Lawrence Freedman is professor emeritus of war studiesat King’s College London, Britain’s official historian of the Falklands War, and was a member of the UK Inquiry into the Iraq War. As one of Britain’s most eminent war historians, his On Strategists and Strategy is a timely contemplation of the strategies of war, international relations and nuclear deterrence.
The book is a series of academic essays from 2014 to 2024. Thematically, Freedman presents his works under the headings autobiography, strategies, strategists, the Iraq war and the war in Ukraine. While his essays predate the current US and Israeli air assault on Iran and Lebanon, they contain many theoretical and strategic perspectives that remain timely and applicable to the current crisis in the Gulf.
In his introductory essays, Freedman describes the manner in which his professional, intellectual and ethical formation was forged in a time of nuclear proliferation during the 1960s and ’70s, overshadowed by the threat of mutually assured nuclear annihilation. His focus in these essays often returns to the strategic challenge experienced by the Nato alliance during the cold war – the requirement for proactive deterrence balanced by the need to avoid escalation and a full-scale war with the USSR.
On these ethical and strategic concerns, Freedman cites many authors and theorists with whom he often sharply disagrees. As a true intellectual, Freedman’s respect and affection for those he disagrees with is writ large in his analysis. Indeed, he dedicates the book to seven defence intellectuals “whom I admired and who in their own ways helped me sort out my ideas, even when we disagreed”. This might serve as a salutary and worthy example to the emerging cohort of defence intellectuals in Ireland, of whom a small but very vocal minority engage in ad hominem attacks online on fellow scholars with whom they disagree.
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In his essays on Strategies and Strategists, there is an insightful journey through many of the conflicts and international crises that marked the close of the “conventional” cold war era, to the full-scale conventional and non-conventional wars of the 21st century. He charts the evolution of strategy from the threat to nuclear stalemate – and stability – posed by President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” or “Strategic Defence Initiative”, to the “strategic fanaticism” demonstrated by Vladimir Putin in his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
In a discussion of the fundamental difference between diplomatic and military tactics and strategy, Freedman echoes the von Clausewitz assertion of military force being the “extension of politics” by quoting Liddell Hart’s maxim that in the chaos of war, “the distribution and employment of military means must fulfil the ends of policy”. In his recent work on War and Power, Phillips P O’Brien argued that in the current febrile geopolitical environment, war is so chaotic and destructive that it cannot successfully achieve political, policy or strategic goals, and that war represents the “failure of politics”.
While Freedman and O’Brien may differ somewhat on this domain assumption, Freedman does hypothesise that without a carefully considered strategy of specific interim goals and long-term objectives, military intervention, however spectacular, will likely end in failure. He uses a quote – which he acknowledges is likely false – from Sun Tzu, that “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory; Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat”.
While reading these lines, I was prompted to consider the unfolding outbreak of the air assault on Iran by Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu. Tactically, there was certainly plenty of “noise” with the “shock and awe” of combined Israeli and US air power – multiplied in ferocity and lethal effect by AI-enhanced target acquisition.
However, on the question of strategy or war aims, it is unclear what the ultimate outcome of this air intervention on Iran will be. In the absence of a clearly articulated and viable strategic objective, it is hard to assess or predict the human, environmental or political implications of the current campaign of air and missile strikes on a population of more than 90 million Iranians.
Freedman is crystal clear in his work that a detailed, realistic and well thought-out strategy is essential to the success of any diplomatic or military intervention
When questioned about the United States’ ongoing concept of operations for Iran, Trump’s initial response was to state that “the big one is coming” and that the regime should “put down their weapons”. He clearly went far further later with a Truth Social post, telling the Iranians to “Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell”. US secretary for war Pete Hegseth stated that Iran “is toast, and they know it”. While this language might be more appropriate in a Marvel or DC comics-inspired action movie, the reductive and hyperbolic nature of their rhetoric is reminiscent of President George W Bush’s premature announcement of “Mission Accomplished” at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Freedman is crystal clear in his work that a detailed, realistic and well thought-out strategy is essential to the success of any diplomatic or military intervention – and that consistent with Greek moral philosophy, words must closely match actions. “I prefer to talk more about ‘acting strategically’ than ‘having a strategy’. Strategy is an activity more that a product, a verb more than a noun.” Freedman observes that in the absence of ethical leadership and moral agency – where deeds match words – a strategy statement, is akin to a “drunk, clinging to a lamppost”, where rhetoric is more for false moral support rather than actual illumination.
Freedman applies these perspectives to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, acknowledging that rational engagement is unlikely to work with a dictator whose idée fixe may not be a genuine belief – after four years of attritional, grinding losses – of victory, but the terror of a man “who dares not lose”.
The lessons for Ireland in Freedman’s book are simple. What is Ireland’s strategy? We don’t know, as the Government has yet to publish a defence strategy. Nor does the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Defence and National Security have oversight of the decision-making processes that inform any such strategy, as Government has imposed a contrived and overly narrow remit and scope for the committee.
On this point, Freedland warns that when policy-making is secretive and access to data considered taboo or overly sensitive, such conditions always lead to suboptimal, poor decision-making. Ireland cannot afford such secrecy at a time of global inflection. We need full parliamentary oversight of our defence and security decision-makers to drive a strategic agenda that serves the long-term interests of the Irish people.
Tom Clonan is a Senator, security analyst, author, and retired Irish Army captain
