Spring 2027 - TBD - 395M - GRAND STRATEGY AND MILITARY OPERATIONS

NSP 395M Grand Strategy and Military Operations

Spring 2027

Class meeting: Mondays 2-5pm, Room 

Course Description

This course will prepare students for careers in national security by developing the historical knowledge and analytical skills needed to understand the role of grand strategy and military operations in policy and practice. 

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Leon Trotsky’s famous warning should also serve as a reminder to those aspiring to work in national security. But a passing interest in war is not enough. It requires the disciplined study of how states and empires have pursued their goals through strategy and the application of military force—and why they have succeeded or failed in their efforts. 

From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, history’s greatest commanders have understood that it is not enough to simply fight wars; one must rigorously study them. Even then, operational brilliance on the battlefield was not enough to save some of them from defeat and their empires from collapse due to fatal flaws in their grand strategies. And that is why Generals H.R. McMaster and James Mattis, among many modern military leaders, have stressed the need to learn history as a foundation for strategic judgment. During the semester, students will study grand strategy and military operations just as some of the legendary figures of history did, and just as military professionals still study them today in the world’s premier War Colleges. 

This course will bridge grand strategy, or how states apply the instruments of national power to war and statecraft, with military operations, which attempt to coordinate military ways and means to achieve political goals. Students will learn to distinguish the timeless principles of grand strategy and the operational art from their application to—and outcomes in—specific wars across history. We will not only closely study some of the greatest wars in human history, recorded by those who participated in them, but also the strategies and military operations that led to spectacular successes and catastrophic failures. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to think like strategists and national security practitioners by identifying political goals, assessing strategic choices and tradeoffs, and considering the risks and consequences of competing courses of action. Students will learn how to conduct a campaign analysis and engage in debates and wargames to put themselves into the positions of those who were there during the wars and events we will study.

While the course title includes concepts like grand strategy and military operations, course content will cover far more, including the different levels of war, from the tactical to the operational to the strategic, as well as old and new understandings of them, their application in wars across history, and their relevance to policymakers and practitioners today. Students will apply historical case studies to contemporary strategic issues facing the United States, such as the reemergence of geopolitical competition among great powers, the disruptive effects of new technology, the practical challenges of balancing American interests with global commitments, and the complicated threats posed by irregular warfare. The course will also emphasize the influence of civil-military relations on formulating strategy and achieving desired outcomes in wars. Fundamentally, this course will prepare students to apply the hard lessons of history to some of the gravest struggles and most pressing problems of our own day. 

By studying the wars, strategists, and decisions that have determined the course of history, students will develop tools that they will later use in careers in government, the military, diplomacy, policymaking, and other fields across the national security enterprise.