Strategy in the Contemporary World

• 1: John Baylis, James J. Wirtz, and Jeannie L. Johnson: Introduction: Strategy in the Contemporary World


• Part I: Enduring Issues of Strategy


• 2: Beatrice Heuser: The History of the Practice of Strategy from Antiquity to Napoleon


• 3: Michael Sheehan: The Evolution of Modern Warfare


• 4: Thomas G. Mahnken: Strategic Theory


• 5: John Garnett and John Baylis: The Causes of War


• 6: Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky: Strategic Culture


• 7: Justin Morris: Law, Politics, and the Use of Force


• 8: Ryan Grauer: Technology and Warfare


• 9: Roger Z. George: Intelligence and Strategy


• 10: Daniel Moran: Geography and Strategy


• Part II: Contemporary Problems


• 11: James D. Kiras: Irregular Warfare: Terrorism and Insurgency


• 12: C. Dale Walton: Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-first Century


• 13: John Baylis: The Control of Weapons of Mass Destruction


• 14: John Ferris: Conventional Power and Contemporary Warfare


• 15: Sheena Chestnut Greitens: Humanitarian Intervention and Peace Operations


• 16: Ryan C. Maness, Rebecca Lorentz, and Brandon Valeriano: Cyber Conflict in the Age of Great Power Competition


• 17: Stephanie Ortmann and Nicholas Whittaker: Geopolitics and Grand Strategy


• 18: Oriana Skylar Mastro: Chinese Grand Strategy


• Part III: The Future of Strategy


• 19: Amitav Acharya and Jiajie He: Strategic Studies: The West and the Rest


• 20: Columba Peoples: Strategic Studies and its Critics


• 21: James J. Wirtz: A New Agenda for Security and Strategy?


• 22: Colin S. Gray and Jeannie L. Johnson: The Practice of Strategy


• 23: Sir Lawrence Freedman: Does Strategic Studies Have a Future?

John Baylis is Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations and a former Pro-Vice Chancellor at Swansea University. Prior to that he was Professor of International Politics and Dean of Social Sciences at Aberystwyth University. He has published more than 20 books and over a hundred chapters and articles. His books include The Makers of Nuclear Strategy, with John Garnett (Pinter, 1991); The Globalization of World Politics, with Steve Smith and Patricia Owens (8th edn, Oxford University Press, 2020); An Introduction to Global Politics, with Steven Lamy, Steve Smith, and Patricia Owens (4th edn, Oxford University Press, 2016); and The British Nuclear Experience: The Role of Beliefs, Culture and Identity, with Kristan Stoddart (Oxford University Press, 2015). He has a BA, MSc (Econ), PhD, and DLitt from Swansea and Aberystwyth Universities.

James J. Wirtz is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is the author of Understanding Intelligence Failure (Routledge, 2017). Along with Loch Johnson, he is the editor of Intelligence: The Secret World of Spies (5th edn, Oxford University Press, 2019). He received his PhD from Columbia University.

Jeannie L. Johnson is the Founding Director of the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence at Utah State University and an Associate Professor in the Political Science department. She is the author of The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture: Lessons Learned and Lost in America's Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2018) and the co-editor of Crossing Nuclear Thresholds: Leveraging Socio-Cultural Insights into Nuclear Decisionmaking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Dr Johnson previously worked for the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence and the US State Department. She received her doctorate from the University of Reading in 2013.

This forward-thinking, comprehensive textbook is a must-have for instructors of international relations and strategic studies in the modern age. It covers a broad range of theoretical and topical issues ranging from strategic theory to nuclear weapons, from irregular warfare to great power competition. Incorporating military and scholarly views, the chapters provide students with in-depth instruction on a variety of the most critical strategic issues of our time. Dr Molly Dunigan, Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation, and Senior Lecturer, Carnegie Mellon University