The wars of decolonisation in Africa were contested by national liberation movements that, to varying degrees, all modelled their insurgencies on leftist theories of people’s war. At the same time, however, African national liberation movements never followed the precepts set out by the theorists of people’s war in a slavish manner. Instead, they adapted these precepts to local conditions and needs. Drawing on examples ranging from the Algerian war of independence to the armed struggle of the African National Congress against apartheid, this chapter explores the strategic practice of a disparate group of insurgent movements that sought to end decades and more of colonial and white minority rule in Africa. Focusing on their objectives, means, methods and priorities, the chapter argues that while people’s war was an important guiding principle for African liberation movements, from which they drew key lessons, it never represented an immutable blueprint for victory.

In the conclusion to the series, a series of significant observations are presented. In contrast to the pre-occupations of the field with theory and concepts, the practice of strategy shows a distinct picture. When heads of state, states, empires and other social groupings engage in strategy away from the abstract in concrete and real-life situations, it is messy, chaotic and largely ad hoc. First, core conceptual categories in the field hamper a proper understanding of strategy. The binaries of war/peace, rationality/emotion and state/non-state, as largely products of the nineteenth century, obscure rather than illuminate historical practices over the past three millennia. Second, four distinct patterns present themselves: (1) strategy as a utilitarian phenomenon with an alignment of means and ends, as the dominant perspective, holds explanatory power; (2) strategy as a performance offers a strong lens to look at the historical record as war and warfare are repeatedly part of a way of life; (3) opportunity offers a significant explanatory category; (4) practising strategy as an ordering or disordering exercise offers a way to look at reality, and is enacted as a process of making life difficult for an opponent. These findings form an invitation to reconsider the dominant perspective of strategy as stable and universal, attesting to the necessity of awarding more attention to deeds than words.

This chapter considers the strategic dimension of conflict in North America between the outbreak of fighting between the French and colonial Americans in the Ohio valley in 1754 and the formal end of the War of American Independence in 1783. While this thirty-year period saw several local struggles between colonists and Native peoples, the focus here is on the two major conflicts – the Seven Years War (1754–1760 in North America, 1756–1763 in Europe) and the War of Independence (1775–1783). Both wars were global struggles, extending well beyond North America – the Seven Years War from its outset, and the War of Independence from 1778, when the French became belligerents. Even so, the chapter will concentrate on the American aspects of these struggles, and only indirectly address the Caribbean, west African, European and Asian dimensions. It will aspire to cover all the participants in the North American parts of the two wars – settlers, Native peoples and Europeans, particularly the British and the French.

The Russo-Japanese War was fought during 1904–1905 between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Japan. The war broke out due to their conflicting interests in the Korean Peninsula and the north-eastern region of China, known then as Manchuria. Both saw the conflict as a zero-sum game in which compromise was a temporary solution. Japan’s objectives were the control of Korea, the seizure of southern Manchuria and the conclusion of the conflict with a peace agreement that would ensure its own long-term presence and interests in Korea and China. Russia’s objectives were the inverse of Japan’s and included the control of Manchuria, seizure of Korea and the expansion of its political and economic sphere to play a pivotal role in the entire region. Japan had far more limited resources and manpower, but it could mobilise its armed forces more quickly and gain the upper hand in the region, at least initially. As an island country, Japan had to control the seas from the outset and limit the duration of the war. The war lasted seventeen months but demonstrated that when strategic objectives are carefully defined and meticulously executed, as was the case with Japan, then the prima facie weaker party may win.

Although the early part of the century involved the Nationalist Party (KMT) campaigns – the Northern Expedition (1926-28) – to reunify China after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the history of China’s military strategy in the twentieth century is largely dominated by the activities of the Chinese Communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Embroiled in the first civil war with the Nationalists and avoiding annihilation during the latter’s five encirclement campaigns (1927–1937), the PLA under Mao Zedong’s leadership began to develop some of the core ideas of Communist Chinese military strategy – People’s War, and Active Defense. During the anti-Japanese War of Resistance, the Communists and the Nationalists arrived at a temporary truce to fight Japanese invaders (1937–1945). This period was largely marked by stalemate, but still involved millions of casualties, the use of guerrilla warfare, and the movement of millions of troops across China. Mao’s vision of military strategy unfolded with the resumption of the Communist–Nationalist civil war: guerrilla warfare; manoeuvre warfare; a hybrid of conventional and unconventional operations; conventional warfare; and then a war of annihilation, culminating in the Nationalist retreat to Taiwan.

