ABSTRACT
The use of military force is a key feature of international politics, particularly in the early twenty-first century. Nations use the powerful tool of military forces to be their ‘fists of statecraft’, enabling them to intimidate and dominate the decisions of other people and states.1 But it is a complex problem and strategy is the study of the practice of ‘the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfil the ends of policy’.2 A mechanistic formula of setting political ends and using military means to achieve them is insufficient to make strategy, as the presence of an enemy who reacts means that war is more than mere administration.3 In fact ‘the entire realm of strategy is pervaded by a paradoxical logic of its own’.4
