MILITARY STUDIES
COLLECTION:
MILITARY STRATEGY -
WHAT IS THE USE OF
IT?
RESEARCH ARTICLE
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Peter Viggo Jakobsen
Royal Danish Defence College
and Center for War Studies,
University of Southern
Denmark, DK
peja@fak.dk
KEYWORDS:
assumptions; ends; ways;
means; risk; Denmark; military
strategy; NATO
TO CITE THIS ARTICLE:
Jakobsen, P. V. (2022).
Introduction: Military
Strategy: What is the Use
of It? Scandinavian Journal
of Military Studies, 5(1), pp.
143–148. DOI: https://doi.
org/10.31374/sjms.141
Introduction: Military
Strategy: What is the Use of
It?
PETER VIGGO JAKOBSEN
ABSTRACT
This special issue seeks to highlight the utility of military strategy for students and for
practitioners, civilian and military alike. It seeks to dispel three myths: first, that military
strategy is irrelevant for small states because they exist in an anarchic system in which
“the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Thucydides, ca.
400 B.C.E/ 1982, p. 351); second, that the “science” of causal theory is irrelevant to
the “art” of strategic practice on account of the complex and inherently unpredictable
nature of war; and, third, that military strategy is relevant only at the strategic level
and should therefore not be taught to junior officers.
Taken together, the contributions to this special issue illustrate that military strategy
is of “use,” and that the practical execution of the common Ends, Ways, and Means
model will benefit from making explicit the assumption and causal hypotheses that
inevitably underpin strategy. In this way, the underlying logic becomes easier to
subject to critical scrutiny – both logical and empirical. The contributions demonstrate
that it is a mistake to conceptualize military strategy as either theory/science or
practice/art. It is more fruitful to view them as complementary. Indeed, the principal
message conveyed by this special issue is that theory, science, and method serve as
indispensable tools for enhancing the analytical quality of strategic practice/art.
