How do you judge, say, a field soldier like General Ulysses S. Grant—a victor whose bulldog approach to battlefield combat is Carl von Clausewitzs principle of continuity made manifest—against a Clausewitz, an indifferent soldier whose accomplishments as a man of letters shape strategic thought and actions to this day? ... You need both doers and thinkers to perpetuate strategic thought—but ultimately, the thinker with a feel for battlefield realities trumps the practitioner with little flair for analyzing his experiences, drawing out the takeaways and recording the results. Yet another superlative list from TNI popped up during a random bit of reading and research this afternoon, and this one was too good not to share. Definitions matter here (e.g., What is strategy and how is it different from military strategy?), but any number of really interesting questions come to mind. What is a great military strategist? What are the criteria by which we judge? Who are numbered among them? Homer and Thucydides seem problematic as entries (each for different reasons), but lets not quibble with Holmes list. Rather, lets make our own.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:13:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015