Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists. James R. Holmes. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021.

Peruse The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and there are pages of testimonials from business executives, writers, athletes, and military leaders on the value of Stephen Covey’s principles for the character ethic. If, as Covey suggests, the habits of mind that enable personal fulfillment are universal, might there be an analogous set of habits of mind for military affairs? Professor James Holmes, the distinguished J.C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, provides an answer. In Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, Holmes argues the profession of arms requires habits of mind, heart, and deed that are compatible with, though distinct from, Covey’s principles.

The thrust of Holmes’ book is elegant in its simplicity: aspirants and practitioners of military strategy alike should learn from the habits of history’s great strategists and understand how to emulate their behaviors in the present. “Strategic leaders thrive,” Holmes explains, “when they develop a repertoire of habits that make these higher-order functions second nature.”[1] With a decidedly seapower bent, he places maritime strategists alongside their air and land power counterparts to illustrate the interrelated contributions to military strategy. Yet, in attributing the book’s maritime focus to his “background, interests, and professional appointment,” Holmes misses an opportunity to illustrate the factors that make seapower strategy unique.[2] Ultimately, Holmes plunders philosophy, history, biography, and strategic theory to offer readers a framework for a lifelong study of grand strategy.[3] Habits of mind and character, Holmes argues, make leaders dynamic in their iterative quest to balance ends, ways, and means.

Across four chapters, Holmes develops three interrelated tenets for maritime strategists: (1) “in peace, prepare for war;” (2) “in peace, win friends and overawe opponents;” and (3) “in war, fight for a better state of peace.”[4] In the first chapter, Holmes establishes the intellectual justification for the importance of habits. Drawing on Aristotle, Holmes explains that “living the good life in strategy is a matter of intellectual and moral virtue…practicing collective virtue as a matter of routine makes a military institution proficient at arms.”[5] In the second chapter, he turns to practicing the “good life in strategy” in peace through internal preparations for war. Holmes reminds readers that there is more to war than warfare, and reviews strategists from Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett to Carl von Clausewitz and the Pentagon’s Andy Marshall to argue that in today’s environment, “not just naval commanders but those in charge of air and ground forces must habituate themselves to thinking like maritime commanders…and keep ways and means in sync with strategic and political ends.”[6] Holmes urges leaders to develop the habits internal to an institution of “anxious foresight,” “competitive strategies” in force design, “stewardship of institutional culture,” and strategy as storytelling to think “constantly about generating maritime means sufficient to make good on the country’s political ambitions.”[7]

Such habits, however, are only a part of what Holmes suggests maritime strategists require to attain “the good life.” In chapter three, Holmes explores the habits external to an institution that leaders should practice in peacetime to both prepare for and deter war. “Peacetime strategic competition,” Holmes explains, “is virtual war.”[8] He borrows from former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s quip that “all diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means” to explore how maritime strategists might deter and coerce enemies while reassuring allies. Yet, Holmes cautions that despite strategists’ best efforts, “armed conversation” can become armed conflict.[9] In his fourth and final chapter, Holmes explores the habits that make effective wartime leaders. In war, as in peace, Holmes argues that “self-mastery—mastery not just of fear but of human fragility of all sorts, both in intellect and in character” is a maritime strategist’s essential habit.[10] Only through “study, reflection, and conscious habituation,” Holmes concludes, can strategists manage armed conflict to produce a better state of peace.[11]

Holmes warns the reader at the outset that the book is a “Feynmanesque foray” into strategic leadership, a reference to the famed physicist, Richard Feynman, who advocated for studying personal interests in the “most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.”[12] Indeed, the reader confronts vignettes ranging from Thucydides to George Washington in the same paragraph. Despite Holmes’ caution, his Feynman method of moving rapidly across time and space might create pause for both scholars and the uninitiated. Those looking for context should look elsewhere, and new students will want to have Google at the ready (e.g., what was the 1597 Battle of Myeongyang?). Military historians, moreover, will bristle as Holmes draws conclusions without offering the reader insight into strategists’ lived experience, culture, politics, technology, or geostrategic environment. When removed from their historical context, Holmes’ effort to illustrate the enduring relevance of the strategy classics risks readers perceiving insights as maxims. Holmes seems to realize this shortcoming through his lament that “historical forgetfulness” and “superficial understanding” produce faulty strategy.[13]

The book, however, is not meant to be a final word on strategy, but rather a primer for further exploration. Holmes will have succeeded if he inspires aspirants and practitioners alike to study further the people, conflicts, and above all, the ideas that he introduces. After all, despite the book’s title and its maritime emphasis, there is a singular habit that Holmes values above all others: the importance of lifelong study of strategy as a whole. Moreover, Holmes’ placement of maritime thought in conversation with its land and air power counterparts is a welcome trend in strategic studies. That one might critique how Holmes pieces together his admittedly “undisciplined” study would only reassure the author that the book has achieved its purpose.[14]

Kip DiEugenio is a PhD Student in Military History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Chief of Staff of the Air Force PhD Scholar. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of the The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Untitled, Galveston, Texas, 2015 (Tanner Mardis).

Notes:

[1] James R. Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2021), 22.

[2] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, xii.

[3] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, viii.

[4] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 23, 81, and 112.

[5] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 16.

[6] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 50.

[7] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 47.

[8] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 82.

[9] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 110.

[10] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 114.

[11] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 127.

[12] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, vii.

[13] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, 61.

[14] Holmes, Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists, viii.