Dear Reader,
In our last article of this series, I introduced the concept of grand strategy with the story of Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world by the age of 32.
Today we would seek to understand what grand strategy means, and draw out its principles for effective decision making in business, career, and life. We begin by reviewing our anchor text: On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis.
Here are the lessons from this article, but read on for more context:
Lessons
Align aspirations and capabilities.
Be a fox and a hedgehog, depending on which the situation requires.
Balance theory with experience to develop a sense of judgement.
Have ecological sensitivity – be aware of your surroundings.
Perceive truth at every point.
Balance opposites through proportionality, and apply lightness of being to tolerate contradictions.
Temperament – Have psychological maturity, be grounded, and realistic.
Table of Content
Xerxes and Artabanus.
An Oxford Don, A Fox, and A Hedgehog.
Grand Strategy: A definition.
Octavius Augustus Caeser vs Mark Antony.
Augustine and Machiavelli.
Princes as Pivots.
The Grandest Strategists.
The Greatest President.
Summary and Lessons.
Begin.
John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University, where he teaches courses on the Cold War and grand strategy. He has been hailed as the ‘Dean of Cold War Historians’ by The New York Times, and won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for biography.
In On Grand Strategy, Gaddis draws lessons from teaching grand strategy seminars at Yale and the U.S. Naval War College. In ten essays, he examines historical figures through classic texts such as Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Clausewitz’s On War, and draws grand strategy lessons across over 2000 years.
Xerxes and Artabanus
This book begins with the chapter Crossing the Hellespont. The date is 480 B.C.E. Xerxes, Persia’s ‘king of kings’ has assembled an army of a million and half men and is invading Greece to avenge the humiliating defeat of Darius, Xerxes’ father, at the battle of Marathon, ten years earlier.
He instructs his men to build a bridge to cross the Hellespont so that he can begin his invasion of Greece. As he surveys the scene from on high and prepares to commence his invasion, he gives his adviser and uncle, Artabanus one more opportunity to object to the invasion.
Artabanus:
Sire, the enemies ahead will not just be Greeks, formidable fighters though they are: they’ll also include the land and the sea. The march around the Aegean will traverse territories incapable of feeding so large an army.
There won’t be enough harbours to shelter ships if storm arises. Exhaustion, even starvation, could set in before fighting a single battle. The prudent leader “dreads and reflects on everything that can happen to him but is bold when he is in the thick of action.”
Xerxes listens carefully and responds:
“If you were to take account of everything…, you would never do anything. It is better to have a brave heart and endure one half of the terrors we dread than to [calculate] all of the terrors and suffer nothing at all… Big things are won by big dangers.
He is decided. Xerxes sends Artabanus back to rule the empire and forges on with his invasion.
After crossing the Hellespont, Xerxes advances, relying on intimidation with his large force. ‘His army was so large it drank rivers and lakes dry before all of its units could get to the other side’.
To proceed further, his army would need to march through the narrow pass at Thermopylae, and it was here King Leonidas of Sparta and his elite 300 would make a stand.
He captures a deserted Athens and burns it to the ground. But the Greeks respond in kind; defeating and ‘sending his fleet to the bottom of the sea at the Battle of Salamis, [his men] – hadn’t been taught to swim’.
‘The king had no choice now but to accept, much too belatedly, his uncle’s advice to return home.’
An Oxford Don, A Fox, and A Hedgehog.
“2419 years later an Oxford don takes a break from tutorials to go to a party”. His name was Isaiah Berlin. He meditates on a line from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus of Paros:
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
He uses this distinction to frame an essay on Tolstoy’s philosophy of history into a short book, The Hedgehog and the Fox.
Hedgehogs, Berlin explained, “relate everything to a single central vision” through which “all that they say and do has significance.”
Foxes, in contrast, “pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected if at all, only in some de facto way.”
To him, this distinction offered a way to compare the difference between writers, thinkers, and all humans. His essay went viral. In the media, and even in the university classroom, professors asked their students if a certain historical figure was a fox or a hedgehog.
An American political psychologist Philip E. Tetlock conducted a 15 year study on why some people correctly predict future events and others don’t. The results were startling.
Those who identified as foxes were far more proficient predictors than hedgehogs.
Gaddis writes:
‘The foxes relied for their predictions, on an intuitive “stitching together [of] diverse sources of information,” … In short foxes do it better’.
This distinction can be used to understand Xerxes, Artabanus, and the result of the invasion.
Gaddis explains:
Xerxes’ invasion of Greece was a spectacular example of hedgehog-like behaviour. He failed as is the habit of hedgehogs, to establish a proper relationship between his ends and his means. Ends are infinite, means on the other hand are finite. Ends and means have to connect if anything is to happen.
Had Xerxes grasped these distinctions, he’d have seen that his armies and fleets could never have transported all that it would take just to invade Greece.
There would also have been risk in following the fox-like Artabanus. He could have warned Xerxes of the depleted rivers, hungry lions, fierce fighters and sinking non-swimmers awaiting him across the Hellespont: because their causes were knowable, their consequences were predictable… Little things add up in unpredictably big ways - and yet, leaders can’t let uncertainties paralyze them. They must appear to know what they’re doing, even when they don’t.
