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1. Introduction to Defense and
Strategic Studies
Ist Lecture
Course: Defense and Strategic
Studies

2. Understanding Term Strategy
• We tend to use strategy as a general term for a plan, a
concept, a course of action, or a “vision” of the
direction in which to proceed at the personal,
organizational, and governmental—local, state, or
federal—levels.
• Such casual use of the term to describe nothing more
than “what we would like to do next” is inappropriate
and belies the complexity of true strategy and strategic
thinking. It reduces strategy to just a good idea without
the necessary underlying thought or development. It
also leads to confusion between strategy and planning,
confining strategic possibilities to near-time planning
assumptions and details

3. Strategy
• Word strategy is derived from Greek Word
“Strategia” which means “office of general” or
“Stratos” means “ an army”
• Strategy is a plane of action/ method/ art that
organizes efforts to achieve objectives and further
goals

4. Strategy
• In simplistic terms, strategy at all levels is the calculation of
objectives, concepts, and resources within acceptable bounds
of risk to create more favorable outcomes than might
otherwise exist by chance or at the hands of others
• “the art and science of developing and employing
instruments of national power in a synchronized and
integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or
multinational objectives”
• strategy is the art and science of developing and using the
political, economic, social-psychological, and military powers
of the state in accordance with policy guidance to create
effects that protect or advance national interests relative to
other states, actors, or circumstances.

5. Military Strategy
• Military strategy is basically an art of employing
military forces to achieve objectives set by political
forces
• OR “ Theory and practice of the use and threat of
use of organized forces to achieve objectives set by
political forces”

6. GRAND STRATEGY
• Thinkers with the passage of time started arguing
that strategy is something more than the study of
war and military forces
• In 1969, Liddle Hart coined term Grand Strategy. It
involves coordination and direction of all the
resources of nation (economic, diplomatic, political
and military) towards the attainment of political
objectives

7. Important Strategists
• Machiavelli (16th century)
• Clausewitz (17 century)
• Liddle Hart (18th century)
• Raymon Aron (19th century)
• Suntzu (5th century)
• Chanakya Kautilya (4th century)

8. Aim of Strategy
• Basic aim of every strategy is to gain objectives set
by the policy makers through the utilization of all
available means
• Strategy can be of two types:
• Offensive Strategy: is aimed at attacking or
occupying other’s territory or resources
• Defensive Strategy: Is aimed at defending oneself

9. War & Different Levels of Warfare
• War is a state of armed conflict between two
countries or two groups within a country
• War has three basic levels: Tactical, Operational and
strategic

10. Tactical Level
• The tactical level of warfare is the one on which
individual soldiers through to the divisional level
engage enemy forces on the battlefield
• This level of warfare is concerned with the short-term
dimension of warfare and warfighting and involves a
period ranging from a couple of days to a couple of
weeks
• This level is essential to strategy because it represents
the practical orchestration of planning and a
fundamental link in the strategy chain
• It is here that the capabilities of a military actor should
align with the merits of a larger strategic vision

11. The Operational Level
• The operational level extends beyond the divisional
level and concerns such units as the corps, whole
armies, and entire army groups (in the context of
land warfare)
• The timeframe concerned with the operational level
also departs from the scale of days and becomes a
matter of military movement and engagement over
weeks and months

12. The Strategic Level
• The strategic level of warfare, what is sometimes
referred to as “military strategy,” regards the
orchestration of war at the highest level of
planning/preparation and execution
• It involves as much the political as it does the
military dimension
• The strategic level of planning considers the
endgame of a given conflict or war. When speaking
about this level of warfare, one is ultimately
concerned with the how a war will be won, and
what the specific steps are that will lead to victory
•

13. • In line with the definition of strategy mentioned
previously, the strategic level of planning is
instrumental in dictating strategy because it
involves political decision-making, the allocation of
national resources (both in terms of material and
personnel), commitment of those materials and
personnel and in what capacity or geographical
locale.