ABSTRACT
Strategy, which is the conscious exploitation of military force to promote the aims of policy, has passed through a number of phases of development which have related most closely to the degree to which force can be mobilized, and to its destructive capacity. With limited means at the generals’ disposal, and when the nature of those means conferred no advantage to either combatant unless one side possessed superior weapons, strategy consisted in little more than the art of manoeuvring for an advantage on the field of battle. After the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century, which had as a consequence produced a situation in which no major power could hope to gain a qualitative advantage over a like rival, strategy became focused on the discovery of the means of effective application of force in a situation of balance. Two rival intellectual approaches had by then opened up to attract the theorist. On the one hand, the study of the past might reveal the existence of ‘rules’ or guidelines; on the other, the application of pure reason might, it was claimed, enable the practitioner to grasp a certain number of fundamental truths, which could then be applied to particular cases. This latter was the position adopted by Foch, who informed the readers of The Principles of War that ‘Strategy is but a question of will and common sense.’
