Talking Strategy

In this episode, we discuss the reign of Leo VI (the Wise), Byzantine emperor and strategist (r. 866–912), with Dr Georgios Chatzelis from the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia (CAS).Leo VI predates the 18th century flourishing of Western thinking about strategy by almost 900 years – although it is the translation of the Greek word strategía in his treatise (confusingly called The Tactic) that becam...

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars profoundly affected all of Europe and became watersheds in the history of strategy. Until then, French thinking on war had dominated European discourse for a good two centuries, even though the word 'strategy' had not yet been imported into European languages from the Greek. Crucial among the French thinkers of this period was Comte de Guibert (1743–179...

At the turn of the 20th century, Imperial Germany was a dominant force in thinking about military strategy with a focus on land warfare commensurate with its geography. Prussian strategists agreed with most of their French colleagues that war would involve mass armies, and that their strategy had to be offensive. Three Prussian strategists of land warfare were particularly influential in shaping t...

Sir Julian Corbett was at the heart of strategy debates before, during and immediately after the First World War. Educator of the British Royal Navy, he was strongly influenced by Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, but adapted Clausewitz's theories to include the naval dimension that was missing in most Prussian writings. In his theories of 'maritime strategy', which were inherently 'joint', he...