Abstract
How can military strategists improve the odds of success while reducing the chances of failure? ‘What causes military strategies to succeed or fail?’ identifies four tasks are necessary for a successful strategy: a critical appraisal of the adversary’s strengths and weaknesses matched against one’s own; the net assessment should serve as a baseline for developing courses of action that weaken the foe enough to get what one wants; the head of state must select a suitable military commander to develop and implement the desired strategy; and sound war plans are needed to pull everything together. Military strategies often fail because the opposing party refuses to concede, even if continuing to fight is patently self-destructive.
