Defense - Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy

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The Other Mahan: Transmitting and Modifying the Classics in Military Education

January 28, 2015

When one thinks about the impact of Mahan on American military thought and practice, one naturally thinks of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the naval historian and theorist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But there was another notable Mahan – Dennis Hart Mahan (USMA, 1824), Alfred’s father, who taught for many years at West Point in the mid-nineteenth century and whose personality and views influenced Civil War commanders on both sides of the divide.

The Bhagavad Gita and the Cross of Thought or Action

Patrick J. Garrity +

January 24, 2015

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” So J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, said he had reflected while witnessing the detonation of the first atomic device in July 1845. The source of this inspiration, or despair, was the Hindu scriptural epic, the Bhagavad Gita.

David Tucker on the Classic Dimensions of Strategy and Intelligence

Patrick J. Garrity +

November 21, 2014

David Tucker (Ashbrook Center, Ashland University) has published a book, The End of Intelligence: Espionage and State Power in the Information Age, in the Stanford Security Series (Stanford University Press). To a first order, the book examines – and finds wanting – claims that the recent information revolution has weakened the state, revolutionized warfare, or changed the balance of power between states and non-state actors. It can be read at several different levels: as a primer, or refresher, on the various dimensions of intelligence (e.g., collection, analysis, espionage, counterintelligence, and covert action); as high-level exploration of the relationship among philosophies of government and human nature, historical eras, and various approaches to the means and ends of intelligence; and for its considered judgment of the possibilities, and particularly the limitations, of intelligence.

Machiavelli, The Art of War (1521)

Patrick J. Garrity +

January 16, 2009

In The Art of War, the only one of his major writings published during his lifetime, Machiavelli sets out to consider that topic from the standpoint of the superintending military commander. The Art of War is divided into a preface and seven books (chapters), presented as a series of dialogues that take place in the garden of Cosimo Rucellai, a friend of Machiavelli, who had died two years before the book was published. Cosimo and his guests, including a silent Machiavelli, respectfully question a visitor, Fabrizio Colonna, who is treated as a military authority. Fabrizio discusses how an army should be raised, trained, organized, deployed and employed. His model is the Roman Legion of the Republic, which he argues should be adapted to the contemporary situation of Renaissance Florence.