This book is a comparative study of military operations conducted my modern states between the French Revolution and World War I. It examines the complex relationship between political purpose and strategy on the one hand, and the challenge of realizing strategic goals through military operations on the other.
Taking the Napoleonic wars as his starting point and culminating at the brink of World War I, Hodge presents a comparative history of military operations and the political factors that governed them. Hodge argues that the modern state treated war as a strategic use of force to achieve rationally calculated political goals.