Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists

By: James Holmes

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Paperback | 15 September 2021

At a Glance

Paperback
200 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.3 x 12.7 x 2.0

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Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists is a deliberately compact work aimed at both current and aspiring strategists, especially those who concern themselves with strategy at sea, and at those who work for or alongside them. The volume is meant to help strategic leaders know and educate themselves, two of the most important enterprises in the field of leadership.

James R. Holmes reaches back to the classics of philosophy--especially to the works of Aristotle, the founder of the Lyceum--to posit that strategy is a habit. Rather, he writes, it involves cultivating a family of habits. To excel at strategy, one should learn what excellent strategists do and practice that ritual each day. Repetition helps the strategist find virtue, which Aristotle defined as the "golden mean" between the extremes of some trait, while shunning vice, the excess or deficiency of that trait. Over time, it becomes second nature to take the long view of national political and strategic ends; marshal diplomatic, economic, and military resources; and devise ways to put those resources to work for strategic gain.

The classics of strategy feature prominently in this work. The canon sets forth concepts worth mastering. For instance, Carl von Clausewitz exhorts strategists to amass superior forces at the decisive place and time while abjuring secondary commitments that scatter resources about the map and risk leaving each force too weak to accomplish its goal. In a similar vein Alfred Thayer Mahan devises a formula for sizing fleets to overpower foes in important waters or coastal zones. Sun Tzu espouses the "indirect approach" to strategy, and B. H. Liddell Hart and J. C. Wylie join the classical Chinese general in his advocacy. In the ideal case strategists not just learn but internalize these concepts. Harnessing them in the real world becomes effortless.

Industry Reviews

"The thrust of Holmes' book is elegant in its simplicity: aspirants and practitioners of military strategy alike should learn from the habits of history's great strategists and understand how to emulate their behaviors in the present." --The Strategy Bridge

"The wisdom of this book is in its belief in the need to begin a journey of reading and reflection; in its lack of schematic theory and dogma; in its intuitive understanding that professional military experience is intellectual as well as practical; and in its recognition that the human habits, in other words the culture, of a military service are more powerful and enduring than any military plan, corporate scheme or regulatory framework. The book is handily pocket-sized and certainly recommended." --Australian Naval Institute

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