Gaddis continues:
The tragedy of Xerxes and Artabanus is that each lacked the other’s proficiency. The king,
Like Tetlock’s hedgehogs, Xerxes commanded the attention of audiences but tended to dig himself into holes. The advisers, like Tetlock’s foxes, avoided the holes, but couldn’t retain audiences. Xerxes was right. If you try to anticipate everything, you’ll risk not accomplishing anything. But so was Artabanus. If you fail to prepare for all that might happen, you’ll ensure that some of it will.
In 1936, F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby) famously stated that the test of a first-rate intelligence: “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
Gaddis explains:
One possible meaning for Fitzgerald’s opposites could be taking the best from contradictory approaches while rejecting the worst: precisely the compromise that Xerxes and Artabanus failed to reach twenty-four centuries earlier
We’d need to combine, within a single mind (our own), the hedgehog’s sense of direction and the fox’s sensitivity to surroundings. While retaining the ability to function.
Grand Strategy: A definition
On page 21, Gaddis defines grand strategy as:
‘The alignment of potentially unlimited aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities. If you seek ends beyond your means, then sooner or later you’ll have to scale back your ends to fit your means.
Expanding means may attain more ends, but not all because ends can be infinite and means can never be. Whatever balance you strike there’ll be a link between what’s real and what’s imagined: between your current location and your intended destination.
You won’t have a strategy until you’ve connected these dots – dissimilar though they are – within the situation in which you’re operating’.
Practically, grand strategy is a way of matching what you have with what you want, in the context in which you are operating. The adjective ‘grand’ comes in when we are dealing with high stakes.
Historically, grand strategy was associated with the execution of war, which consist of several battles which determine the ultimate outcome. Today it refers to a nation state leveraging all its resources – economic, political, cultural, and military - to further its own interests on the global stage.
But grand strategy could also be associated with the individual. Using a student taking classes at university, Gaddis explains:
The stakes rise, though, as you consider what you’re learning in that class, how that relates to the other courses you’re taking, what your major and then your degree are going to be, how you might parlay these into a profession, and with whom you may fall in love along the way. Strategies become grander even as they remain within the beholder’s eye.
It’s wrong to say then, that states have grand strategies but that people don’t. Alignments are necessary across time, space, and scale.
For effective grand strategy, Gaddis emphasizes the importance of common sense, flexibility, and training:
You learn to play the game by having a coach, who…: teaches you the basics, builds stamina, enforces discipline, encourages collaboration, shows you how to fail and to recover from failure.
By analysing how others since that monarch [Xerxes] have managed oppositions of logic and leadership, we can perhaps coach ourselves for the crossings we’ll sooner or later have to make.
Gaddis defines common sense as:
The ease with which most of us manage, most of the time. We know where we’re going, but we’re constantly adjusting our route to avoid the unexpected, including obstructions others place in our path while on their way to where they’re going.
Common sense, in this sense, is like oxygen: the higher you go, the thinner it gets. “With great power comes great responsibility,” Spider-Man’s uncle Ben reminded him memorably – but also the danger of doing dumb things.
Which is what grand strategy is meant to prevent.
You want to be a fox and a hedgehog at the same time, the importance is to know which the situation requires.
Octavian Augustus Caeser vs Mark Antony
The chapter Teachers and Tethers begins by highlighting The Art of War by Sun Tzu, a 5th century BC Chinese text on military strategy. A manual on ‘aligning aspirations with capabilities’.
It’s filled with different principles such as “if you attack where your enemy least expects it – if you avoid his strength and strike his emptiness” then “like water, none can oppose you”.
Gaddis explains:
Sun Tzu seeks sense – even common sense – by tethering principles, which are few, to practice, which are many… He leaves enough option to satisfy any fox, while retaining the purposefulness of a hedgehog. He keeps opposing ideas in his mind by projecting them across time, space, and scale.
In this chapter, our grand strategy teachers are Augustus Octavian Caesar and his rival Mark Antony. Augustus Caesar was 18, when his uncle; Julius Caesar was murdered leaving him as his heir.
With the goal to seize control of the Roman republic, he constantly adjusts his plans, limiting his means to his ends: initially sharing power with his rivals (to make allies), ‘redistributing land in Rome to gain popular support, and seizing control of legions in Gaul when the opportunity arose’.
Gaddis writes:
Octavian was thinking ahead how one decision can be made to affect what happens next. Anthony wasn’t...Octavian seized opportunities while retaining objectives. He saw next steps where Antony stumbled.
Where Octavian carefully connected his actions, Antony blundered. For example, Antony left Rome for an ill-planned and hence unsuccessful campaign against the Parthians who destroyed his supply train. He was forced ‘to retreat through snowstorms to the Syrian coast’.
Antony and Octavian finally fought a significant naval battle at Actium, of which Octavian was victorious. He was now the sole ruler of Rome.
Gaddis writes:
Victories must connect: otherwise, they won’t lead anywhere… Small triumphs in a single arena set up larger ones elsewhere, allowing weaker contenders to become stronger.
Young Octavian was running circles around Antony, leveraging limited assets until he could switch at Actium, to a more direct approach.
Gaddis writes:
The rising Octavian had spent a decade and a half fending off, buying out, circumventing, eliminating, or capitalizing on threats… he did so resourcefully but he wasn’t setting the pace.
