In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Strachan examines the interaction of policy, strategy, and operational frameworks.

The focus is American, but Jones uses US historical experience from the early conflict with Native Americans through the Second World War, the Gulf and Vietnam to illustrate developments and continuities in strategic and operational theory and practice.

Developments in Iraq and their impact on the US military and national strategy are the book’s primary focus, but it sets these in the context of evolving US national strategy in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War and with additional emphasis on counterterrorism and the growth in thinking about counterinsurgency.

Concentrating on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and with particular emphasis on strategic practice in Western democracies from the Second World War to the ‘War on Terror’, Stone examines the function of strategy (defined as ‘the instrumental link between military means and political ends’) and argues that effective strategy reflects the political context in which it is derived.

This is a big, thick book that grapples with the history of strategic thought and its implications for current and recent practice. It is not an easy read but repays the effort.

Just as happened after the Vietnam War, when the US military turned to Clausewitz to make sense of its defeat, the US military has renewed its interest in the study of strategy—the relationship and interaction of ways, means and ends—informed by recent experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A critique of United Nations’ peacekeeping missions during the 1990s, the author explains how the United Nations is often hamstrung by its own member states and their inability to act, rather than the organisation of the United Nations itself.

This gripping and rarely told narrative recounts America’s entry into World War II and the vital role of American industry in their subsequent successes. Freedom’s Forge explores in detail how the United States’ industrial capacity was realised through rapid expansion – from producing a few aeroplanes per annum to over 90,000 aircraft in 1944 alone.