govern themselves when they become independent. The Latin Americans, in contrast,` had a power vacuum after the collapse of the empire.
* Short-term focus can cost you in long-term. US convinced Russia to help in WWI. This led to Bolshevik revolution. Hoover helped the Bolshevik government after the war whole-sale and led to the Cold War.
* Oxford professor Isaiah Berlin once categorized writers into two groups: “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. Plato and Dostoevsky are hedgehogs while Shakespeare and Joyce foxes. It turns on, this can be used to describe leaders too. A good one should blend both. (The foxes, BTW, are far better in predicting outcomes of world politics.)
* Having realistic assessment of one’s own skill is highly useful. Augustus knew his limited military skills, and chose to align himself with Marc Antony and Lepidus and dividing the power. Napoleon on the other hand, overestimated his strength in invading Russia. Common sense is like oxygen: the higher you get the thinner it becomes.
* Adaptability is important. Philip II of Spain was not adaptable. He ran his colonies in a strictly uniform manner. Elizabeth I was far more relaxed in her American colonies and willing to delegate. This is why the Americans can govern themselves when they become independent. The Latin Americans, in contrast,` had a power vacuum after the collapse of the empire.
* Short-term focus can cost you in long-term. US convinced Russia to help in WWI. This led to Bolshevik revolution. Hoover helped the Bolshevik government after the war whole-sale and led to the Cold War.
April 25, 2018
This is a strong book on the considerations that go into grand strategy and the traits of someone who aspires to be a grand strategist. Gaddis offers a multitude of considerations using the teachings and lessons learned from the likes of Thucydides, Clausewitz, Octavian/Augustus, Napoleon, and Lincoln to name just a few. Some of these names, such as Napoleon serve as an example of poor strategy (albeit with outstanding tactics and operational art).
The only shortfall I saw in this book was it's focus on Western strategy and strategists. A chapter on Mao, or Ho Chi Mihn would strengthen this book.
The only shortfall I saw in this book was it's focus on Western strategy and strategists. A chapter on Mao, or Ho Chi Mihn would strengthen this book.
August 25, 2018
Starts of with some mind-provoking concepts like distinguishing 'foxes' from 'hedgehogs' or the aspirations-capabilities dilemma and then slowly becomes fuzzy and long-winded, leaving the reader with an unrelated sequence of analyses of historical characters without a common thread. Gaddis wasn't able to match aspirations with capabilities for this one.
November 16, 2022
I don't understand why this book got raving reviews.
After finishing it, I don't even know what it is about, but you will definitely not learn much about grand strategy (and certainly not military grand strategy) by reading it.
It's just a collection of vague and unstructured musings about the thinking and lives of a few politicians, military strategists and political philosophers.
After finishing it, I don't even know what it is about, but you will definitely not learn much about grand strategy (and certainly not military grand strategy) by reading it.
It's just a collection of vague and unstructured musings about the thinking and lives of a few politicians, military strategists and political philosophers.
September 30, 2021
This book covers nothing close to a grand strategy. It's a redundant analysis and comparison of some great minds by an ivy-league scholar.
September 9, 2021
It started out as promising read but it kept getting drier afterwards. It might be of great interest to somebody who is curious about war strategies but it didnt interest me at all. Probably also because it's a compilation of lectures and hence there wasnt any background to the theme discussed.
December 7, 2018
58. On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis
reader: Mike Chamberlain
published: 2018
format: 11:02 Libby audiobook (~306 pages equivalent, 368 pages on hardcover)
acquired: Library
listened: Oct 22 - Nov 2
rating: 3
from Litsy ~Nov 5: What's cool is all the historical analysis from Ancient Greece to Rome to St. Augustine and Machiavelli as applied by Queen Elizabeth vs Philip II of Spain, to Lincoln vs Napoleon (with Tolstoy's War and Peace), to Woodrow Wilson vs FDR. But his points are troublesome in that they amount to: everyone who was successful managed to balance strategy with reality and uncertainty and everyone who wasn't didn't. Is that really insightful?