After Actium, Octavian began controlling events, rather than letting them control him…He placed local rulers – Herod in Judea was an example – in charge of difficult provinces. He settled veterans by giving them land and long-term support.
Knowing the Romans aversion of kings, he gradually and skilfully turned Rome from a failing republic to an empire.
Gaddis explains:
He secured authority by appearing to renounce it, most dramatically on the first day of 27 when he unexpectedly gave up all his responsibilities. The surprised senate had no choice but to forbid this and to award Octavian the title of princeps (“the first citizen”) – as well as a new name: Augustus.
What he was really doing was giving up the republic, but so gradually and with such tact.
Ceasar Augustus saw time as an ally… He used time to grow things. One was a constitutional settlement renewing respect for the senate and the rule of law, while retaining, as if in a soft glove, an iron fist.
Octavian was a fox, navigating and adjusting to his environment to reach his objective and became the sole ruler of Rome. Once he achieved this, he switched and became a hedgehog; taking his time to convert and grow Rome from a failing republic to a rising empire.
The key takeaway in this chapter was the importance of closing the gap between aspirations and capability, while grasping the interconnections, going from one action to the next. Finally, be a fox and a hedgehog, depending on which the situation requires.
Octavius succeeded in his objective, lived a full life, and died at the age of 76.
His last words:
I found Rome built of clay: I leave it to you in marble.
Have I played my part in the farce of life creditably enough?
If I have pleased you, kindly signify.
Appreciation with a warm goodbye.
Augustine and Machiavelli
The chapter considers the difference between the City of Man (Caeser) and the City of God. ‘Men owe allegiance to both while on earth, but how do they balance obligations to both?’ In Augustine’s thinking justice, peace, and God fit one category, while order, war, and Caesar inhabit another.
It considers when is man justified in using war as a means to an end. But the key message is about balancing opposites: order versus justice, war versus peace, Caesar versus God.
Gaddis writes:
Augustine concluded that war, if necessary to save the state could be a lesser evil than peace – and that the procedural evil than peace – and that the procedural prerequisites for necessity could be stated.
We shall discuss this further below with the example of Abraham Lincoln and the US Civil War.
Augustine believed there were a set checklist that needed to be met by states choosing war. But how do you find a compromise within these checklists?
Gaddis explains:
Perhaps a compromise lies where Augustine’s checklists leave you, when you do have room to manoeuvre. You lean, bend, or tilt in a certain direction when choosing between order and justice, war and peace, Caesar and God.
You’re aligning aspirations with capabilities, for in Augustine’s thinking justice, peace, and God fit the first category, while order, war, and Caesar inhabit the second.
This means that to have justice you need order to be present, and sometimes to have peace you have to fight wars.
Gaddis explains:
Alignment, implies interdependence. Justice is unattainable in the absence of order; peace may require the fighting of wars… Each capability brings an aspiration within reach, much as Sun Tzu’s practices tether his principles, but what’s the nature of the tether?
I think it’s proportionality: the means employed must be appropriate to-or at least not corrupt- the end envisaged.
This then, is Augustine’s tilt: toward a logic of strategy transcending time, place, culture, circumstance, and the differences between saints and sinners.
By Machiavelli’s time Rome had changed, from emperors leading an empire, to ‘Popes managing papal states of central Italy’. States constantly angling for more power and influence.
Machiavelli believed that war could be used to prevent further breakdown in order and anarchy, but they should be proportional to the objective, and not destroy everything.
Gaddis writes:
Machiavelli was careful, however to apportion enormities: they should only forestall greater horrors: violent revolution, defeat in war, descent into anarchy, mass killing, or what we would today call “genocide.”
Machiavelli considers what’s the best way states should be governed, badly by leaders may lead to war, and with planning may constrain the state. To this he commends the study of history as a guide.
Unlike Augustine whose thinking was limited by his belief in God’s omnipotence, Machiavelli had no such ‘encumbrance’. Machiavelli doesn’t try to speak for or explain God, except for a single sentence in The Prince:
“God does not want to do everything so as not to take free will from us and that part of the glory that falls to us.”
But both Augustine and Machiavelli agree on a principle of proportionality as a pathway to balance opposites. This is reflected in common sense: if you have to use force, don’t destroy what you’re trying to preserve.
Gaddis writes:
For Machiavelli this means seeking patterns – across time, space, and status - by shifting perspective. “Just as those who sketch landscapes place themselves down in the plain to consider the nature of mountains and to consider the nature of low places place themselves high atop mountains”.
Sketches, as Machiavelli sees them… can convey incomplete information on short notice. They thus enhance, although they never replace, good judgement. Like Augustine’s checklists, they show the directions in which a prince might lean, bend, or tilt while balancing opposites.
They tether practices to principles in unknown futures by showing how these were tethered in known pasts.
But as leaders seek to balance opposites, idealisms and reality how do they reconcile the differences? According to Machiavelli (and Isaiah Berlin) by having ‘lightness of being’: don’t sweat it, by learning to live with the contradictions.
Lightness of being
Gaddis defines:
“Lightness of being” as the ability, if not to find the good in bad things, then at least to remain afloat among them, perhaps to swim or to sail through them, possibly even to take precautions that can keep you dry.
