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.

West Side Story has long been important in the international market. This chapter provides four vignettes of its presence outside of the United States. Attempts to make the show one of the pieces of American culture that the US State Department allowed to tour in the USSR in the 1950s were unsuccessful, but the 1961 film helped make West Side Story known there and its sense of integration between various elements aligned closely with Soviet artistic conceptions. The film became very popular in Spain, where staged versions did not appear until tours in the 1980s. The first two professional Spanish productions premiered in Barcelona in 1996 and Madrid in 2018. Jerome Robbins took an American cast to England in 1958, creating a sensation first in Manchester and then in London. A Finnish production in Tampere Theater in 1963 proved popular and played briefly in Vienna in 1965.

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.

Independent India developed a three-tiered approach to its grand strategy: first, dealing with the challenges of national integration and threats on its immediate periphery from Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC); second, carving a role for itself as a significant actor in the emergence of a recently decolonised Asia; third, attempting to shape the post-war global order through ideational means. It was able, to a very considerable extent, to achieve its first goal although it failed to secure its Himalayan border with the PRC and suffered a disastrous military defeat in 1962. Its second objective ultimately failed to materialise, largely because of flawed strategies and domestic constraints. The final aim met with very partial success. It played an outsized role in promoting decolonisation, had a limited impact on global disarmament negotiations and made minor contributions to the peaceful resolution of international disputes. Until the end of the Cold War, while India’s stated strategic goals mostly remained the same, it lacked the material capabilities and requisite moral authority to influence key developments in global politics. Only with renewed economic growth, growing military clout and an expanded diplomatic presence has India now become a more influential actor in global politics. However, domestic political choices may undermine the realisation of all three goals.

The Civil War provides an example of a war between two democratic powers with similar constitutions, styles of government and military culture. This helps produce some similarities in strategy making (particularly the role of commanding generals) but also distinct differences, such as the control exercised by respective presidents. The differences in approach are apparent from the beginning of the war. The initial Confederate strategy of a cordon defense arose not from its president, Jefferson Davis, or his officials but from governors and commanders in the field. The Union’s initial strategy, the Anaconda Plan, came from the Union General in Chief, Winfield Scott. This position gave the Union’s creation of strategy a focus which the Confederates did not possess, leading to poor co-ordination of military forces across the Confederacy and weak political control of the South’s generals. This produced blunders such as the Confederate invasion of Kentucky – which had declared itself neutral – without Davis’s knowledge or consent. This was also an example of poor political military control in the South. By comparison, the leadership of Abraham Lincoln – after a weak start – provides an interesting case of the beneficial effects of strong political leadership in the creation and execution of strategy.

From the 16th century onwards, the Republic of the United Provinces, or the Dutch Republic, developed into a state with extensive maritime economic activities (fisheries, trade and whaling) with an extensive trade network in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and North and South America. In the wake of these developments, the navy of the republic found itself involved in many conflicts throughout the early modern era. Sometimes this was for conquest, but most of the time these involvements were to defend. In other words, the maritime power of the republic was mostly used for defensive, rather than offensive, operations. In this chapter we will explore two cases where the republic used naval powers: the Eighty Years War (1568–1648), a struggle between a few rebellious states in the Netherlands and the Spanish Habsburg Empire, and three wars between England and the republic that happened in the second half of the seventeenth century. We will discuss the sources, the presence of a maritime revolution, and the question of who was in charge in deciding the objective for the creation of grand strategy, who were the opponents, what were the causes of the wars, what where the objectives, what means were at the disposal of the republic to achieve its objectives, how priorities were decided and to what degree did cultural and emotional factors play a role in prioritisation.

Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, despite coming to power in similar circumstances, approached their rule in very different ways. In particular, it suggests that along with a contrast of style, in Keegan’s terms Alexander being a ‘heroic’ leader, his father an ‘unheroic’, one their approach and, as a consequence, the aims and practice of their strategies were quite different. While it could be argued that Philip’s was simply one of survival exacerbated by ever more ‘mission creep’ towards the south of Greece, here it is suggested that instead Philip had from very early on a firm proactive vision of ruling all Greece and used an integrated strategy of diplomacy, financial subversion, and military force to achieve that end and on its success established a firm method of retaining his rule. In contrast, Alexander, while tactically brilliant, unlike his father was a reactive rather than a proactive strategist and his campaigns are best seen as a series of micro-strategies responding to specific circumstances as opposed to an overarching vision. This approach explains the lack of a firm political strand to his strategy and the subsequent collapse of his empire on his death.

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) was a poet firmly embedded in tradition, not a radical innovator but always aware of his predecessors and alert to ways of adapting and improving the models they provided. The exception that proves the rule is the Onegin stanza, the only instance in all of Pushkin’s oeuvre where he created his own stanzaic form. He did so for his unprecedented ‘novel in verse’ Eugene Onegin (Evgenii Onegin), widely considered the cornerstone of the Russian literary tradition. Composed from 1823 to 1831 and published serially between 1825 and 1832, the work is marked by sudden shifts in theme, character, setting, and mood.

Translated Byzantine lives of saints occupied considerable space in the hagiographic corpus of Rus and medieval Russia. But original (non-translated) vitae differ significantly from their Greek models in several respects: the very causes of their subjects’ sanctity (the Rus corpus emphasises saintly princes and founders of monasteries); their extremes of self-mortification (as in the case of Varlaam of Keret); and the extravagance of their feats (such as those of Andrew of Crete, or Petr and Fevroniia). Compared to Byzantine hagiography, the Lives of holy fools are overrepresented in the repertoire of medieval Rus, while female saints are underrepresented in it. In the modern era, Russian literature has drawn heavily on the medieval vitae. This tradition became pronounced in the mid-nineteenth century, but communist writers of the twentieth century also fashioned their heroes in the hagiographic mould.

This chapter describes the development of Russian drama over the first two centuries of its history. It begins with the court theatre of the seventeenth century, which formed under the influence of Polish and Ukrainian examples, and goes on to trace the slow development of public theatre. The chapter presents the political and social transformation of the audience as both a driving force behind the evolution of Russian drama and an important theme of numerous authors, including but not limited to Aleksandr Sumarokov, Denis Fonvizin, Aleksandr Griboedov, Nikolai Gogol, and Aleksandr Ostrovskii. The work of these authors reflected the shifting values and conditions of Russian society and state ideology, and influenced spectators and readers by offering up models of behaviour.