Written by a Yale professor who co-taught courses on grand strategy for nearly two decades, this book (Grand Strategy, 2019) had significant potential to bring together years of teaching into an accessible book (published by a mass market press, not academic press). John Lewis Gaddis is extremely well read, and from diverse fields. The book opens with an appealing first chapter(s), while the latter half meanders around American history and seems to lose sight of the book’s objective. A reviewer of the book described the book as a being like a long walk with a seasoned academic. At parts it felt like that. A few notes:
“There’s no way Octavian could have planned all of this. He couldn’t have anticipated that angry veterans would kill a centurion, or that Fulvia and Lucius would rebel without Antony’s support or that the governor of Gaul would die, or that Antony would miscalculate his logistics, or that his troops and Octavian’s would refuse to fight, or that Antony would reverse course and wed his sister. Unlike Pericles, Octavian never tried to forge, from contingent events, casual chains. Instead he seized opportunities while retaining objectives. He saw next where Antony stumbled.” (p. 77)
“In time though, logic surrounds, confounds, and supersedes such grammar. Heroic drain you. Offensives slow as supply lines lengthen. 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. Like Caesar, he rose so far above fundamentals as to lose sight of them altogether. Such ascents can be awe-inspiring: so too, in thier day, were hot air balloons. But gravity is always present.” (p. 190)
“Napoleon, in theory, knew this. That’s why, despite his limited objectives he crossed the Nieman with such an enormous force: Xerxes at the Hellespont did the same. Both sought to overcome friction by intimidating their enemies. Neither saw, though, that the retreat of a foe can be resistance, owing to the ascending costs of protracted pursuits. Both, for this reason, wore out their military machines, to the point that further advances emboldened adversaries, not themselves.” (p. 203-204)
“That’s where grand strategy helps. For “in all fair dealings,” Burke reminded his parliamentary colleagues in 1775, “the thing bought must bear some proportion to the purchase paid.” Proportionality comes from what grand strategy is: the alignment of potentially infinite aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities. And fairness? I’d say from bending the alignment toward freedom. Or, as Berlin would have put it, toward “negative” liberty. This is what Clausewitz meant by subordinating “war” to “policy”, for what freedom could come from total violence? It’s what Augustine sought by seeking to make wars “just”. And it’s what Sun Tzu, with uncharacteristic gentleness, acknowledged: that “while an angered man may again be happy, and a resentful man again be pleased, a state that has perished cannot be restored, nor can the dead be brought back to life.” (p. 312-313)
