This book is a new look at the evolution of operational art and its complex roots in history.

Broadly defined as the grey area between strategy and tactics, operational art spans the theory and practice of planning and conducting campaigns and major operations aimed at accomplishing strategic and operational objectives in a given theatre of operations. An intermediate link between strategy and tactics has always existed, but a distinct concept that encompasses a systematic and deliberate plan of campaign for major operations is a mere two hundred years old. Based on country specific case-studies, this book describes how the concepts that underpin operational art originated, how they received practical expression in various campaigns, and how they developed over time. The point of departure is the campaigns of 'the God of War', Napoleon Bonaparte. The book then proceeds with chapters on the evolution of operational art in Prussia / Germany, the Soviet Union / Russia, the United Kingdom, United States, Israel, and China. The final chapter deals with the future of operational art in irregular warfare. Theory is critical to refining and improving existing methods of applying operational warfare, and its importance cannot be overstated; however, to be useful, theory and its accompanying vocabulary must be combined with a proper examination of historical trends and practical experience. The present volume attempts to achieve that combination. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

Smallholder farmers and pastoralists fulfil an invaluable yet undervalued role in conserving biodiversity. They act as guardians of locally adapted livestock breeds that can make use of even marginal environments under tough climatic conditions and therefore are a crucial resource for food security. But in addition, by sustaining animals on natural vegetation and as part of local ecosystems, these communities also make a significant contribution to the conservation of wild biodiversity and of cultural landscapes. This publication provides a glimpse into the often intricate knowledge systems that pastoralists and smallholder farmers have developed for the management of their breeds in specific production systems and it also describes the multitude of threats and challenges these often marginalized communities have to cope with.

In Napoleon and the Operational Art of War, the leading scholars of Napoleonic military history provide the most authoritative analysis of Napoleon’s battlefield success and ultimate failure in a work that features the very best of campaign military history.

From the foreword: "Bruce Menning's translation of Georgii Samoilovich Isserson's 1936 treatise The Evolution of Operational Art is the best example available of the distillation of Soviet military thought before the Second World War. Isserson, Tukhachevsky, Shaposhnikov, and others like them were founding members of a focused military Enlightenment whose goal was to change the way armies and leaders thought about war. Moreover, unlike contemporaries such as B.H. Liddell Hart or Billy Mitchell, they had the opportunity to build their ideas into the modern Soviet Army and see their doctrine survive despite the existential challenges of Stalin's purges and the German invasion. I commend this work to you as a foundational text, one to which I hope you will refer repeatedly throughout your career."

One can argue that the development of true doctrine required the formal adoption of the concept of operational art. Prior to the Great War, no army in the world possessed a codified body of thought that enabled senior military commanders to visualize the aggregate effects of tactical engagements across time and space. By 1918, after a dramatic revision of drill regulations into something approaching true doctrine, the German army was furthest in realizing this goal. Ultimately, though, the Germans could not translate tactical success into strategic victory because they could not resource military operations in sufficient depth to render local successes decisive. Understanding that the character of warfare in 1918 was radically different from 1914 would have enabled Ludendorff to see the flaws in the MICHAEL offensives and perhaps mitigate them. And although the interwar German Army spent a great deal of effort reflecting on the lessons of 1914-1918, German understanding of the operational art remained incomplete. The separate and unequal Allied efforts against Nazi Germany in World War II, followed immediately by the superpower competition of the Cold War, created a significant gap in American officers' understand­ ing of the factors that contributed to Soviet victories on the Eastern Front. As a result, in the decades following the war the concept of "operational art" was recognized and adopted by the US Army almost as a proprietary creation. In the 1990s, however, Western military historians and theorists discovered that the Soviets had gotten there first. Bruce Menning's translation of Georgii Samoilovich Isserson's 1936 treatise The Evolution of Operational Art is the best example available of the distillation of Soviet military thought before the Second World War. Isserson, Tukhachevsky, Shaposhnikov, and others like them were founding members of a focused military Enlightenment whose goal was to change the way armies and leaders thought about war. Moreover, unlike contemporaries such as B.H. Liddell Hart or Billy Mitchell, they had the opportunity to build their ideas into the modem Soviet Army and see their doctrine survive despite the existential challenges of Stalin's purges and the German invasion.