Evidence for discussing grand strategy in the Roman Empire is extremely limited. In reaction to Luttwak’s thought-provoking book, ancient historians have tended to focus on limitations in the information available to emperors and hence their capacity to determine priorities. Kagan’s reformulation of Luttwak’s thesis to use troop movements as a proxy for strategic decision making does not adequately take into account the personal and cultural considerations that often influenced rulers, and in particular that suppression of internal rivals took priority over external threats. That said, grand strategy remains a useful tool for investigating imperial decision making, especially for emperors such as Augustus and Diocletian, both of whom had to stabilize the empire after protracted bouts of civil war and enjoyed long reigns. It is also relevant to the later empire (after AD 300) when rulers regularly had to balance threats and opportunities on different frontiers against the more limited resources that were available.

The rise and the survival of the Ottoman Empire for six centuries is one of the most important event of the European and Middle Eastern histories. At the apex of the Ottoman conquests in the mid-1500s, Süleyman the Magnificent pushed deep into Hungary and Mesopotamia, as well as making the empire the master of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Later sultans advanced into southern Russia, Caucasia, Persia and north Africa. In concert with these military successes, the empire transformed itself into a sophisticated administrative entity of great strength, which encouraged diversity, culture, learning and religious activity. The Ottoman high tide reached the gates of Vienna in 1683, only to fail because of faulty command decisions and internal deficiencies. While the Ottomans were trying to counter the military reverses, the forces of the socio-economic revolutions in the West and rapidly evolving market economies added new stresses to it. A new generation of sultans and members of the governing elite evolved, who were convinced of the need for modernisation and westernisation (both terms have been used synonymously and interchangeably) and were committed to change in order to keep the empire intact. They did achieve some results but they failed to stop the interventions and machinations of the Great Powers, which sought to benefit from the empire’s collapse. The Ottoman Empire gained notoriety as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ and additionally became a target for the forces of ethnic nationalism that fought to dismember it. The First World War became the swan song of the empire. For the first time since the 1680s, the Ottoman Army consistently defeated its European enemies. But it was too late. The empire, bankrupt and blockaded, could not match the resources of its enemies and surrendered.

In this first global history of strategic practice, we define strategy making (following K. Kagan) as making choices, prioritising means in pursuit of political ends in the context of armed conflict, actual or threatened. The usage of the term took a long time to spread from the East Roman Empire to the Occident, and most civilisations discussed in these volumes did not have a distinct word to describe what they were doing in the modern sense. Yet by applying Kagan’s definition, we see evidence of complex reasoning and prioritisation of means and ways; even the greatest empires could not pursue unlimited ends. Our volumes bring together experts on each individual civilisation and period to explore analogous dimensions of strategy making: who are the enemies, and why? What means are available to them? What are the political strategic goals? And the central questions: how were ultimate and immediate goals formulated, and how were they linked up with military means? What were the enablers and limitations, in terms of geography, resources and other means, which produced distinctive approaches? But also, was there a transfer of ideas and methods? How were they translated, adopted, enacted, imitated and emulated in warfare around the world?

The Asia–Pacific War was caused by the expansionist ambitions of Imperial Japan, which by the 1920s had secured Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria. This strategy led to war with Nationalist China in 1937, and to provide fuel and supplies Japan seized the oil-rich Netherlands East Indies and Malaya. When the Japanese moved into southern Indo-China in 1941 the United States applied an oil embargo. Japan struck first at the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, hoping to form a defensive ring around its captured territories and reach an acceptable peace. But having been humiliated at Pearl Harbor, the United States would never have agreed to a negotiated peace.

The Allied strategy was largely reactive. To deter Japan, Britain applied the faulty Singapore Strategy. The US planned to advance gradually across the central Pacific, but were thwarted by Japan. Although the Allies’ overall strategy was to ‘beat Hitler first’, the United States continued to pursue and control the war in the Pacific. Given the industrial power of the United States, it was inevitable that it would prevail in the largely maritime war. By 1945 Japan was being strangled by the Allied blockade and conventional bombing. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 forced Japan’s surrender.

Here we lay the ground and define the parameters of this project. Definitions of strategy are discussed, giving the rationale for the one chosen to guide our work: Kimberly Kagan’s definition that sees evidence of strategy where prioritisation and choices about means of pursuing political aims at the level of the state (or higher social entity) have been made. This allows us to identify strategic decision making even when no documents have survived that contain explicit articulations of such reasoning.

