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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Strategist: How to Think about War and Politics

The Strategist: How to Think about War and Politics

Cohen, Eliot a.

Hardcover

General Political ScienceInternational RelationsMilitary Strategy

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0691269440
ISBN13: 9780691269443
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Oct 20 2026
Pages: 312
Language: English

An authoritative introduction to strategy--its enduring essentials, its inherent challenges, and the ways it will change in the twenty-first century

We live in a world in which America's previous dominance has disappeared, violent states seek to remake the global order, and war itself has taken new forms. The Strategist is the definitive guide to the use of military means to achieve political ends. In this incisive book, Eliot Cohen addresses the deceptively straightforward questions at the heart of strategy, the reasons why strategists often choose badly, and the ways in which strategy, inevitably imperfect, can be improved.

Who is the enemy? What are our means? What is the sequence in which we should act? Why do we believe we will succeed? These are some of the seemingly elementary questions all strategists must answer, and success or failure rests on choices that may also seem simple, such as selecting campaigns and deciding when to launch a war and when to stop it. Yet devising effective strategy, while achievable, is extremely difficult. Cohen draws on illuminating examples from history as well as his own experience as a strategic adviser to government to explain why. He demonstrates how to mitigate these limitations through habits of thought and qualities of character that enable a strategist to make the best possible decisions under conditions of profound uncertainty.

We wish to be done with war, but unfortunately war is not done with us. At a time of radical change in geopolitics and military technology, The Strategist sheds light on the perils before us, and ways to cope with them.

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