The key takeaway in this chapter is that we should learn to balance opposites, using proportionality. But even as we do this, we shouldn’t sweat the differences. We should learn from history (like an artist ‘sketching’), combining its lessons with our experiences, to develop our sense of judgement. Because although times have changed, human nature is the same.
Princes as Pivots
The chapter ‘Princes as Pivots’ shows a remarkable example of the Augustinian grand strategy and the Machiavellian grand strategy during the conflict between Elizabeth 1 of England and Phillip II of Spain in the 1598, which led to the sinking of the Spanish Armada.
Phillip’s Spanish empire was the then dominant power in Europe and the world. His biggest dream was to return England (and its church) from Protestantism to Catholicism, whether through marriage, assassinating the queen, or war.
Gaddis writes:
Philip rushes from crises to crises, rarely resting, never fully in control. He’s whacking moles, and they pop up everywhere. Elizabeth in contrast refuses to hurry. She’ll whack when she has to – the raised hand can indeed remove a head-but she sets times and places.
The king, an Augustinian, sees his empire as a shroud connecting the City of Man to the City of God, no part of which is dispensable…The queen, more Machiavellian, regards her state (not yet an empire) as a stage for performance rather than as a holy relic.
She followed Machiavelli, for if God didn’t want to do everything, why should she? It was enough to awe, to set limits, and like Augustus, to let thing grow – while retaining ... her autonomy. Phillip like Augustine, saw God’s hand in all that happened.
But what Phillip had in religious fervour, he lacked in strategy.
Gaddis writes:
Philip’s micromanagement delayed preparations [for the invasion of England] …Strategy was unclear: how would the “Armada” commanded by the Duke of Medina, who lacked seafaring skills - link up with Parma’s army in the Netherlands to make the Chanel crossing?
The largest naval force ever assembled sailed from Lisbon in May 1588, only to run into a storm that scattered it, forcing repairs and resupply in the northern Spanish port of Corunna.
Elizabeth’s navy, however well trained, was no match numerically for Medina Sidonia’s massive fleet, which appeared off Cornwall on July 29. The queen did, however, have a strategy. She’d first brought Drake home, knowing that her admirals could best confront the Armada in the familiar English Channel.
Medina Sidonia’s warships were supposed to protect Parma’s barges as they carried his army to England. But the king’s orders said nothing about timing, or the means by which the admiral and the general would communicate, or how the winds and tides could bring the two fleets together from opposite directions and then… propel them in the same direction toward England.
This breakdown in communication, meant that when the Armada arrived, the warships were not prepared to guide them to England. Sir Charles Howard, Elizabeth’s lord admiral took advantage of the favourable wind to rig fireships aimed at the Armada, forcing it to ‘cut its anchor cables and disperse’.
The smaller English fleet battered and harassed “the disorganized Spanish: Parma could only watch, in frustration, from the beaches. England, overnight, was again safe”.
Of the 129 Spanish ships that left, 50 were lost, and many were damaged beyond repair. About 15,000 Spanish men were lost. Compared to eight English vessels and about 150 men.
What happened? Phillip had failed in proportionality to align his ends with his means. For example, he invaded by sea on a coast where he had no port for his ships, so even in retreat, his ships had to take the long way back to Spain.
Gaddis writes:
He failed to see incompatibles, and hence the need to pursue certain objectives at the expense of others. The king resisted prioritizing ends, even though God Himself had chosen selectively to provide means.
Instead, Philip lashed himself with Augustinian anxieties. How could a world work against God’s agent - which Phillip believed he was - reflecting God’s intention.
That became the basis for Philip’s grand strategy: not to plan with a view to pivoting but, in the manner of saintly pin cushioned martyrs, to suffer.
Elizabeth, ‘like Machiavelli, neither expected nor needed reassurance.’ She used dithering and pivoting to balance opposites, and achieve her objectives.
Gaddis writes:
Relishing opposites, the queen was constant only in her patriotism, her insistence on keeping ends within means, and her determination – a requirement for pivoting – never to be pinned down.
By resisting military commitments while enforcing domestic economies, Elizabeth balanced revenues and expenses during most of her reign, even running a surplus in its second and third decades.
The Historian A. N. Wilson has pointed, “her advisers and courtiers had been urging her to make decisions: to be Catholic or to be Protestant; to marry; to fight a decisive and expensive war in Ireland. In almost all cases, Elizabeth had dithered … and dithering had been, if not the right policy, then at least not the wrong policy.”
Elizabeth used dithering: to hold of her suitors, thus balancing their states, and, when the balance at last turned against her, to lure the Spanish Armada into the English Channel, where, by trusting her admirals, she sprang a massive mousetrap. Precision and decisiveness in each of these cases could have entrapped her.
This chapter demonstrates how Queen Elizabeth I excellently balanced opposites with proportionality. She carefully retained the initiative, dithering and pivoting when everyone advised her to act. Doing so only when she deemed it necessary, and not before.
Gaddis concludes:
Pivoting requires gyroscopes, and Elizebeth’s were the best of her era. She balanced purposefulness with imagination, guile, humour, timing, and an economy in movement that that, however extravagant her display, kept her steady on the tightrope she walked.
