Appendix A The Dicta of Strategy

The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice

Colin S. Gray

Print publication date: 2010

Print ISBN-13: 9780199579662
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579662.001.0001

Appendix A The Dicta of Strategy

Nature and Character of Strategy
1. Grand strategy is the direction and use made of any or all of the assets
of a security community, including its military instrument, for the
purposes of policy as decided by politics.
2. Military strategy is the direction and use made of force and the threat
of force for the purposes of policy as decided by politics.
3. Strategy is the only bridge built and held to connect policy purposefully
with the military and other instruments of power and influence.
4. Strategy serves politics instrumentally by generating net strategic
effect.
5. Strategy is adversarial; it functions in both peace and war, and it
always seeks a measure of control over enemies (and often over allies and
neutrals also).
6. Strategy usually requires deception, is paradoxical, and frequently is
ironic.
7. Strategy is human.
8. The meaning and character of strategies are driven, though not
dictated and wholly determined, by their contexts, all of which are
constantly in play and can realistically be understood to constitute just
one compounded super context.
9. Strategy has a permanent nature, while strategies (usually plans,
formal or informal, expressing contingent operational intentions) have a
variable character driven, but not mandated, by their unique and
changing contexts, the needs of which are expressed in the decisions of
unique individuals.

Making Strategy
10. Strategy typically is made by a process of dialogue and negotiation.
11. Strategy is a value‐charged zone of ideas and behaviour.
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Appendix A The Dicta of Strategy

12. Historically specific strategies often are driven, and always are
shaped, by culture and personality, while strategy in general theory is
not.

Executing Strategy
13. The strategy bridge must be held by competent strategists.
14. Strategy is more difficult to devise and execute than are policy,
operations, and tactics: friction of all kinds comprise phenomena
inseparable from the making and conduct of strategies.
15. Strategy can be expressed in strategies that are direct or indirect,
sequential or cumulative, attritional or manoeuverist‐annihilating,
persisting or raiding (more or less expeditionary), coercive or brute force,
offensive or defensive, symmetrical or asymmetrical, or a complex
combination of these nominal but often false alternatives.
(p.263) 16. All strategies are shaped by their particular geographical
contexts, but strategy itself is not.
17. Strategy is an unchanging, indeed unchangeable, human activity in
thought and behaviour, set in a variably dynamic technological context.
18. Unlike strategy, all strategies are temporal.
19. Strategy is logistical.
20. Strategic theory is the most fundamental source of military doctrine,
while doctrine is a notable enabler of, and guide for, strategies.

Consequences of Strategy
21. All military behaviour is tactical in execution, but must have
operational and strategic effect, intended and otherwise.

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