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Volume 5, Issue 2, Spring 2016
Infinity Journal
Page 2
How do you teach Strategy? It’s a good question; or rather it’s a good question until you pick apart the basic idea
behind it.
Infinity Journal uses the understanding of strategy that connects politics with violence. So how do you teach
people to connect politics with violence? Strategy is after all a
practical
skill. More to the point it’s a practical skill
that very, very few people actually ever employ. Far more people input to tactics and policy than ever apply what
they know to strategy.Almost no one can claim to be a “strategist.”
However, understanding and studying strategy equips you with a whole range of understanding that other fields
simply lack, but that can really only be accomplished by studying history through the lens that classical strategy
provides, which is to say, history. If you debate the meaning of strategy, how it is done, or the mechanisms it is
composed of, then all that history, as in over 5,000 years of evidence, is simply closed to you. History is the only
source of evidence.
Strategic History (to use the phrase and definition coined by Colin S. Gray) is far more than just military history, and
sadly current military history is mostly narrative in nature and consumed for entertainment purposes.That with
insights relevant to understanding and practice is rare.
If you want to know why wars are won and lost, then only strategic history can tell you. For example, strategic
history can, with relative ease, show how and why the US lost the Vietnam War and Rhodesia sealed its own
fate, regardless of military skill. If we are to understand culture as shared ideas and beliefs, then the concept of
“strategic culture” would struggle to accommodate perspectives of similar value.
It is worth noting that almost all aspects of understanding and comprehending military behaviour are best
enabled by a detailed and structured study of history.That said, the required analytical framework must exist to do
so. Undefined problems will always remain unresolved.
Want to study strategy? Applying the strategic theory that has been proven by practice, to an examination of the
relevant history is pretty much the only way forward.
William F. Owen
Editor, Infinity Journal
May 2016
A Note From The Editor