Ft. Leavenworth Series

Perhaps the most memorable campaign that underpinned US Army LTG Ulysses S. Grant’s military strategy of 1864, MG William Tecumseh Sherman’s Savannah Campaign exhausted the Southern Confederacy and hastened an end to the American Civil War. The “March to the Sea” has inspired mixed mythologies of the war: it became synonymous in the Lost Cause […]

Throughout history, command in war has demanded skill, knowledge, experience, creativity, and judgement in the application of military force. It has also required what is today called “operational art.” Current U.S. Army doctrine defines Operational Art as “the cognitive approach by commanders and staffs … to develop strategies, campaigns, and operations to organize and employ […]

Antoine-Henri Jomini was a foundational 19th-century military theorist whose approach to warfare sought to define universal principles of strategy and tactics. His emphasis on geometric concepts like interior lines of operation, massing combat power at decisive points, and the critical importance of logistics remains highly relevant today. In the contemporary security environment, Jomini's structured principles […]

This lecture addresses the maritime strategy of both Great Britain and France as war resumed between these two powers, principally at sea, in 1803. The lecture is at the strategic, and sometimes operational, level and traces both empires as they used the sea as a medium to gain advantage over each other. Strategies of blockade, […]