The lost meaning of strategy

Abstract

Strategy is a word which has lost its meaning, too often being used as a synonym for policy. Between the late eighteenth century and the end of the First World War, it described the conduct of war as exercised at the level of the military commander. But the scale of the two world wars and the influence of maritime powers, like the United States and Britain, prompted the evolution of ‘grand strategy’ to enable the coordination of allies in different theatres of war and to mobilise all national resources for the prosecution of war. Since the end of the Cold War the vocabulary of war-making has lost definition, making lesser conflicts seem larger than they are, ‘militarising’ foreign policy and robbing the nation state of an important conceptual tool for adapting military means to political objectives. The results have been evident since m September.