Recovering the classic sources of strategic thinking
While Washington famously urges America in his 1796 Farewell Address to focus on preserving union at home for the “permanency of [its] felicity as a people,” Eisenhower in his 1961 Farewell Address identifies extensive foreign involvement as a necessity to preserve peace and “enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among people and among nations.” These two presidents seem to offer very different…
Art in its widest sense is any human activity for which the ability is not directly given to him by Nature, nor is it developed through her hand. Man has received from Nature the developed abilities of the senses (at least it seems so); he has learned (through instinct) to walk, eat, drink, etc., by her hand. Both kinds of abilities cannot count as art. The post Clausewitz, On Art and the Theory…
“On Art and the Theory of Art” is a rigorous investigation exploring the differences between art and science; the possibility of art theory; the necessity of practice and talent; the possibility of any laws or rules of art; and the difficulty of exceptions to these rules or laws, among other topics. It is a deep meditation on the relationship between purposes (Zweck) and means (Mittel), which is…
In the aftermath of the Second World War, engineer and chief science advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt Vannevar Bush wrote "Modern Arms and Free Men: A Discussion of the Role of Science in Preserving Democracy." World War II had been marked by incredible technological innovations that changed the course of the war, culminating in the atom bomb. The lessons of that war, Bush hoped, would help…
The hard-won trajectory of his career enabled Richelieu to develop the temperament and experience to step into the role of Prime Minister for a struggling France in 1624. At the time, the kingdom was not ready to challenge the dominance of the Habsburgs, whose extensive borders almost surrounded France. Years of war, religious turmoil, and bitter domestic conflict had weakened France’s finances,…
Musashi’s main contention in the Book of Five Rings is that the secrets of the ultimate style of successful samurai swordsmanship contain the secrets to success in warfare itself. Therefore, a revelation of such secrets is as important to the front-line combatant on the ground, as it is to the commander and to the planner(s). My argument is, in turn, that Musashi’s equation of perfection in the…
Two general schools of thought regarding Crowe and his famous Memorandum have emerged. Some scholars paint Crowe as a latter-day Cassandra who foresaw the structural trends that were hurling the two powers toward confrontation and articulated the necessary course of action, which his government failed to undertake until it was too late. Harvard’s Graham Allison compares the Crowe Memorandum to the…
As a history of naval war Influence makes for dull reading. Rather, Mahan is interested in the more fundamental relationship between national primacy and the sea. Without commerce, territorial infrastructure, and political will, naval preponderance is unsustainable. Momentary superiority in tonnage or deployable warships often masks a deeper brittleness. As Mahan puts it when discussing the War of…
The Idrimi Statue Inscription is perhaps the earliest complete biography of a political figure that has been discovered to date. Written on a statue of Idrimi sitting on a throne, the inscription is a generally chronological abridgement of King Idrimi’s political and military activities in fifteenth century northern Levant (BCE). While there exists more biographical information about the lives and…
It is with great sadness that we write to let you know that CSD founder and executive director Dr. Patrick Garrity passed away peacefully after a long battle with skin cancer. Right up until the end, he devoted his time and thoughts to his life’s work, attending to his John Quincy Adams essay, the work of future scholars, and outreach for his beloved CSD. The post A Founder’s Passing first…