Philip’s gyroscopes, if he had any, malfunctioned constantly. She without visible effort, retained the initiative in all she did. He exhausted himself regaining it in one place while losing it somewhere else. She deftly turned adversaries against each other. He ponderously united them against himself. She running a poor state, kept it solvent. He running a rich one, begged and borrowed.
The Grandest Strategists
The chapter The Grandest Strategists is about 2 key figures who experienced the Napoleonic wars across Europe, and wrote about it. They are Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace) and Carl Von Clausewitz (On War).
Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) was a Russian writer, regarded as one of the greatest writers of all times. He served with the Russian army in Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Crimean War. His novel War and Peace provides a historic narrative of Russia, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino, during the Napoleonic wars.
Carl von Clausewitz (1780 – 1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who focused on the political and ‘moral’ (psychological) aspects of waging war. Disappointed by the forced alliance with Napoleon, he left the Prussian army and joined the Russian Army to fight Napoleon. He was at the famous Battle of Borodino (1812). His writing On War, unfinished at his death focused on the philosophy of war.
Together, their writings provide a complementary view of the battles fought and grand strategy, particularly the grand strategy of Napoleon. This chapter focuses on the gap between theory and practice. It also considers how the war was fought in space, time, and scale. Let’s dive in.
The Battle of Borodino (Sept. 1812)
This battle took place during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia were his Grande Armée met the Imperial Russian Army at the village of Borodino. Both sides suffered heavy losses and Napoleon failed to get a decisive victory. Napoleon’s strategy was to defeat the Russian army, take Moscow, and force their king Tsar Alexander I into a peace agreement.
“War must be extended in space. I cannot put too high a price on this view. The aim is to weaken the enemy, so one cannot pay attention to the loss of private persons.”
- On War, Carl von Clausewitz
The Russians surprised Napoleon and began to retreat, scorching the earth, and abandoning Moscow. That’s what it means to extend war in space to weaken the enemy. Napoleon took the city but didn’t know what to do next.
The more Napoleon pursued the Russians deep into Russia, the more he put his army at risk, and winter was coming.
Gaddis writes:
Clausewitz called this the “culminating point” of Napoleon’s offensive, by which he meant that the French had defeated themselves by exhausting themselves.
Retreats invite counterattack. Russia is big and its winters are cold. Dogs that catch cars never know what to do with them. Why then, did Napoleon forget what most fools remember?
Perhaps because common sense is indeed like oxygen: the higher you go, the thinner it gets. As each triumph topped its antecedent Napoleon’s grammar became his logic.
What this means is that he lost the initiative. With each victory he began to believe he could do no wrong, and force the Russians into a peace agreement. When they didn’t, he kept going.
The Battle of Tarutino (Oct. 1812)
Napoleon pursued the retreating Russian army and again faced them at Tarutino. In this confrontation he was defeated. This gave Napoleon ‘the push needed to begin his retreat’. But it was too late.
Winter had come.
The Result
Napoleon left for Russia in June 1812 with an army of 600,000 men, and returned in December 1812 with only 90,000 men. Most of them lost to the winter. This mirrored the experience of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, and the Spanish Armada in the English Channel.
‘What were they thinking? Or to put it another way, what had Napoleon forgotten?’
Clausewitz explains
That ‘war should reflect and be subordinated to politics, and hence policy… The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.’
By retreating the Russians extended war in space. If Napoleon chased them, he would stretch his supply line and weaken himself. It also extended the war in time: ‘the farther the French advanced, the longer it would take for them to get back.’
He should have expected the unexpected.
Ecological Sensitivity
How could Napoleon have expected the unexpected: the Russian army retreating (unlike every other army he faced)?
Gaddis answers:
Good strategy requires an ‘ecological sensitivity’ or as Carl von Clausewitz puts it: “The man responsible for evaluating the whole must bring to the task the quality of intuition that perceives the truth at every point. Otherwise, a chaos of opinions… would arise, and fatally entangle judgement.”
This means the strategist should extend his thinking far and wide to consider different options.
Clausewitz goes further and explains how to perceive “truth at every point” by linking strategy to imagination. He recommends coup d’oeil, or an “inward eye”, which is similar to what ‘Machiavelli meant by “sketching”- conveying complexity usably’. This will help you respond to surprises.
Gaddis continues:
So when your troops get sick, or their horses begin to starve, or tsars don’t follow the scripts you’ve written for them, you sketch what you know and imagine - informed by the sketch - what you don’t: this allows recovering from surprises and moving on.
But how can planning anticipate surprises ? Only by living with contradictions, Clausewitz maintains: “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”
Clausewitz explains that what constrains the achievement of grand strategy (the alignment of aspirations and capabilities) is friction. He defines friction as the ‘collision of theory with reality’. These are all the obstacles that reality presents to any plan or strategy.
Gaddis writes:
Just as coup d’oeil links strategy to imagination, so Clausewitz’s concept of friction ties theory to experience.
For strategists this means being able to extend research and thinking across as many domains as is knowably possibly is a vital skill. More importantly, being able to spot and connect thinking to unknown or outlying fields, behaviours or domains is an advantageous ability.
So where did Xerxes and Napoleon go wrong in their respective invasions of Greece and Russia?