I think I pushed my Litsy 451 characters to the limit of coherence and maybe beyond. This was an odd book for me. I'm not particularly interested in grand strategy or any other type, but I was wondering how it applied to what is going on now. And, mostly, it only does in how you use it (even if he mentions that it is partially a response to Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century). I kind of liked this and kept listening because of all the interesting historical topics and characters he brought up and the odd way he analyzed them and compared them to each other. But I'm not sure I really got much out of it. This is all hindsight analysis, identifying successes and failures and trying to come up with one general idea that defines them all. When you analyze history in hindsight by grouping the winners into one category and losers into another, in this case on the basis of his grand strategy ideas, it's not only very easy to manipulate your argument, but very hard not to. Gaddis not only picks the winners and losers, but he even defines how they won and lost in his own way, and not always in ways they might have understood. Basically he can say whatever he wants to, and it may or may not be meaningless.
reader: Mike Chamberlain
published: 2018
format: 11:02 Libby audiobook (~306 pages equivalent, 368 pages on hardcover)
acquired: Library
listened: Oct 22 - Nov 2
rating: 3
from Litsy ~Nov 5: What's cool is all the historical analysis from Ancient Greece to Rome to St. Augustine and Machiavelli as applied by Queen Elizabeth vs Philip II of Spain, to Lincoln vs Napoleon (with Tolstoy's War and Peace), to Woodrow Wilson vs FDR. But his points are troublesome in that they amount to: everyone who was successful managed to balance strategy with reality and uncertainty and everyone who wasn't didn't. Is that really insightful?
I think I pushed my Litsy 451 characters to the limit of coherence and maybe beyond. This was an odd book for me. I'm not particularly interested in grand strategy or any other type, but I was wondering how it applied to what is going on now. And, mostly, it only does in how you use it (even if he mentions that it is partially a response to Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century). I kind of liked this and kept listening because of all the interesting historical topics and characters he brought up and the odd way he analyzed them and compared them to each other. But I'm not sure I really got much out of it. This is all hindsight analysis, identifying successes and failures and trying to come up with one general idea that defines them all. When you analyze history in hindsight by grouping the winners into one category and losers into another, in this case on the basis of his grand strategy ideas, it's not only very easy to manipulate your argument, but very hard not to. Gaddis not only picks the winners and losers, but he even defines how they won and lost in his own way, and not always in ways they might have understood. Basically he can say whatever he wants to, and it may or may not be meaningless.
August 25, 2019
كانت قراءة وترجمة مرهقة لكتاب يتحدث عن أهم الاستراتيجيات والاستراتيجيين عبر عصور التاريخ المختلفة. الكتاب بالطبع يعطي أمثلة ونماذج بدءا من الاغريق وزمان زركسيس وبركليس وأغسطس وغيرهم، مرورا بأوغستين وميكيافيللي، وصولا إلى ستالين وروزفلت وتشرتشل.. أسلوب الكاتب كان مرهقا ولا يخلو من فذلكة لغوية لكن إجمالا المحتوى بيثير عندي كالمعتاد أسئلة متكررة عن تاريخنا احنا الذي ليس مسموحا لنا أن نقرأه إلا من مصادر شحيحة ومحددة وكأنما يراد لنا ألا نعرف شيئا عما كان، وبطبيعة الحال ده هيكون أدعى لأن لا ننقدر على قراءة الحاضر جيدا، ولا نستشرف ملامح المستقبل الغائمة طوال الوقت، والسوداوية للأسف بشكل مؤكد.. دول كلمتين حبيت أسجلهم عن الكتاب في عجالة ولضيق الوقت.
مودتي.
مودتي.
August 11, 2020
Brilliant start but unfortunately tailed off massively. Analysis of Xerxes at Hellespont and Octavian were incredibly interesting, especially considering the discussion of the ‘fox’ and the ‘hedgehog’. However after these chapters it lost me. I thought the analysis of Machiavelli was interesting but his comparison with Augustine was odd (it seemed these chapters were dedicated to making constant off hand comments). I thought it had been rescued with Napoleon and the comparison with Xerxes as well as Tolstoy and Clausewitz, but again this was short lived and to be honest I skimmed the last few chapters.
I was hoping for at least a conclusion but alas...
I was hoping for at least a conclusion but alas...
April 18, 2020
A delightful, thought-provoking, and instructive peek into the mind of one of the great historians of our time. This book is a collection of essays or case studies, each probing through a different approach, what exactly "grand strategy" is, should be, and can be. Gaddis' evocation of history's broad range—Xerxes to Lincoln to Cleopatra to Machiavelli and more—together with his nimble explanation of strategic maxims is downright delightful. What makes this book stand apart from others on the same topic is how seamlessly Gaddis integrates the historical case studies with literary and philosophical voices such as Tolstoy, Clausewitz, Kundera, and Isaiah Berlin. This was frankly breathtaking, bringing ideas I'd previously studied only in a literary realm into the strategic framework.