One can divide sources regarding Byzantine strategy into three main categories: sources dedicated to the exposition of strategy, tactics and logistics, i.e. military manuals and administrative documents;' Byzantine historical narratives; and non-Byzantine historical accounts written in various dialects such as Slavic, Arabic and Armenian. Still, there is an ongoing debate whether military manuals reflected current tactical and strategic practise. Equally uncertain is the extent to which Byzantine historians employed military manuals or idealised biographies as models in order to present favoured figures in an ideal light. The emperor was usually the one who set priorities and objectives, assisted by advisers as well as by treatises on strategy and logistics. Sometimes, however, high-ranking military officers, the strategoi, local commanders who executed military and political authority over their districts, also took the initiative to undertake operations. The Byzantines faced various peoples: Slavic and Turkish peoples and polities threatened and occupied its Balkan frontier; Arabs, Turks and Armenians dominated the eastern frontier (Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia), and the Normans, Crusaders and various pirates threatened Greece, Thrace and the islands of the Aegean and the Ionian Gulf. The objectives of the Byzantines varied according to the period. Defence and survival were among the dominant ones; others included retaliation, devastation of the enemy’s potential through raiding and acquisition of booty, marching deep and showing the flag in order to achieve more favourable treaties, the reconquest of lost key cities and fortresses, and, rarely, the total elimination of enemy polities. The Byzantines relied greatly on money and diplomacy to achieve their goals. When these were not enough, they would mobilise their army and navy comprising indigenous professional and semi-professional troops, as well as foreign and allied troops. The main priority in terms of strategy was to conduct military operations, as far as possible, on only one front at a time. The latter was chosen with various goals in mind: the control of major cities, fortresses, routes and mountain passes; the establishment of a client ruler; acquiring of a quick victory in order to enhance the emperor’s image; and acquiring an acknowledgement of the emperor’s overlordship in order to adhere to Byzantine political ideology which saw the emperor as the supreme ruler of the world and the legitimate claimant to the Roman Empire. It is interesting to note that religion seems to have played a lesser role than realpolitik and political ideology. When fighting their wars, the Byzantines mostly adhered to the advice found in military treatises, but there were also occasions when the neglect of such matters brought devastating defeats.

Warfare did not evolve in a linear fashion. This is most obvious on the physical level: the weapons and armies of polities across time and space have fluctuated in sophistication, so that early European medieval armies had more in common with ancient Israelite or Greek contingents than with the Roman war machinery, and, up to the nineteenth century or even the twentieth, raiding warfare in some parts of Africa or the islands of south-east Asia was akin to patterns of pre-Columbian warfare in the Americas, prehistoric warfare in Europe and ghazis and booty expeditions in Europe and around the Mediterranean. Where warfare’s aims went beyond mere raiding, for much of world history, the paucity or even absence of relevant sources has made it difficult to reconstruct political–strategic aims. We also encounter vast varieties conditioned in part by hard factors such as climate, geography and resources. We have encountered and possibly not always avoided the danger of squeezing cultural differences into a Procrustean bed of Western concepts and languages. Yet some striking patterns have emerged. Not only Indo-European cultures, but also Mongols and Chinese, came up with a strategic aim of establishing a universal monarchy, or defending against the imposition of such an overlordship. The forming of alliances for common strategic purposes and the defence of allies or clients is another widespread pattern, strategic co-operation counterbalancing long-term hostilities. The distinction between client states and allies was often blurred. Non-kinetic tools of strategy were also employed widely, from giving gifts, to tribute payments (again a distinction often difficult to make), to marriages to confirm peace treaties or cement alliances. And most cultures seem to have had some rules or code of honour with regard to the conduct of war which in many contexts imposed limits on the pursuit of strategic aims.

The strategies devised throughout the interwar years and applied in Europe at the beginning of the Second World War were related to the consequences of the Great War. Due to the Third Reich’s aggressive foreign policy, war broke out in September 1939. Germany’s grand strategy consisted in proceeding one front at a time and launching bold onslaughts destined to lead the enemy to the negotiation table. By signing the agreement of August 1939 with the Reich, the USSR expanded its territory and bought time. Italy tried to wage a ‘parallel war’ but failed and had to resort to German help. Britain and France stuck to a defensive strategy of checking the enemies’ offensives on the European continent, building up their forces with US support and finally counterattacking. Britain held on until the US went to war in December 1941, while the USSR narrowly managed to face the first German onslaught. From 1942, the Allies steadily implemented a broad strategy of pushing back the enemy forces on land, at sea and in the air, imposing unconditional surrender on the Axis powers. The latter’s total defeat and the emergence of new superpowers and weaponry paved the way for new strategic perspectives.

