No two heads of state could be more dissimilar in ambitions or temperament than Abraham Lincoln and Louis XIV, but when it came to the conduct of their wars, they shared much in common:
Both kept their generals on a tight leash, spending many hours a day in correspondence directing operations: Louis at his writing desk, Lincoln in the telegraph office. They paid especial attention to the theaters closest to their capitals — the Low Countries and northern Virginia, respectively (Louis established a courier service so efficient that a message sent in the morning could receive a reply that evening).
Neither man had experience commanding troops in the field, and both made serious mistakes as a result of their micro-management. Yet they also had good reason to take the approach they did. Fighting a war is very different from winning it, and their generals — though professionals in tactics and operational art — did not always see the larger picture. Domestic political constraints, economic factors, and foreign relations had just as much an effect on the course of the war as battlefield victories. In the realm of strategy, the generals were just as much amateurs as the heads of state.
In all of warfare, the leap from operational art to strategy is the hardest to make. Whereas operational art is in many ways an extension of tactics, dealing with the same sorts of considerations, strategy is different in both kind and scale. The problems it seeks to address are of a fundamentally different nature, as are the tools to effect it — yet by the very nature of the problem, it is almost impossible to train anyone to practice good strategy.
In its broadest sense, strategy is the art of accomplishing major national objectives. This encompasses far more than military force alone: it extends to industrial production, economics, diplomatic relations, domestic politics, and so forth. It is the logical extension of synergistic cooperation in warfare, from combined-arms tactics, to joint operations, to whole-of-government strategy. Good strategy is therefore a collaboration of a broad base of subject-matter experts.
Yet unlike other levels of warfare, nothing prepares practitioners from these separate fields to work together. An infantryman is not trained in the specifics of artillery employment, but is trained from the very beginning to fight as part of a combined-arms team. Junior officers frequently gain experience working alongside other services well before they are expected to plan or conduct joint operations. By contrast, there are far, far fewer opportunities for a military officer to work with industrial policy, economic warfare, or diplomacy before he reaches the three- or four-star level.
It’s a rare mind that is blessed with both the tactical/operational acumen to win battles, and the social and political savvy to coordinate national resources and policies to make them stick.
Caesar and Napoleon really were special.