important, even crucial, for shaping what, after all, the fighting is about. Why is one
fighting? Unless the war is strictly a desperate exercise in self-defence triggered by an
invasion, the purpose of the whole bloody enterprise ought to be ‘to attain a better peace’,
as British strategic theorist Basil Liddell Hart has written (Liddell Hart, 1967: 366). That
notion should be understood to include a condition of international order which is better
than the one which preceded the war in question. Understandably, soldiers tend to be
unsympathetic to orders and other guidance from politicians which, if followed faithfully,
would restrict their ability to fight in the most effective manner. Not all politicians
comprehend the fact that warfare is a blunt instrument. It is not a scalpel to be applied
with surgical skill for precise military and then strategic, and consequential political,
effect. Among a host of difficulties, it is in the nature of war for there to be an enemy
with an independent mind and will who is committed with variable skill, determination
and capability to thwarting you. Undue fascination with our military behaviour and its
anticipated strategic returns is ever likely to be shaken rudely by the inconvenience of an
uncooperative foe. As Winston Churchill warned, ‘However absorbed a commander may
be in the elaboration of his own thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy
into account’ (quoted in Heinl, 1966: 102).
As peace follows war, so war follows peace, though not with any temporal regularity.
Strategic history is distressingly cyclical, notwithstanding the fact that the cycles can be
long or short. Over the past 200 years, wars great and small have erupted, or have been
planned and purposefully unleashed, out of conditions of peace. It follows that one has
to be interested in the provenance of wars in the periods preceding active hostilities. In
particular, one would like to know whether some arrangements for international order
have proven to be more peace-friendly than others. Within the historical domain of this
enquiry there were four great wars: French Revolutionary and Napoleonic, otherwise
known as the Great War with France (1792–1 8 15); World War I (1914–1 8 ); World War
II (1939–45); and the virtual war, but all too real conflict, that was the Soviet–American,
East–West, Cold War (1947– 8 9). Were there common elements among the origins,
causes and triggering events of these four mighty episodes? Most probably there were.
In particular, attention must be drawn to the persisting significance of the concept and
practice of the balance of power and, yet again, to the enduring validity of Thucydides’
fatal triptych of fear, honour and interest. Throughout the whole course of strategic
history, the challenge has never been simply to master the periods of war. Instead, the
real demand for skill in statecraft and strategy derives from the necessity to make
effective provision for peace with tolerable security. The qualification is as essential as,
ultimately, to date, it has proved unduly difficult to achieve on a truly lasting basis to the
general satisfaction of all of the essential – which is to say the major state and other –
players. In addition to the four great wars just cited, since 11 September 2001 a global
conflict has erupted between violent Islamic fundamentalists and their enemies, which
some commentators speculate may be ‘the Third World War’ (Freedman, 2001).
Contexts
Because wars do not occur for reasons internal to themselves, context is literally vital to
their understanding. Historian Jeremy Black explains, ‘War had an enormous impact on
the historical process, but as Napoleon noted, it was not alone at work. Throughout, an
Themes and contexts of strategic history 9