New Makers of Modern Strategy

"First published by Princeton in 1943, the collection of essays that constituted Makers of Modern Strategy has largely held the field as the key book that studied the means and ends of military power and thought, and the historical figures that shaped that history. The books, in two editions, have long been a staple of Princeton's backlist in international politics and strategic studies. The first edition, edited by Edward Mead Earle and subtitled Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, emerged out of a seminar of foreign policy and security experts organized between Princeton and the Institute of Advanced Study in reaction to World War II as a global conflict. The subsequent edition, edited by Peter Paret, then at Stanford University, was prepared in the early 1980s and subtitled From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. In that edition, three essays were reprinted from the earlier book, four others were revised, and the remainder-twenty-two essays-were wholly new, to reflect the updates in the field and also how the global political context had changed. The two books together are regarded as the founding and leading text in military and strategic studies, containing influential essays by many of the best-known scholars of the subject. The ambition of the new volume is to commission an entirely new edition of this classic reference work, with 37 chapters organized into 5 sections covering key military leaders and the most important elements of strategic thinking since Thucydides and Sun Tzu. The field of strategic and military history has witnessed an intellectual renaissance in recent decades, as the number of strategic challenges faced by the world has grown enormously. International politics has also changed. The Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. The United States entered a period of unipolarity, only to see it challenged by the rise of new powers, China in particular. Terrorism, civil wars, so-called "rogue states," insurgency and counter-insurgency, and cybersecurity all joined a growing list of strategic concerns. New technologies promise to upend our understanding of conflict. Furthermore, scholars have learned more about earlier periods, from the classic thinkers of strategy to the struggles of great power war to the dynamics of world politics during the Cold War. Finally, scholarship on international politics, war, and peace in the 20th century and after has become increasingly internationalized, with the opening of new archives and the incorporation of new perspectives. The aim of this volume is to serve as an overview and stimulant to research in this field, one that encompasses the broader definitions of strategy in current research, reflects the current state of world politics, and also takes a more global and less Western perspective"--Publisher's description.