The imperial Guptas became the dominant power in India during the fourth and fifth centuries. Though the focus of this chapter will be on Gupta military strategy, I will occasionally peep into grand strategy and tactics. This is because superior tactical elements (horse archery and armoured lancers) allowed the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II to follow an aggressive military strategy. Also, non-military issues which are part of grand strategy (like the fiscal crisis in the mid-fifth century) forced the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta to adopt a passive defensive policy. First, we lay out the scope and objectives of the chapter and analyse the sources available to us for chalking out Gupta strategy. Second, we explore the offensive military strategy which enabled the Guptas to rise from a petty regional polity to the most formidable power in the subcontinent by AD 415. Third, the spotlight is shone on the failure of Gupta defensive strategic policies against the Huns after AD 467. The fourth section discusses the shortcomings of military and non-military strategies followed by the Gupta emperors in maintaining coherence within their domain. The empire was dependent on the co-operation of the samantas (feudatories) and landlords. Further, continuous success against external enemies was essential for maintaining royal supremacy. When the emperors failed against external invaders, then the internal props of royal power started disintegrating. The last section discusses strategic failures against both external and internal enemies which resulted in the collapse of the empire in the last decade of the fifth century.

Writing about the policy goals and strategies of one war is difficult enough; writing about three wars, the generically named Gulf Wars, compounds the problem. This chapter will explore the goals and higher strategies of the belligerents in the three wars. The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) was launched by Iraq in order to throttle the revolutionary regime in the new Islamic Republic of Iran and take advantage of a balance of power that had changed drastically in its favour after 1979. Operation Desert Storm (1991) was the outcome of Iraq’s deteriorating socio-economic conditions and Saddam Hussein’s insatiable ambitions. It pitted Iraq against an international coalition led by the United States, in the latter’s effort to reverse Iraq’s occupation of its tiny but rich neighbour, Kuwait. Finally, Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) was an outgrowth of US determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein, once again involving Iraq fighting the US and a much smaller coalition of partners. The chapter explores the background to each war, addresses the goals and strategies of the belligerent sides, and concludes with a discussion of the outcome of each war. It does not delve in detail into operational or tactical matters but focuses on the grand strategies, goals, decision making and, to some extent, the military strategies.

Rome transitioned from being a central Italian city state with predominantly local concerns of peer-polity competition and survival to the conquest of Italy and then to pre-eminence in the Mediterranean and beyond. The context in which strategic decisions were made varied considerably as Rome’s capacity for military and diplomatic action developed, the nature of the threats that it faced changed and its international horizons and opportunities expanded. Equally, the development and formulation of strategic priorities rested on a complex interplay between the state’s political and religious institutions and authorities and individuals and interest groups, making consistent and coherent long-term strategic policy almost impossible. For the most part, the Roman state proved adept at acting opportunistically to enhance its power, in response to external events and internal impulses. Its objectives therefore were not static but arose in a complex competitive inter-state environment of dangerous rivals to Roman power. A fundamental element in their success lay in the evolution of the structural capacity of the Roman state for military mobilisation, of both its own population and that of allies. Despite a predominantly militia army of annually raised legions and annual magistrates, Rome displayed a formidable ability to prosecute warfare within diverse theatres of operation, by land and sea, and to employ an effective mix of coercion and generosity to obtain support, co-operation, and collusion from allies and to undermine the resolve of enemies.

Most discussions of Chinese military history and Chinese strategy rely heavily, sometimes exclusively, on Sunzi’s Art of War, with the occasional inclusion of a few other works of strategy. There is, however, no evidence that Sunzi or any other abstract strategist, mythical or real, influenced the actual course of campaigns or battles. The Warring States Period (475–221 BC) was brought to a close by the success of the Qin state’s relentless campaigns to create a unified empire. This not only required a new strategic goal – the complete destruction of any subsidiary political authority – but also created a new strategic reality in the form of an empire. Neither Sunzi nor any of the other Warring States strategist had anything to say about these problems. In fact, events like the Qin massacre of a reported 450,000 men after the Battle of Changping in 260 BC, which followed a prolonged siege, seems to have run counter to strategic writing, but was tremendously effective.

This chapter will turn to the actual campaigns of the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC), followed by those that created the first imperial state in China in 221 BC, and finally the campaigns that created, maintained, lost, restored and then permanently lost the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). War required rulers, generals and statesmen to devise and execute strategies that were not ideal, often failed and seldom accommodated higher moral values. This reality was portrayed clearly in most of the histories, even in the stylised and moralised anecdotes that are often all that is left to us.