Colin Gray’s essays on strategy (II): Why 3 strategic classics remain relevant

In his 14th essay, Colin Gray makes a good argument that all you really need to do to understand strategy is read and re-read Thucydides, Sun Tzu, and Clausewitz. "These three books constitute the strategic canon," he advises.

He adds an interesting thought: "It is only the generality of strategic ideas in the three classics that saves them from utter irrelevance to the supremely pragmatic and ever changing world of the practicing strategist." I’d go a step farther and say that their very generality is what makes them so useful. War is chaotic, crammed with startling details and unexpected turns. In 2004 and 2005, as I was writing Fiasco and so trying to understand the war in Iraq, I took all those details and developments and sat down with Clausewitz and T.E. Lawrence for a month. Both books helped me "make sense" of what I had seen — Clausewitz in strategic terms, Lawrence more on the tactical and cultural.