Why has the period up until the end of the Cold War failed to produce a great military theorist?

by quantumcognition

Great military theorists can be taken to mean individuals like Clausewitz (19th Century) or Fuller (20th Century) whose ideas were implemented into actual strategies, operational planning, etc.

BritainOpPlsNerf

Who is to say it hasn't?

The problem with great military theory is that it doesn't often become affirmed as great until one sees it in practice and in fruition. The post-Cold War era has been relatively dry in terms of conventional warfare that is even remotely a match between equal foes. The reality is, the handful of relatively indepedant and unique military theories, such as AirLand Battle, Full Spectrum Operations, the euphimistic "Shock and Awe" haven't really had oppurtunities to be seriously tested, with perhaps the exception of the latter. Again, alot of the aforementioned newer theory was historically incorporated into strategies and action plans - which all, thankfully for world peace, never had to be enacted on any great scale.

Warfare itself hasn't been revolutionized too greatly either, yes, technology has changed, its become more precise, longer-ranging, more compact, and so on and so forth; but in reality, its still based on the same classic principles of combined arms warfare. It has new values, but the forumla remains the same.

Edit: Just saw who posted, we need to stop meeting like this :P

mormengil

One might consider George F. Kennan, the author of the "Long Telegram", to be one of the most influential theorists or strategists of the Cold War.

In the Long Telegram, he outlined the strategy of "Containment" (of the USSR and Communism) which was the strategy adopted by the USA.

Although this was not strictly "military theory" it was "geopolitical strategy" and considered, or contained within it, military strategies.

Eventually the strategy of containment worked. Communism has been given up as a practical socio/economic/political system by almost all of its previous converts, and this happened without all-out, direct, military conflict between the Communist and Capitalist systems.