Strategic Thinking: An Introduction and Farewell

Of the many subjects that stimulated Philip Windsor's intellectual curiosity and fertile mind, war and military strategy in the nuclear age are perhaps the ones for which he is most widely remembered. In countless interviews and commentaries for the BBC, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, he brought clear and characteristically jargon-free analysis to bear on the vicissitudes of East-West relations. To gatherings of military officers and diplomats around the world, he placed the phenomenal increase in the destructive power of modern weaponry and the very real possibility of nuclear Armageddon into sharp historical, political, and philosophical relief. But it was during his tenure as a teacher at the London School of Economics from 1967 to 1997 that his reflections on the evolution of what he called [strategic thinking] reached their widest audience.

The principal setting for these reflections was an annual series of lectures titled [Strategic Aspects of International Relations.] Philip's fluent and brilliant delivery, richly laced with wit and insights drawn from outside the narrow confines of the social sciences, captivated and enthralled undergraduate and graduate audiences. His flawless delivery aside, it was above all the content of Philip's lectures that proved so enriching and intellectually stimulating to new classes of students each year. Recognizing this, friends and colleagues persisted in encouraging Philip to bring his lectures and thoughts on modern strategy and war together in a single volume. After much prodding, he eventually obliged, and the result was Strategic Thinking: An Introduction and Farewell. The initial draft of the book was completed in 1995. But the long, drawn-out process of preparing a final draft for publication, combined with illness, meant that he was unable to complete the project before he

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