At the core of this book is Gaddis' emphatic insistence that strategists must not shy away from contradictions but rather seek out complexity and struggle to find resolution in seeming incompatibility. There are other lessons scattered throughout, but this one is the overriding thesis, along with the importance of studying history in general to avoid the mistakes of the past and approach the problems of the present armed not only with individual skill and experience but also the lessons learned by all those who came before. At one point Gaddis remarks: "without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction." This book's union of historical turning points, literary philosophy, and lessons in leadership not only cures this affliction, but offers a foundation from which to hopefully make better choices in a past-informed future.
At the core of this book is Gaddis' emphatic insistence that strategists must not shy away from contradictions but rather seek out complexity and struggle to find resolution in seeming incompatibility. There are other lessons scattered throughout, but this one is the overriding thesis, along with the importance of studying history in general to avoid the mistakes of the past and approach the problems of the present armed not only with individual skill and experience but also the lessons learned by all those who came before. At one point Gaddis remarks: "without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction." This book's union of historical turning points, literary philosophy, and lessons in leadership not only cures this affliction, but offers a foundation from which to hopefully make better choices in a past-informed future.
March 26, 2021
I was hoping this would be for grand strategy what Michael Sandel's book was for justice. Sandel's book Justice was based on his very popular Harvard course and it captured well the essence of the course while remaining interesting. I am sure that Gaddis's course on grand strategy is probably among the best of its kind, but the greatness of the course doesn't exactly shine through in the reading. But since Yale is not allowing universal enrollment this volume will have to do for the rest of us plebs.
December 30, 2021
Um livro complexo, que demorei para ler, mas me ensinou muito sobre os grandes estrategistas e o que levou ao sucesso ou fracasso. . O autor fala da Roma antiga, da França de Napoleão e dos EUA de Lincoln e Roosevelt, além de outros. Uma leitura enriquecedora.
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April 24, 2018Turgid. Not an easy read. Some chapters, Lincoln in particular, flowed nicely. This book was uneven in its approach. Essentially, a collection of lectures and perhaps parts of his other books.
Jim, Wilmette
Jim, Wilmette
July 8, 2018
This ambitious title is supported by the author’s note that he has been teaching this topic as a class at Yale and the Naval War College. It is a history of notable figures and how they handled decision making. In most cases, two contemporaries are analyzed. In most cases, I thought it was bunk psychological analysis of historical figures. However, it does provide some insights to strategy. His historical figures – Pericles, Julius Caesar, Augustine, Phillip II, George III, Napoleon, Wilson are compared to Octavian, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, American Founders, Lincoln, Salisbury, and FDR. The first group, “Positive Liberty” are the hedgehogs trying to herd foxes – they were certain of how the world worked and did their best to control. This only led to disillusionment and failure. The second group are the “Negative Liberty”, the foxes who lived in uncertainty and displayed flexibility. They believed humans to be flawed and set their strategies around it. Keep the end goal in mind, while playing the dirty politics to keep going toward the goal. FDR was considered incredibly inconsistent and untrustworthy because he seemed to change his mind – however, he was playing a long game. Similar, Lincoln waited and waited to declare the emancipation proclamation. He could not let his aspirations out run capabilities. These capabilities could mean military power, but usually the level of support within the population. The author has a strong believe that novels can provide a better portrait of strategy and history. He focuses on Tolstoy as a great distiller of human history. Further, he uses the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" as his judge of strategy.
January 4, 2020
Pure gibberish! It's tough to imagine I even finished the book (although it did take me 2 months) and the author has won a Pulitzer prize. Given its title, and its blurb (it comes from a class taught at Yale) I thought it would be a blend of strategy and statecraft. Alas, I was sorely mistaken. The book consists of meandering, nonsensical, stream-of-mind delusions on "adjusting infinite ends to limited means across time, space, and scale". Whatever that means. While I vaguely get that Gaddis is trying to explore the tensions inherent to making decisions in a messy and complicated world, he totally sucks at doing so. With his "analysis" you just end up with meaningless truisms and banalities, or head-scratching proclamations. Consider the following
"Herein lie, then, the roots of toleration, 'historically the product of the realization of the irreconcilability of equally dogmatic faiths, and the practical improbability of complete victory of one over the other.' These extend to the painful stretch, as if on a rack, between what public life demands and what private life allows: only anchorites, on their poles, are above politics".
What exactly is he trying to say?
