Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers

What can Thucydides teach us about the war in Iraq in 2003? What is the key to adaptation during an ongoing conflict? How do you balance the tension between political and military objectives? Why are insurgency and terrorism such powerful military tactics, and how do you combat them?

Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers gives you an inside look at both the content and historical context of the world’s greatest war strategists. Taught by Professor Andrew R. Wilson—and modeled on his elite course at the United States Naval War College—these 24 lectures will change the way you read newspaper headlines by instilling in you a new appreciation for the subtleties and complexities of strategy—and how nations and military leaders have adapted to the dynamic realm of fog, friction, and chance. See how George Washington adapted his strategy after losing New York during the American Revolution. Learn why FDR went against the advice of Chief of Staff George Marshall and embarked on a campaign in north Africa in the summer of 1942. Trace the United States’ Pacific strategy, from War Plan Dog to Guadalcanal to the island-hopping campaign. Apply Clausewitz’s “culminating point of victory” to the Persian Gulf War. Consider the strategy behind recent U. N. airstrikes in Libya.

You’ll come away from this course with new insight that will allow you to take an informed, active interest in political and military debates—which ultimately will determine the course of our nation.

List of lectures

1 Why Strategy Matters
2 Thucydides on Strategy
3 Thucydides as a Possession for All Time
4 Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
5 Sun Tzu through Time
6 Machiavelli’s The Art of War
7 Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy
8 The Napoleonic Revolution in War
9 Baron Jomini as a Strategist
10 Clausewitz’s On War
11 Jomini and Clausewitz through the Ages
12 From Sail to Steam—The Sea-Power Revolution
13 Alfred Thayer Mahan
14 Sir Julian Corbett
15 Mahan, Corbett, and the Pacific War
16 Air Power in Theory and Practice
17 From Rolling Thunder to Instant Thunder
18 Nuclear Strategy
19 Mao Tse-tung in Theory and Practice
20 Classics of Counterinsurgency
21 Just-War Theory
22 Terrorism as Strategy
23 Strategies of Counterterrorism
24 From the Jaws of Defeat—Strategic Adaptation