On Grand Strategy

Overstretch—the enfeeblement that comes with confusing ends and means—allows enemies to apply leverage: small maneuvers that have big consequences. Themistocles wouldn’t have won at Salamis without spinning a Delphic oracle. Elizabeth trusted her admirals to trust the winds. And Kutuzov could safely slumber after Borodino, certain that geography, t

England’s maritime superiority had relied, since the Tudors, on rivalries within continents to prevent projections of power beyond their shores. But now, Mackinder was arguing, consolidations of continents were taking place that, if used to build fleets, could empower an “empire of the world.” Probably Russia would run it. Or maybe Germany allied w

What Lincoln had shown was the practicality, in politics, of a moral standard. I mean by this an external frame of reference that shapes interests and actions, not—like Douglas’s—an internal one that only reflects them. Lincoln’s didn’t arise from faith, or formal ethics, or even the law, a profession necessarily pragmatic in its pursuit of justice

Spain, like Rome, imposed uniformities on particularities. This could produce impressive results: it’s unlikely, otherwise, that either empire would have expanded so far so fast. The price, though, was shallow roots, which allowed adversity to shake authority.9 The English spread their influence more slowly, but adapted more easily, especially in N

“Any complex activity,” Clausewitz writes, “if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a ‘genius.’”39 I take this to mean continuing adjustments of “intellect”—which sets course

Nor did Jefferson, any more than Paine, say anything about what kind of government might replace that of the British tyrant. Details weren’t either patriot’s strength. Had they been, independence might never have been attempted, for details dim the flames fireships require. They disconnect ends of arguments from their beginnings. That’s why Paine a

Geoffrey Parker, his best biographer, finds an answer in late twentieth-century “prospect” theory: leaders, it suggests, risk more to avoid losses than to achieve gains.76 Given the empire Philip inherited and then expanded, he had a lot to lose. What’s strange, though, are the risks he ran to regain territories he hadn’t lost. It wasn’t Philip’s f

This was, in one sense, toleration, for the new queen cared little what her subjects believed. She would watch like a hawk, though, what they did.

Hedgehogs, Berlin explained, “relate everything to a single central vision” through which “all that they say and do has significance.” Foxes, in contrast, “pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way.” The distinction was simple but not frivolous: it offered “a point of view from which t