ABSTRACT
For the British, practice often tends to precede, and sometimes to supplant, theory. Even in the sunny afternoon of British maritime power, it took an American1 to distil the essence of its strategy just as it had taken a Frenchman2 to analyse its tactical principles 200 years before. British theorists did exist of course, but the limelight was not theirs. And in the period covered by this chapter (say 1945-95), American, Russian and French writers – to say nothing of Indian and Australian theorists in the later decades – produced a body of substantial and often highly publicised work.