I guess the one redeeming quality of the book, and the only reason I finished it, is that Gaddis roams widely across time and geography. He tries to link "grand strategy" to: Von Clausewitz, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Shakespeare, Octavian, Xerxes, Pericles, Augustine, Queen Elizabeth, the American Revolution, Tolstoy's "War and Peace", Quincy Adams, Abe Lincoln, FDR, and Isaiah Berlin. His linkages suck, as do his attempts at drawing any meaningful conclusions, but his description of various historical figures or events can be shallowly entertaining. I would love to see a book as wide-ranging as this, but coherent.
"Herein lie, then, the roots of toleration, 'historically the product of the realization of the irreconcilability of equally dogmatic faiths, and the practical improbability of complete victory of one over the other.' These extend to the painful stretch, as if on a rack, between what public life demands and what private life allows: only anchorites, on their poles, are above politics".
What exactly is he trying to say?
I guess the one redeeming quality of the book, and the only reason I finished it, is that Gaddis roams widely across time and geography. He tries to link "grand strategy" to: Von Clausewitz, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Shakespeare, Octavian, Xerxes, Pericles, Augustine, Queen Elizabeth, the American Revolution, Tolstoy's "War and Peace", Quincy Adams, Abe Lincoln, FDR, and Isaiah Berlin. His linkages suck, as do his attempts at drawing any meaningful conclusions, but his description of various historical figures or events can be shallowly entertaining. I would love to see a book as wide-ranging as this, but coherent.
May 1, 2018
This is a grand book, I loved the historical and quite entertaining take by Gaddis on moments that required great strategies and how they were taken by people who confronted them all the way from Xerxes invading Greece to our current times. The stories are told with focus on what strategies were taken and what could have been done.
All these strategies and strategists are framed within a view proposed by Isaiah Berlin in a short book about foxes and hedgehogs. Hedgehogs look only at ends and do not think of how means should match ends to achieve one's goals while foxes adjust both their ends and their means to match and achieve what they are in for. I found the proposition entertaining if not verifiably accurate, after all, we can cherry pick any number of historical events that match a given theory.
The shortcoming of the book is that it is much more focused on the narratives and stories than on rigorous analysis. It is a pop-strategy book (as opposed to, say, Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman which is much more vigorously scientific and greatly analysed and referenced, but that one is nearly 800 pages). This is fun to read and gives many ideas, mainly on what one can avoid when embarking on strategy.
All these strategies and strategists are framed within a view proposed by Isaiah Berlin in a short book about foxes and hedgehogs. Hedgehogs look only at ends and do not think of how means should match ends to achieve one's goals while foxes adjust both their ends and their means to match and achieve what they are in for. I found the proposition entertaining if not verifiably accurate, after all, we can cherry pick any number of historical events that match a given theory.
The shortcoming of the book is that it is much more focused on the narratives and stories than on rigorous analysis. It is a pop-strategy book (as opposed to, say, Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman which is much more vigorously scientific and greatly analysed and referenced, but that one is nearly 800 pages). This is fun to read and gives many ideas, mainly on what one can avoid when embarking on strategy.
July 5, 2018
I was a student of Dr. Gaddis' thirty years ago at Ohio University.
I was fascinated by this book, which distills Gaddis' thoughts on leadership. I took Dr. Gaddis' three classes on US Foreign Policy, so it was very interesting to read his thoughts here on Ancient Greece and Rome and also on Lincoln's political career, things that didn't come up in the class. It was also a revelation to see how interested he is in literature and religion. That showed a side of him that I had not been aware of.
The lessons Gaddis draws are sound. This book is the result of a lifetime of study and thought, and the results are expressed quite well. I'm very glad I read this.
I was fascinated by this book, which distills Gaddis' thoughts on leadership. I took Dr. Gaddis' three classes on US Foreign Policy, so it was very interesting to read his thoughts here on Ancient Greece and Rome and also on Lincoln's political career, things that didn't come up in the class. It was also a revelation to see how interested he is in literature and religion. That showed a side of him that I had not been aware of.
The lessons Gaddis draws are sound. This book is the result of a lifetime of study and thought, and the results are expressed quite well. I'm very glad I read this.
June 10, 2018
John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy taught a strategy class at Yale and ranged thru history looking for examples of leaders who were strategic or not in their thinking. Ancient Greeks, Machiavelli, Abraham Lincoln... it was a broad list in this book with varied comparisons.
Why I started this book: The author and title caught my eye as I was browsing thru Overdrive's new audio.
Why I finished it: Listening to the audio was like attending class... however I think that this class would have benefited greatly from class participation and group discussion.
Why I started this book: The author and title caught my eye as I was browsing thru Overdrive's new audio.
Why I finished it: Listening to the audio was like attending class... however I think that this class would have benefited greatly from class participation and group discussion.
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