What is Strategy?

 

Curiously enough, the word strategy wasn't in the English language until about the late 18^th or early 19th century. Prior to that time the closest thing was the word stratagem which meant a trick or maneuver to gain advantage over an opponent. Sometime around the turn of the 18th and 19th century the word strategy was imported from the French word strategy which meant the office or art of the general.

The simplest definition of strategy would be a plan for achieving an objective. While there is nothing wrong with this definition It encompasses unilateral or single actor plans of action, i.e., plans that do not involve other actors either as allies or opponents. For instance, as I write this I am preparing for a trip to Maine, and I am developing plans to accomplish that objective. Decisions about whether to go get my oil changed this morning and when to start packing boxes would seem to be more logistics than strategy. However, one might see strategy in it if I was developing plans to get my wife to bring fewer bags with us.

Therein lies a key component of strategy, the focus on affecting the actions of others in some way to achieve your objective. This component is particularly important in international relations where, generally, states (or actors) are trying to achieve goals and objectives in cooperation or competition with other states (or actors).  

Therefore, as a starting point, I am tentatively defining strategy as an actor’s plan of action to influence other actors in order to achieve an objective. In this definition, ‘influence’ is meant to encompass not only attempts at changing the other actors’ behavior, but also attempts to materially strengthen, weaken, or destroy the other actor, and attempts to change the other actors' attitudes or ideas. Types of strategy can then be differentiated by manner in which the object of the strategy is to be influenced.

It should also be pointed out that there are a variety of ‘other actors’ that may be the object or target of a strategy. In the international arena a state may need to influence several actors in order to achieve its goal. In the case of a war, there is not only the opposing state(s) to contend with but also allies, potential allies (for oneself and the opposing side), the opposing state’s domestic population, and, indeed, one’s own population.

Obviously, I will need to circle back and expand on the above some more, but to keep moving forward the next steps are to consider what are the different types and objects of power. Also, it will be important to consider how strategy relates to power.