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Now in its 7th edition, Strategy in the Contemporary World continues to evolve as the ideas and issues that preoccupy scholars and strategists change. Over time, new topics emerge in military affairs and new voices and perspectives demand a hearing. As a result, the number of chapters contained in our most recent effort has nearly doubled from the original edition and we sometimes have to drop an existing chapter to make room for a new topic.
We have decided to include five chapters from previous editions of Strategy in the Contemporary World in these online materials that accompany the 7th edition. While these essays are often grounded in the past and reflect their age, not current events, they capture traditional perspectives on strategy that have been pushed into the background by the intensity and pace of the transformation produced by the Information Revolution, especially the impact of Moore’s Law on science, industry, society, and war. Eventually, ideas come around full circle; if you stay in the strategy business long enough, you will get to see the same issues twice. What follows might just be a preview of coming attractions.
The first three chapters, written by Stephen Biddle, Sam J. Tangredi, and Timothy Garden, focus on Land, Sea, and Air Power. These chapters date back to the 1st edition of Strategy in the Contemporary World, published in 2002, and provide a concise introduction to operations in these different milieus, explaining how each of them reflects different intellectual traditions, doctrines, strategic cultures, weapons, physical factors, and geographic settings.
The next selection is a chapter written by Colin S. Gray, a brilliant strategist who had a knack for identifying how important consequences might flow from the neglect of the smallest details. In this sophisticated discussion on strategic planning, Gray suggests that strategists and planners should probably devote less effort to the impossible task of creating precise, accurate forecasts of the future. Instead, they would be better off building flexibility into their planning in anticipation of the fact that they will inevitably miss something important when it comes to the strategies and forces they build for the future.
The next chapter on ‘Technology and Warfare’, written by Eliot A. Cohen, was revised several times over the years. It uses the notion of a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ to explain how the application of information-age technologies in war continues to transform conventional combat, a point brought home by the lopsided Coalition victory in the First Gulf War. Cohen’s narrative is intriguing because it reflects the sense of military-technical change that was in the air at the end of the twentieth century, especially the idea that superior numbers alone might not supply a reliable advantage in war.
We have also included a link to an article, ‘The Reluctant Theorist’, written by James J. Wirtz that discusses Gray’s last major work, The Strategy Bridge (2010). The article illustrates the dialectical thinking that was a hallmark of Gray’s scholarship. That approach to strategy is a theme reflected by many of the contributors to Strategy in the Contemporary World.