LIT2: Gray, C. (2012). War, Peace and International Relations (2nd ed., pp.5-14), “Chapter 1: Themes and contexts of strategic history”. New York: Routledge.

Question 1

What are Gray’s 6 main themes in the framework of strategic history?

Answer 1

1. Continuity and discontinuity in strategic history
2. The relationship between politics and war
3. The relationship between war and warfare
4. The relationship between politicians and soldiers
5. The dependence of war on society
6. The relations between war and peace, and between peace and war

Question 1

What is the difference beteween war and warfare?

Answer 1

a. War is a legal concept, a social institution, and is a compound idea that embraces the total relationship between belligerents.
b. In contrast, warfare refers to the actual conduct of war in its military dimension. Warfare bears the characteristic, even defining, stamp of violence.
States and other political communities wage warfare in order to prosecute their wars.

Question 2

What is Continuity and discontinuity in strategic history? GRAY

Answer 2

1. Continuity and discontinuity in strategic history
   a. War, the subject which comprises the core of this story, has a nature that is as unchanging as its character is highly variable.
   ‘Fear, honour and interest’ provide historical continuity of motivation for conflict and war.

Question 3

What is the relationship between politics and war? (Grey)

Answer 3

a. Strategic history is all about the threat or use of organized violence carried on by political units against each other for political motives. War is political behaviour using the agency of force.
b. War has no meaning beyond the political, at least it should not, though it certainly has multidimensional consequences.
It is one thing to assert, accurately, that war is a political instrument; it can be quite another to wage war in such a manner that it privileges one’s political objectives

Question 4

What is the relationship between politicians and soldiers (Gray)

Answer 4

a. Military violence and its political consequences comprise two different currencies, and it is difficult to convert one into the other by strategy.
b. Military and political professionals have different values, skills, perspectives and responsibilities.
Strategic history is amply populated with cases of soldiers being given impossible tasks by policy-makers, and of soldiers compelled to operate in the absence of clear political guidance.

Question 5

What is the dependence of war on society (Gray)

Answer 5

War is a social institution and it is waged by societies, not only by states. Now policy on war and peace had to consider public opinion as a significant factor.

Question 6

What is the relationship between war and peace, and between peace and war?

Answer 6

a. Analysis of the strategic history of the past two centuries must examine the war–peace nexus from both perspectives:
i. One must consider the consequences of wars for the peace and order disorder that follow.
One has to understand the consequences of periods of peace for the succeeding wars.

Question 7

What are the 7 contexts of military strategy? (GRAY)

Answer 7

1. Political
   a. It is what war is about, by and large at least. It is where war and peace come from. Decisions to fight, or not, are the products of a political process. Armies and their military behaviour are, or should be, the servants of a political context.
   
   2. Socio-cultural
      a. States and their societies approach strategic issues, and behave militarily, in ways shaped by their prevalent values and beliefs. Those values and beliefs will evolve over time, but they provide a definite socio-cultural context within which policy and strategy must be made.
   3. Economic
      a. There is always an economic context to the record of war, peace and order. Defence preparation and actual warfare are exercises in economic choice, in affordability, as well as in military judgement.
   4. Technological
      a. At any point in the two centuries covered here there was a particular technological context. That context was dynamic. It contained many artefacts from earlier contexts, as well as many prototypes of immature products that were not quite ready for military prime time.
   5. Military-strategic
      a. At all times there is a military-strategic context to policy decisions that may have consequences for war and peace.
      b. When married to an assessment of the strategic meaning of the balance of military prowess among relevant state, and other, players, one arrives at this useful concept of the military-strategic context.
   6. Geographical
      a. All strategic history has a geographical context. We humans live in geography, are attached to our home geography, and sometimes covet other people’s geography. The geopolitical context, which is to say the political meaning of spatial relationships, could not help but provide a fairly stable context for the strategic history of the past two centuries.
   7. Historical
      a. Every event, episode, process and trend discussed here occurred at a specific date and, necessarily, happened in the stream of time. That stream and its implications play momentous roles in strategic history.
      b. The people in this strategic history were moulded by the times in which they lived, the societies of which they were a part, and of course by the ideas that were fashionable and sometimes authoritative. In other words, in order to understand how and why people behaved strategically as they did, it is essential that we locate them historically.

Question 8

What is Gray’s conclusion on strategic history!

Answer 8

Strategy is difficult to comprehend, and even more difficult to do well.

It is the somewhat mysterious bridge between the military instrument and political objectives, the meaning of both of which is simple to grasp.

Although strategic history cannot possibly capture the whole story of modern times, it does offer a superior guide to what happened, and why, in international relations.
- The binding thesis of this text holds that strategic history provides the best navigation aids to explain and understand the relations among polities.
The history of war and peace in international relations is a big story that shows the engagement of mighty forces and powerful contexts.
Nevertheless, strategic history has to be done by individual human agents. This, emphatically, is not a history without individuals of importance.