Suchergebnisse

It is now a familiar theme in the literature on the emergence and development of the state in the Western world to refer to war and war preparation—in short, war making—as an important contributing factor to the development of the modern state. As Charles Tilly succinctly put it, "War made the state, and the state made war." We know, however, little about the relation between war making and the development of the state in the contemporary Middle East. This is rather surprising considering the importance of war and war preparation in the history of many states in the region and the current wave of academic interest in the study of state formation in the Middle East. A review of the literature would show that war is usually integrated as a contingent factor, but not as a systematic process that can influence state development. For instance, accounts of state development in Egypt mention the impact ofthe 1956 and 1967 wars on the capacity of the state to intervene in the economy and society; yet until recently no one had systematically studied the impact of war preparation on state formation in Egypt.

In this article, the authors try to define the general conceptual framework of classical strategic thought in order to assess its relevance for the development of contemporary Strategic Studies. Our argument brings out the fact that classical strategic scholars tended to conceptualize strategy as the scientific study of conflictual actions between unitary actors, omitting by this very fact to study the sociopolitical dimensions of conflicts, the impact of military technology or the influence of organizational and decisional processes on the conduct of war. Nevertheless, classical strategic thought still offers an invaluable body of literature to understand the evolution of ideas on war, and a possible way of enriching strategic studies through the use of its distinctive comparative historical perspective.