The internationally respected monograph “Treaty on Strategy” by the eminent expert on the theory and art of strategy, Professor Hervé COUTAU- BÉGARIE, has been published in Polish (2nd Edition © Copyright by Academy of Military Art, Warsaw 2023 ISBN 978-83-8263-491-4). The author is a long-time director of studies at the School of Practical Higher Education (l’École Pratique des Hautes Études) and a professor at the Combined Defense College (Collège Interarmées de Défense). The translation from the French of “Traité de stratégie, 2e édition” (Paris 1999, Economica Publishing House), was done by Dr. Piotr Gawliczek, Prof. of the UWM, and Col. Andrzej Soboń, Prof. of the Academy of Military Art in Warsaw.
The monograph is a pioneering attempt to show, against the background of the history of our civilization, the development of modern strategic thought. It is a comprehensive treatment of strategy in one fundamental study of more than 600 pages. The author creates a historical panorama of the intellectual achievements of the most prominent authors of modern strategy, with the work itself divided into three parts. They bear the name of books. This is an intended archaism to refer to the tradition of creating outstanding works of the masters of the liberal arts of our era. Reading it is a kind of intellectual adventure – it allows you to learn in a systematic, logically coherent way about the causes and results of deliberate human actions (according to the strategy adopted earlier), which led to certain effects, which are often turning points of history. This is not a work directed exclusively to specialists in security sciences or fields such as command or management. Readers with at least some interest in the history of our civilization will find benefit in reading “Treaty on Strategy.” The authors of the translation express in the preface their conviction that the publication will make a permanent mark in the ecosystem of science not by new theories of strategy, but, on the contrary, by a systematized passage through the vastness of already existing strategies. It is also a consideration of the essence of geostrategy, bearing in mind that the translated edition was published in 1999, more than a quarter of a century ago.
The digital version of the translation will be available from the new academic year on the LMS ILIAS platform of the UWM Branch in Elk, supporting the needs of the educational process of students majoring in homeland security.
The author’s meeting, in Giżycko, was attended by Jaroslaw Tokarczyk, representing the Polish Association for Security.
