Strategic Studies: A Reader

This new Reader brings together key essays on strategic theory by some of the leading contributors in the field.

Filling a large gap in the market, it will guide students through both the theoretical and practical aspects of Strategic Studies. Including classic essays and works of contemporary scholarship, the volume provides a wide-ranging survey of the key ideas and themes in the field of Strategic Studies. It comprises six thematic sections, each of which has an Editors’ Introduction and suggestions for further reading:

• uses of strategic theory
• interpretation of the classics
• instruments of war: land, sea, and air power
• nuclear strategy
• irregular warfare and small wars
• future warfare, future strategy

Striking a balance between theoretical essays and case studies, the Strategic Studies Reader will be essential reading for all students of strategic studies, international security and modern warfare, as well as for professional military students.

Thomas G. Mahnken currently serves as the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. He previously served as a Professor of Strategy at the US Naval War College and a Visiting Fellow at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is author of Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941 (2002). He is co-editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies.

Joseph A. Maiolo is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Department of War Studies, Kings College London. In 2005-06 he was Visiting Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Defence Studies. He is author of The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933-39 (1998) and co-editor (with Robert Boyce) of The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (2005). He is co-editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies.