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This book is both magnificent and maddening. It is magnificent in its amazing scope, with short summaries and interesting insights on practically every strategic thinker in history, and many others who are not thought of as strategists, but whom Freedman rightly and insightfully includes. It is maddening in its failure to actually address the question of what strategy is best, under what conditions. In fact, the book is mis-titled, because it is not about strategy, but about theories of strategy. It could be more accurately titled: "The Pretensions of Strategists: A History," because that is its actual theme.
What is most maddening about the book is its consistent ducking responsibility for saying that any strategy is good under certain circumstances. It is an "academic" book in both the best and worst ways. It has massive erudition, keen critical intelligence and brilliant insights. But it sticks to criticism, and fails to offer any positive advice on good strategy. For every thinker Freedman follows this formula: he summarizes the theory of the thinker, describes the initial case for it or temporary success, and then points out where it has failed. Then he magisterially pronounces all views limited in applicability. This is a maddening ivory tower game, because the author is so risk averse that in his evasion of possible criticism he avoids also avoids insights that might actually be helpful to a decision maker.
In spite of the avoidance of positive recommendations, Freedman does have themes that he keeps coming back to, and are interesting and informative. One of these themes is that leaders often radically get wrong what can be accomplished by victory in a battle. G.W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" is the most glaring example of this, but Freedman has numerous other illustrations, including Napoleon. In this respect, clearly Clausewitz is one of his heroes for his insight that battles need to serve political ends.
As far as military strategy, one of Freedman's really interesting insights is that the decisive thing in wars is more often alliances more than any cleverness on the battle field. The weight of allies tips the balance. This would indicate, as with Napoleon and Hitler, ISIL has now doomed itself by allying the world against it.
A third theme, and the one that he returns to most and is perhaps the most innovative in the book is that persuasion is a key part of strategic leadership, whether in battle, politics or business. Freedman's breathtaking breadth of scope really works in discussing this theme, where he brings people as disparate as Foucault and Lee Atwater into the same story--rightly.
I couldn't put the book down, all 650 pages of it, and will return to study parts of it, which I made note of. But I had the weird sensation of being continually dazzled, grateful, and disappointed all at the same time.
- Hardcover: 768 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1st edition (October 2, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199325154
- ISBN-13: 978-0199325153
- Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 2.3 x 6.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews: 105 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#168,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #388 in Military Strategy History (Books)
- #1294 in History & Theory of Politics
- #1871 in International & World Politics (Books)
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