Chapter 13 synthesizes the book’s core claim: American constitutional war powers are not a single “start” switch but an interlocking system of authorities that shapes whether wars occur, who fights them, how and where force is used, how war aims evolve, and how wars end. It outlines how a possible future war with China would involve or test all of these powers. The chapter argues that powers to initiate hostilities are inseparable from powers for organizing forces, posturing and threatening, setting objectives, funding, oversight, and defining the terms of peace. It reframes the “imperial presidency” narrative by showing that while presidential initiative has expanded, Congress’s capacities have grown as well – especially through force-building, appropriations, and peacetime institutional design – and that many of the most consequential shifts were joint. It explains why originalism is inadequate: later military capacity, alliances, covert action, and technology forced constitutional accommodations the Founding generation could not specify. At the same time, it rejects the view that war-powers law is merely politics or necessity, emphasizing how law constrains strategy. Finally, it argues that durable reform lies less in rigid restrictions on the use of force than in strengthening Congress’s strategic guidance and oversight, especially as future conflicts further blur the line between peace and war.

This book reframes U.S. constitutional war powers by looking beyond the familiar question of which branch may start a conflict. Conventional accounts focus on moments when U.S. forces enter combat – most notably President Truman’s decision to fight in Korea without congressional approval in 1950 – and treat those episodes as the central test of constitutional limits. This book argues that such moments capture only part of how war powers operate in practice. Decisions to go to war are rarely isolated acts; they are shaped by earlier choices about force structure, troop deployments, alliances, and threats, often made jointly by Congress and the Executive. The book opens by pairing Truman’s Korea intervention with a less examined but equally consequential decision: the stationing of large U.S. forces in Western Europe to deter Soviet aggression. That peacetime deployment sparked constitutional debate and helped establish practices that continue to underpin American alliances. From there, the book traces how war powers evolved alongside American strategy from the early republic through the Cold War, the Global War on Terror, and today’s security challenges. Rather than offering a fixed constitutional formula, the book treats war powers as an adaptive system shaped by law, strategy, and institutional practice.

This chapter argues military history first emerged as a recognised genre of historical inquiry in Britain between 1815 and 1856. The dramatic increase in historical writing on warfare following the end of the Napoleonic Wars led William Napier to write History of the War in the Peninsula (1828–40). It was the first history of a war by a British writer to be based on extensive primary source research and to present its subject as shaped by ‘principles’ it was possible to learn. This caused the work to be identified by literary periodicals and the Regius professor of modern history at the University of Oxford as representing the emergence of a new form of historical inquiry in Britain: military history. In 1850, following Napier’s lead, the army began to use military history for officer education to communicate the ‘principles of war’. Popular military history also emerged as publishers and authors began to apply new commercially lucrative literary practices to military history, expanding its consumption by the growing reading public. The most notable product of these developments was Edward Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1851) which became a publishing sensation.

This chapter refutes the influential claims made by J. F. C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart that the study of military history by the army centred on learning factual information for its own sake. In fact, how the subject was taught at Sandhurst, Woolwich and the Staff College ran through several phases, the first of which was ushered in following the Crimean War. During the 1850s and 1860s the army adopted the methods of studying the subject used by European armies, so it was employed to communicate the ideas of continental theorists, including Antoine-Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz. As military history was taught to convey a standardised understanding of warfare, when the wholesale adoption of continental models became challenged from the 1890s it reflected the latest advances in British military thought. Psychological factors, new technology and political and maritime considerations all played a prominent role in how warfare was conceptualised from this time. Following the poor British showing during the Second Boer War, military history was again employed to further the professionalism of the officer corps as it was added to the exams sat by officers when seeking promotion.

The Conclusion builds on the arguments contained in the chapters to consider the wider significance of this book’s findings. It demonstrates that as there has been hitherto no attempt to examine military history’s growth on its own terms, this has served to limit understanding of the development of British historical writing more broadly and the subject’s role in shaping responses to the First World War. When military history is incorporated, existing explanations of the nature and evolution of historical writing in Britain are shown to be problematic and incomplete as they do not account for either the topics covered or the methodological complexity of some of the subject’s subgenres. Equally, understanding the role military history played in the development of military thought in the army helps explain several aspects of the force’s decision-making at the outbreak of war in 1914. This chapter concludes by briefly outlining how military history’s evolution prior to the First World War shaped its subsequent development during the twentieth century.

