Thoughts on Grand Strategy and the United States in the Twenty-first Century

Williamson Murray graduated from Yale University in 1963 with honors in history. He then served five years as an officer in the United States Air Force, including a tour in Southeast Asia with the 314th Tactical Airlift Wing (C-130s). He returned to Yale University where he received his Ph.D. in military-diplomatic history, working under Hans Gatzke and Donald Kagan. He taught two years in the Yale history department before moving on to Ohio State University in fall 1977 as a military and diplomatic historian. He received the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award in 1987. He took early retirement from Ohio State in 1995 as Professor Emeritus of History. Professor Murray has taught at a number of other institutions, including the Air War College, the United States Military Academy, and the Naval War College. He has also served as a Secretary of the Navy Fellow at the Navy War College, the Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, the Matthew C. Horner Professor of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University, the Charles Lindbergh Chair at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, and the Harold K. Johnson Professor of Military History at the Army War College. At present he is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Defense Analysis and a member of the National Strategic Studies Group. Professor Murray has written a wide selection of articles and books. He is the author of The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-1939, The Path to Ruin (Princeton University Press, 1984); Luftwaffe (Nautical and Aviation Press, 1985); German Military Effectiveness (Nautical and Aviation Press, 1992); The Air War in the Persian Gulf (Nautical and Aviation Press, 1995); and Air War, 1914-1945 (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1999). He has edited with Allan Millett a number of books on the implications of the past for current military thinking: Military Effectiveness, three volumes (Allen and Unwin, 1988); Calculations, Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II (Free Press, 1992); and Military Innovations in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, 1996). Professor Murray has also edited with MacGregor Knox, The Making of Strategy, Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge, University Press, 2001). Professors Murray and Millett have published (May 2000) an operational history of World War II, A War To Be Won, Fighting the Second World War with Harvard University Press, which already has received rave reviews from a number of newspapers and journals, including The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The Naval War College Review, The Journal of Military History, and Strategic Review.. Professor Murray’s most recent book, The Iraq War, A Military History (Harvard University Press, 2003), written with Major General Robert Scales, Jr., has also received excellent reviews. Some of Professor Murray’s most recently published articles include: “Clausewitz Out, Computer In, Military Culture and Technological Hubris,” The National Interest, Summer 1997; “Air War in the Persian Gulf: The Limits of Air Power,” Strategic Review, Winter 1998; “Preparing to Lose the Next War?,” Strategic Review, Fall 1998; “Does Military Culture Matter?,” Orbis, Winter 1999; “The Emerging Strategic Environment, An Historian’s View,” Strategic Review, Spring 1999; “Military Culture Matters,” Strategic Review, Summer 1999; and "Military Experimentation in the Interwar Period," Joint Forces Quarterly, spring 2000. At present besides working as a defense consultant in Washington, he is working on a book dealing with the ability of military institutions to adapt to the challenging conditions of combat.