Gaddis writes:
Clausewitz would say they failed to perceive “truth at every point,” which in these instances meant landscapes, logistics, climates, the morale of their troops, and the strategies of their enemies.
They missed what their own soldiers understood: that Greece and Russia were traps, just at the English Channel was for the Spanish Armada.
“The good general, must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operations which this very friction makes impossible.”
Theory and Practice
Clausewitz (and Tolstoy) believed that theories are important to inform, but they must be put in their place – as principles rather than rules. Clausewitz advises that just as you prune plants to bear fruits, you prune theory with experience, by not asking too much of it.
Clausewitz in On War writes:
Theory exists so that one need not start afresh each time… It means to educate the mind of future commander, or more accurately, to guide him in his self-education, not to accompany him to the battlefield; just as a wise teacher guide and stimulates a young man’s intellectual development, but is careful not to lead him by the hand for the rest of his life.
Gaddis explains:
Clausewitz sees theory, then as training… It’s the “lubricant” that reduces friction. Trouble comes not from embracing theory as a beginner, but from clutching it too closely while rising, a practice that “defies common sense”.
He values theory as antidote to anecdotes: as a compression for the past transmitting experience, while making minimal claims about the future. He relies on theory for training, not as a navigational chart for the unforeseen.
Tolstoy agrees in War and Peace, citing the example of General Karl Ludwig von Pfuel who ‘so loved his theory that he forgot the purpose of the theory – its application in practice’. He goes further.
Tolstoy in War and Peace writes:
When Newton formulated the law of gravity, he did not say that the sun or the earth has the property of attraction; he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have this property of attracting each other… History stands on the same path
Gaddis explains:
What Tolstoy means is (a) that because everything connects with everything else, there’s an inescapable interdependency across time, space, and scale – forget about distinguishing independent from dependent variables; (b) that, as a consequence, there’ll always be things that can’t be known
Clausewitz and Tolstoy advise we begin with theory and practice and use it to achieve a balanced view. As we do, we develop our coup d’oeil (‘inward eyes’ or judgement).
Gaddis explains:
‘Each situation requires a balancing derived from judgement and arising from experience, skills acquired by learning from the past and training for the future’.
Theory functions with respect to the past, as Clausewitz’s coup d’oeil do in the present: it extracts lessons from infinite variety. It sketches informed by what you need to know, without trying to tell you too much. For in classrooms as on battlefields, you don’t have unlimited time to listen.
For as you balance knowns, probabilities, and unknowns, you’re also doing so across time, space, and scale. “In war, as in life generally,” Clausewitz explains, “all parts of a whole are interconnected and thus the effects produced, however small their cause, must influence all ... operations and modify their final outcome to see degree, however slight.”
The grand strategy lesson from Clausewitz and Tolstoy, is the importance of balancing opposites. ‘Theory versus practice. Training versus improvisation. Planning versus friction. Action versus inaction.’ And so on.
‘That’s where proportionality – the simultaneous comprehension of contradictions comes from’. The key takeaways in this chapter are to apply ecological sensitivity to quickly assess a situation from different angles, balance theory and practice to develop your sense of judgement, and embrace contradictions.
You quickly assess the situation and take action, and based on the feedback from your action, make another assessment, and decision.
Napoleon expected the Russians [like previous armies he faced] to stand and fight to the death to defend their capital; Moscow. But they not only retreated, they set the city ablaze. With the Russian winter coming, that was the point Napoleon should have turned back. But he kept going, to his destruction. Surprisingly, this mistake would be repeated by Germany during WWII.
The Greatest President
In this chapter we come to the story of John Quincy Adams, the 6th U.S. president, who served in several capacities (Senator, Ambassador, Secretary of State, President) for the then young country. He was the son of the founding member and 2nd U.S. president; John Adams.
The chapter compares where he failed in grand strategy (to align his aspirations and capabilities), with Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president. Who not only succeeded but did so despite the lack of a formal education.
John Adams
When John Adams ran for president, there was a plurality; this meant that there was no clear winner and the U.S. House of Representatives needed to make the final decision. Eventually one of his contenders Henry Clay dropped out of the race and supported John Adams, winning him the election.
He responded by naming Henry Clay his secretary of state. A move that forced the other major contender; Andrew Jackson to label it a “corrupt bargain”, which further dwindled John Adams’ support base.
He further misfired in his first annual message to Congress by proposing an ambitious agenda for investment in the creation of a national university, a naval academy, federally financed roads and canals, a national observatory and so on. He proposed financing these developments not through tax, but through land sale.
His policies were vigorously opposed for several reasons one of which was that it gave the federal government more powers over the state. His dwindled support meant he did only a single term in office.
But then he pivoted, running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representative, after being a president, and won in December 1831. He then took up a cause; the abolishment of slavery.
Gaddis writes:
‘Over the next decade and a half, he asked for only one thing: a debate on the thousands of anti-slavery petitions he’d put before his colleagues’.
For just as the Constitution guaranteed free and the right to petition “for a redress of grievances.”
On February 21, 1848, the House of Representative ‘was debating a resolution to thank military officers who’d recently served in the war against Mexico. This expanded the United States territory from Texas’.