There were three factors which contributed to military history’s establishment as a scholarly discipline and its appearance as a university subject. First, in the final decades of the nineteenth century a new generation of university-based historians emerged at Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester who emphasised solving historical problems using primary source material. This legitimised the study of military history in their eyes and allowed the subject to make inroads into the curricula of these institutions. Second, following its poor showing during the Second Boer War, the army introduced a scheme by which a university student could qualify for a commission after sitting a series of exams, including one on military history. As a result, between 1904 and 1914 the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and London came to teach the military history required for this scheme. Third, a concern that the ignorance of military matters by politicians and electorate would lead to foreign policy disasters fed the conviction that civilians required knowledge of military affairs, further driving the development of ‘high-brow’ military history.

Must change come at the cost of stability? Chapter 7 challenges this assumption by exploring the paradox perspective, which sees change and continuity not as opposites but as interwoven forces that drive sustainable progress. This chapter examines how organisations can balance exploration with exploitation – adapting without losing their core. It reframes change as a dynamic process of navigating tensions, where contrast and synergy become catalysts for resilience. Rather than replacing the old with the new, this perspective invites us to think in terms of both/and – not either/or. While conceptually rich, it also raises tough questions: can organisations truly manage paradoxes in practice? And what happens when balance proves elusive? Ultimately, this chapter offers a nuanced lens for leading through complexity – where lasting change means learning to live with, and leverage, contradiction.

This chapter explores the history of “total war” in the Republic of China, from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. Despite not taking part directly in the First World War, Chinese officers, strategists, and political leaders exhibited considerable interest in the notion of “total war” that became popular in its wake. With the full-blown Japanese invasion of 1937, the transnational circulation of strategic ideas gave way to practical concerns about general mobilization for a conflict of unprecedented dimensions and stakes. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime survived the Second World War only to be destroyed by its Chinese Communist opponent, but it continued tapping pre-war ideas and wartime experiences of total war/mobilization to make sense of civil war – and defeat.

This chapter explores strategy as a key driver of organizational design, emphasizing that structure should align with strategic intent. It introduces four strategic archetypes: reactors (no clear strategy), defenders (efficiency-focused), prospectors (innovation-driven), and analyzers (balancing both). It also discusses digital business strategy, showing how AI and digitalization reshape decision-making, operations, and innovation. Sustainable strategy is introduced, integrating economic, environmental, and social goals (People, Planet, Profit) to enhance resilience and competitiveness. The chapter concludes with strategy misfits – misalignments between strategy and goals – and the need to adjust one or the other. It ends by addressing how the environment influences strategic choices.

In this concluding chapter, we give community strategy its due place in sustainability governance and recapitulate key insights from the previous chapters. Narrative appears in a variety of roles yet is unlikely to do its work as a catalyst of community action if it does not take its place within strategy. Such institutionalization does come with risk, including ossification and the introduction of blind spots. We coin a new leadership function, tightly coupled with the role of strategist: The management of goal dependencies and reality effects associated with community strategy. Strategy appears appropriate as a topic to conclude our interpretive account of sustainability leadership as it is, in part, a narrative itself and as the building of strategic capacity in a community is the culminating point of leadership work, requiring other features of good sustainability to be in place.

Suicide prevention requires a systematic approach to develop a framework that brings together different elements of a prevention strategy, including surveillance, mental health service access, restriction of lethal means, and public awareness campaigns. Originating with Finland's pioneering efforts in the 1980s, such strategies have since expanded worldwide, driven by the World Health Organization's call for action and alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals. It is imperative that these programmes/strategies are evidence-based, informed by local research, continuously monitored and regularly evaluated for effectiveness. By developing suicide prevention programmes/strategies, governments around the world show their commitment to mitigating preventable deaths, underscoring the need for sustained funding, leadership, and research-driven implementation.