Strategic Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The statement is Carl Von Clausewitz's.

In On War (Vom Kriege, 1832), the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz wrote that war is merely the continuation of policy by other means. The idea is that war is not an end in itself but an instrument of the state's political purpose, which must govern its conduct.

Frederick the Great was a Prussian king and commander, J. F. C. Fuller a British theorist of mechanised warfare, and Antoine-Henri Jomini a Swiss-French writer on the principles of strategy. None of them is the source of this dictum.

Answer: B

Kautilya's view of inter-state relations rests on the Mandala Theory.

In the Arthashastra, Kautilya pictures the would-be conqueror (vijigishu) at the centre of a circle (mandala) of states: the immediate neighbour is the natural enemy, the state beyond it the natural friend, and so on outwards, with middle and neutral kings around them. This 'enemy of my enemy' geometry is the basis of his theory of foreign relations.

The Saptanga theory describes the seven elements of the state itself, the four-fold army its military forces, and the Sadgunya (six measures) the policies a king applies within the mandala rather than the theory of relations itself.

Answer: B

The theory of the 'Expanding Torrent' was propounded by Liddell Hart (spelt 'Liddle Hart' in the paper).

Basil Liddell Hart developed the idea in the early 1920s from the German infiltration tactics of 1918: attacking forces should probe for weak points, pour through the gaps like a torrent bursting through a dam, and widen the breach as they go deeper, rather than attacking along the whole front. It became part of his 'indirect approach'.

J. F. C. Fuller wrote on mechanised warfare and Plan 1919, while Jomini and Clausewitz belong to the Napoleonic era a century earlier.

Answer: B

The correct matching is (a)-(iii), (b)-(i), (c)-(iv), (d)-(ii), the code (iii) (i) (iv) (ii).

Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American theorist of sea power, wrote the memoir From Sail to Steam (1907), the paper's 'From Sail to Steamin'. Antoine-Henri Jomini wrote The Art of War (Precis de l'Art de la Guerre, 1838). Clausewitz's Principles of War was the memorandum he wrote in 1812 for the Prussian crown prince, and Giulio Douhet, the Italian prophet of air power, wrote The Command of the Air (1921).

The other codes misplace Douhet, the easiest anchor, or give Mahan a book on land or air warfare.

Answer: C

The correct matching is (a)-(iii), (b)-(iv), (c)-(i), (d)-(ii), the code (iii) (iv) (i) (ii).

Henry Kissinger wrote Diplomacy (1994), Leo Tolstoy the novel War and Peace (1869), and Stephen Philip Cohen India: Emerging Power (2001). That leaves the history of warfare to J. F. C. Fuller, the British general and military historian whose major work is A Military History of the Western World.

The three certain pairs fix the code: only (iii) (iv) (i) (ii) gives Kissinger Diplomacy and Tolstoy War and Peace.

Answer: C

The keyed answer is Haushofer.

Karl Haushofer, a German general turned geographer, founded the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik in 1924 and worked at the University of Munich to establish Geopolitik as a recognised field of academic study and policy advice. Its later association with Nazi expansion discredited the term for decades.

Mahan wrote on sea power and Mackinder on the heartland, but neither set out to institutionalise geopolitics as a discipline (the word itself was coined by Rudolf Kjellén). Machiavelli wrote centuries earlier on statecraft.

Answer: C

Massive retaliation was spelt out by John Foster Dulles.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in January 1954, US Secretary of State Dulles announced that the United States would rely on a great capacity to retaliate, instantly, by means and at places of its own choosing. This was the nuclear doctrine of Eisenhower's 'New Look'.

Spykman (printed 'Spikeman'), Haushofer and Mackinder were geopoliticians writing before the nuclear age, so none of them could have formulated a nuclear doctrine of retaliation.

Answer: A

The statement is by Carl von Clausewitz.

It is the definition of war at the opening of Book One of On War, the Prussian general's treatise published after his death in 1832. Clausewitz goes on to describe war as 'a continuation of politics by other means', and the two lines are the best-known in strategic studies.

Halford Mackinder was the British geographer of the Heartland theory. Hans Morgenthau wrote Politics Among Nations, the classic of realist international relations. Henry Kissinger was a scholar of diplomacy and US Secretary of State. None of them wrote this definition.

Answer: A

The view is Nicholas J. Spykman's.

Spykman, the Dutch-American geostrategist of Yale, wrote in America's Strategy in World Politics (1942) and his articles of 1938-39 that geography is the most fundamental factor in a state's foreign policy because it is the most permanent: ministers come and go, but mountain ranges stay. He is also known for the Rimland theory, which answered Mackinder's Heartland.

Karl Haushofer was the German exponent of Geopolitik and Friedrich Ratzel the founder of political geography with his organic theory of the state, but the sentence quoted is Spykman's. Nayef Al-Rodhan is a contemporary writer on geopolitics.

Answer: A

The words are attributed to Admiral Mahan.

Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American naval officer whose The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890) made the case that command of the sea decides the fate of great powers, is the person to whom this line is commonly credited: whoever controls the Indian Ocean will dominate Asia. The exact sentence is hard to find in his books, but the attribution to Mahan is the standard one in Indian strategic writing on the Indian Ocean.

Nehru, Admiral Nelson and General MacArthur are not linked with this saying.