Adams ‘believed the president had provoked this war in other to bring in new slave territories into the Union’. Unfortunately, while on the floor of the House, Adams suffered the stroke that killed him two days later.
‘Abraham Lincoln, a first-term congressman and fellow war critic, probably witnessed the dramatic event’.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln lost both his parents at a young age, and educated himself by reading voraciously. He became a lawyer and, later on a politician. He gained a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives where he took up the cause of John Adams: the abolition of slavery.
He argued that the U.S. Founders saw slavery as a necessity to initially creating the union, hoping it would eventually disappear.
Gaddis writes:
Lincoln insisted in 1854 that the Founders inherited the institution from the British, knew they’d have no nation without it, but hoped it would disappear on its own. So they wrote slavery into the Constitution without naming it.
Slavery, however was not disappearing. It was becoming more profitable where it was legal… It could well spread by invitation or imposition into the new territories – soon to be states- won form Mexico.
Lincoln argued against slavery in seven famous debates in 1858, with a senior senator; Stephen A. Douglas. With half of the country for slavery, and the other half against slavery, the conversation reflected the ‘mood’ of the country: that maybe the Union should be dissolved if a consensus couldn’t be reached.
This debate set the scene for Lincoln to win and be elected as the U.S. president. ‘Seven states seceded after Lincoln’s election, seizing federal facilities as they did so.’
He tried to reason with them, but on April 12, 1861 the Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter and from that moment war was underway.
Lincoln’s Grand Strategy
To succeed, Lincoln clarified his objectives for the war, devised a general plan, and at each point, applied common sense and excellent timing, eventually winning the war.
Gaddis writes:
Lincoln’s unvarying objective over the next four years was to restore the Union, thereby saving his state for what he foresaw as a future of global greatness. But that wouldn’t be possible, he also believed, without expunging the originally necessary sin of slavery.
Lincoln never read Augustine or Machiavelli on the competing demands of souls and states. Yet few who came after them more skilfully navigated the polarity.
Lincoln knew, though, that you can’t fight only wars that fit textbooks. And so he proposed a “general idea”- “that we have the greater numbers, and the enemy has the greater facility of concentrating forces upon points of collision; that we must fail, unless we can find some way of making our advantage an over-match for his; and that this can only be done by menacing him with superior forces at different points, at the same time.”
Gaddis explains:
The president’s strategy was to destroy enemy forces, wherever they were, whenever opportunity arose to do so: in short, and above all else, to fight.
The Union’s human, territorial, and technological reserves would in time exceed the Confederacy’s… compelling its armies’ surrender. He intuited Clausewitz…War was then, for Lincoln – despite his never seen this sentence – “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”
Lincoln saw that a civil war -which he’d allowed to be forced upon him- might also permit the American state, tainted by slavery, to save its soul. Saving the state however came first.
That meant retaining the allegiance of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, four loyal states where slavery was legal. So Lincoln ordered his commanders not to declare on their own authority, that slaves their troops captured were free: only the president could do that, and he wasn’t yet ready.
Lincoln writes:
By general law, life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.
Gaddis explains:
Lincoln here stated, more clearly than Clausewitz, a Clausewitzian fundamental: that it made no sense to save a part while losing the whole. Hence it was only common sense to conclude that “the political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.”
Allen C. Guelzo suggests that “the gift of coup d’oeil” allowed Lincoln to “take in the whole of a situation at once and know almost automatically how to proceed.”
He committed purposefully to union throughout the war and to emancipation by its end, although with exquisite timing.
Lincoln’s goal at the start of the war was to preserve the union. As the war drew on he began seeking alternatives ways to win the war. ‘One was to become, at last, an abolitionist.’
Gaddis writes:
The president forbade his commanders from freeing captured slaves, but he didn’t object when they put slaves to work supplying the army. It then seemed reasonable to arm some and, once this had been done, to recruit them into the army, where many in event wanted to go.
That augmented Northern manpower while unnerving the South, always fearful of slave revolts. And once former slaves had fought for the Union, no Northerner could credibly support re-enslavement: practicality was freeing slaves, if not yet a presidential decree.
Lincoln had already discovered a way to make his wish ‘his duty: he’d declare abolition a military necessity’. This meant acting through “war powers” implied in his constitutional designation as “commander in chief”, “to order the universal emancipation of the slaves.”
Gaddis writes:
But this president, unlike Adams, had the gift of coup d’oeil. So, he waited for just the right moment.
It came when McClellan at last delivered, at Antietam on September 17, a plausible military victory… It allowed the president five days later to proclaim, not form desperation, but from strength:
That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.
With the South fleeing, and this proclamation, the North had seized the initiative.
During this period Lincoln also had to seek re-election against General George B. McClellan, who proposed a negotiated peace that would save slavery and compromise the Union.
Then General William Tecumseh Sherman took Atlanta on September 2, 1864. This was a significant victory as Atlanta was an important industrial centre and rail hub for the Confederacy. Lincoln promptly won the 1864 presidential elections and was re-elected.
Lincoln was able to manage polarities (“he was righteous without being self-righteous, and moral without being moralistic”), without them managing him.
Gaddis explains that this was because of the common sense ‘Lincoln extracted from an uncommon mastery of scale, space, and time’.
