My thoughts on On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis

Another Golden Week log: I finished reading “On Grand Strategy” by John Lewis Gaddis.

This book is a bit different from what I usually read; I picked it from the bookstore shelf because I was drawn by its title and my interest in grand strategy.

My lasting impression while reading this book is that it requires some pre-reading, such as Isaiah Berlin’s essays, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, or Clausewitz’s On War. I, of course, had read none of them. Therefore, I didn’t get the full picture of what the book was saying on many occasions. Another impression is that it has difficult English vocabulary and style, akin to what you might find in a GRE test. I believe it would not be strange to find a passage from this book in the reading comprehension section of that exam.

Okay, enough about the prerequisites, what about the contents? I would say it was not what I expected. The title “On Grand Strategy” made me think I would learn many methods of grand strategy in war or politics, but instead it told the stories of some loosely connected individuals across time, such as Xerxes, Octavian, King Philip, Queen Elizabeth I, and US Presidents Wilson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. From these figures, I learned that (these are not everything, just the ones that stuck with me):

• Leaders can be put into two categories: the fox, who knows many things, and the hedgehog, who knows one big thing.
• Foxes are better at predicting and adapting to the unforeseen, but they must always have a clear goal (a compass) to guide them to their destination.
• One must always adapt to the events and obstacles around them.
• One must keep ends and means connected. It is difficult to achieve a goal if you lack the means and capabilities to pursue it.
• One must control themselves in order to achieve their goals.

One other thing I learned was that the US had parties other than the Republicans and Democrats: the Whigs. I also learned for the first time that it was the Republican Party that abolished slavery (I had thought it was the Democrats.. Sorry, they didn’t teach me US Civil War history in school).

Do I recommend this book? No. The chapters are too disconnected from one another, the language is too difficult, it requires a great deal of pre-reading, and most importantly, I didn’t learn very much about grand strategy itself.