Scale, Space, and Time
Scale sets the range or magnitude within which experiences accrues. This could be for an individual (as in the case of John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln), or in the case of an army on the battlefield, or a country – regional, continental, and global.
Gaddis writes:
Scale sets the ranges within which experience accrues… if in individuals, resilience accommodates unknowns more readily than rigidity, then it stands to reason that a gradual expansion of edges better equips leaders for the unexpected than those that shock, leaving little time to adapt.
[As the son of a US president and founder] great expectations inspired, pursued, and haunted Adams, depriving him at critical moments of common sense. Overestimation by others – which he then magnified – placed objectives beyond his reach: only self-demotion [to the U.S. House of Representatives] brought late-life satisfaction.
No expectation lured Lincoln apart from those he set for himself: he started small, rose slowly, and only when ready reached for the top. His ambition grew as his opportunities expanded, but he kept both within his circumstances. He sought to be underestimated.
Space is where ‘expectations and circumstances intersect’. It’s about balancing interests and the associated cost.
Gaddis writes:
Lincoln and Adams both saw, in westward expansion, the power to secure liberty, but they also feared its dangers.
[Lincoln and John Quincy Adams] The Founders’ sons had to balance a single interest – whether to expand slavery into new territories – on which national unity had come to depend. Resilience had gone rigid: any choice would, for someone, carry unacceptable costs. Demotion and death spared Adams the need to choose, but Lincoln seems to have welcomed it.
He therefore used space, in wars to restore the Union. He ignored orthodoxies, pored over maps, and calculated capacities. These showed Northern strengths to be the exterior lines along which new technologies - telegraphs, railroads, industrially produced weaponry – could combine with new thinking to allow mobility and concentrated force.
All Lincoln needed were generals who’d fight, and the time it would take them to exhaust the Confederacy. After which the country would control the continent as the Founders intended.
Time is the period within which scale and space occur. Gaddis suggests that ‘Lincoln kept it on his side: he knew how to wait, when to act, and where to seek reassurance’.
Lincoln endured the American civil war were more than 3 million men fought, ‘and at least 750,000 died’ by focusing on his ultimate objective to preserve the union, and later abolition. He intuited Clausewitz although never reading about him, by focusing on this his political objective, war as it means, and not confusing the two.
Gaddis writes:
[Lincoln] He kept them all within the physical, emotional, and moral tolerances of the moment: that allowed expanding war aims to include abolition, but only after he’d convinced himself that this would aid the war’s conduct.
Lincoln’s sensitivity to evolving context – his ability to let even lethal things grow – kept the war Clausewitzian: saving the state remained his compass, despite startling expansion of means he employed.
After Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, he ‘persuaded’ the U.S. Senate to make a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery throughout the US, an objective of his re-election. This was passed and announced December 6, 1865 as the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
He also asked for and got: ‘internal improvements including a railroad to the Pacific, the cheap sale for settlement of western public lands, subsidized state universities, a protective tariff, a centralized banking system, and a federal income tax’. Improvements that Adam had previously requested.
The key takeaway of this chapter was on how Lincoln aligned his capability with his aspiration. His aspiration grew as his capability grew. He exemplified the strategies of Clausewitz despite never reading about him. By focusing on his political objective to save the union, with war as his means, he kept this long-term necessity in mind, whilst addressing the immediate necessity.
He became an abolitionist when he was sure it would aid the war, and not before. He applied his gift of ‘coup d’oeil’ to take in the whole situation, knowing the right action to take across time, while connecting each action to the next.
Lincoln’s uncommon mastery of scale, space, and time’ meant that he was able to restore the union, abolish slavery, and set America on its path for global greatness, winning two world conflicts, and becoming the pre-eminent power of the 20th century.
Summary and Lessons
Here are the lessons I have learnt from this review of On Grand Strategy:
Lessons
Align aspirations and capabilities.
Be a fox and a hedgehog, depending on which the situation requires.
Balance theory with experience (practice) to develop a sense of judgement – learn from history and those who have done it before, not as a hard rule, but as a guide.
Have ecological sensitivity – be aware of your surroundings. When making decisions, understand the environment and factors that could affect the outcome.
Perceive truth at every point – evaluate the ‘knowns’ and ‘unknowns’, through assessment and ‘sketching’.
Balance opposites through proportionality, and apply lightness of being (don’t sweat it) to tolerate contradictions.
Temperament – Have psychological maturity, be grounded, and realistic. I’ll define this further as having a moral humility, where you can tell yourself the truth in any situation, and not be carried away by grandiosity.
Summary
Today we have reviewed our anchor text for this series: On Grand Strategy by John Gaddis, and learnt about what grand strategy is, its core principles, and examined examples from across history.
This was a great book but I had to study it deeply. I enjoyed the focus on classical texts compared to the common approach of recommending frameworks. There are other valuable examples in this book I could not cover, but I encourage you to grab a copy, read it, and let us have a conversation.
In our next articles for this series, I’ll explore modern examples of grand strategy from the world of business, and career. Together with these core principles, we should be able to apply grand strategy in our decision making towards improving our career, business, and life.
If you’re finding this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it and subscribing if you haven’t already. You can message me questions or feedback at notesbynero@gmail.com.
Till next time.
Nero
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