The strategic method is an important element of how I do political economy. The interactive intent of powerful people and institutions is key to understanding why things happen as they do, including the business cycle and the economic crises. My primary field, international relations, sometimes takes strategy seriously, but few other social scientific fields do, certainly not economics or business. There are courses called “business strategy,” but they typically teach planning, not strategy. Economists learn game theory as a way to talk about “strategy,” but the choices called strategies within game theory are a shallow representation of real strategic competition, which involves surprise, deception, innovation and “breaking the rules.” Game theory is too formal to represent most dimensions of real strategy. This is not a list of great generals, which would be much longer, but of authors of original works of strategic genius who were true innovators, not simply superb executors or proponents of other people’s ideas. My list is biased toward those who apply also to political and business strategy, though most of these had no such ambition and are known as military strategists or even philosophers.
Sun Zi (a.k.a. Sun Tzu) (544 BC-496 BC)
Sun Zi is the most famous Chinese strategist, arguably the greatest ever. His work, The Art of 
War, is so concise that it is often difficult for first-time readers to realize how profound it is. Furthermore, although there are many English translations, it is so poetically succinct in expression and classical Chinese characters are so rich in multiple connotations that it is difficult to express the meaning in English with an economical, word-for-word translation. It is better to use a well annotated edition. Sun Zi is rich in concepts. Most important for me is his emphasis on the dialectical interplay between ordinary and extraordinary force. My strategic method applies this dichotomy to all exertion of social power. Ordinary force, the routine, observable, official, public and expected exertion of force distracts the adversary and reassures them that they understand what is happening. It is the cover story that confirms your prejudices or wishful thinking. Extraordinary force is the opposite. It is innovative, unexpected, inconspicuous, surprising, covert, camouflaged, out-of-the box action that doubly powerful because the adversary is typically distracted by ordinary force and thus completely addled by extraordinary force and unable to respond appropriately in time. Extraordinary force deals the decisive blow. It is the underpinning of Sun Zi’s famous dictum, “all warfare is based on deception.” This also applies to politics and business. Wikipedia
Lao Zi (a.k.a. Lao Tzu) (unknown birth/death)
Lao Zi is probably a pseudonym for an unknown author or authors who devised “Taoism” to contend with China’s Confucian school of philosophy. This work is rarely included in lists of book on strategy, since it is much broader than that, but it is essential to read Lao Zi in order to understand Sun Zi fully. 
Lao Zi is concise and enigmatic, so a well annotated translation is essential. I read The Tao several times, but understood it much better only after studying internal Chinese kung fu. An essential concept is “wu wei,” literally meaning non-action, but in political economy contexts it is something like the French “laissez faire” and psychologically it could be expressed in Freudian terms as “transcending ego.” Taoist meditation aims to inculcate a sensitivity to things as they are in fact (their “tao” or “way”), not as our ego would wish them to be. Taoism recognizes the pervasiveness of wishful thinking and the difficulty of overcoming it without careful cultivation of “wu wei.” Thus Sun Zi’s famous phrase “Know yourself and know your enemy and you will win a hundred battles,” could sound simplistic and trite, but viewed through the lens of his Taoist sensibility it is a necessary corrective for the many arrogant and egotistical leaders (not to mention ordinary people) to lose touch with reality because their own wishful thinking so overwhelms their perceptions of what is real. We are never so clever that we cannot fool ourselves. Wikipedia
Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
Clausewitz is the greatest Western theorist of war. Unfortunately, like Sun Zi, he is often trivialized and misunderstood. Critics like English strategist B.H. Liddell-Hart 
thought Clausewitz’s focus on destroying the enemy’s force in critical battles was too direct and unsubtle. He lauded Sun Zi for emphasizing what Liddell-Hart called “the indirect approach,” but Liddell-Hart’s version of both Sun Zi and Clausewitz is too narrowly geographical and physical. He lacks appreciation for the philosophical roots of both, which though different in expression, are unified on many points, not the least the vital importance of deception, which Clausewitz expressed in his own dichotomy of the “fog of war” and “genius.” The “fog of war” reflects the general confusion as well as the specific deception inherent in war. “Genius” is his equivalent of extraordinary force, combining both knowledge and the willingness to act boldly despite the confusion, to seize the initiative (“carpe diem” in Latin) and thereby unbalance the adversary. Clausewitz would agree with Sun Zi that only a general of great wisdom could win without fighting, but he cautions his readers of lesser genius not to depend on victories to be bloodless. Acting as if that is the norm is indeed wishful thinking. Clausewitz emphasizes that war is bloody hell not to be bloodthirsty, but as a cautionary corrective to the antiseptic wishful thinking he found in so many of his predecessors. Wikipedia
Thucydides (460 BC – 400 BC)
Thucydides is typically called a historian. Indeed, he was one of the greatest. Reading him thousands of 
years later, he still sounds surprisingly modern. Like so many great thinkers, he is typically remembered only for a phrase or two, not for the broad thrust of his book on the Peloponnesian War. Today he is taken as a precursor to the international relations theory called “realism” simply because of a quip he puts into the mouth of an Athenian general admonishing the leaders of the weak state of Melos, “The strong do what they will; the weak do what they must.” That plus a facile version of the threat rising Athens posed to Sparta’s dominance is typically all we ever hear about him when studying international relations. Actually, what his history shows in lavish detail is the interaction of war with domestic party strife. Realists ignore the latter. He shows that strategy is not just between contending states, but between contending interests within them. In his case, the contending interests are rival democratic and oligarchic parties that polarized most Greek city states. The former eventually allied with Athens and the latter with Sparta. In nearly all instances when a city fell to the opposing side, it was because it was betrayed from within by the rival party. As Aristotle makes clear, these parties were based not just on different ideas, but on divergent social interests. I was provoked to formulate my theory of polarized political economy because of Thucydides’ example. Wikipedia
Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)
Like Lao Zi, many might think it odd that I include renowned philosopher Aristotle in a list of key strategists. 
However, such people have an overly narrow view of either strategy or Aristotle or both. When I was a graduate student a wrote a paper entitled, “Aristotle, Thucydides and the Critique of Modern Realism,” which is summarized also in Chapter 6 of my recent book. Aristotle is a key strategist because in books like Politics he emphasizes why constitutional change occurs, not just which constitutions are “good” as in Plato’s Republic. Furthermore, unlike the modern concept of “constitution” as merely a set of basic laws, Aristotle uses this term to refer to the how the entire political economy is constituted, including the distribution of power among social classes. His idea of constitution is more like what we would call a political or political-economic system. He is far more advanced than his teacher, Plato, who prefers to explore ideal systems rather than the actual dynamics of existing ones. Aristotle’s success in doing this stems in part from the massive resources he was gifted by his most famous pupil, Alexander the Great. His Lyceum was more than just a school of philosophy; it also functioned as a library and research institute. He is the first to systematically study the evolution and succession of political systems with particular attention to the parties, in his day, democratic and oligarchic, that contended within them. These are not based on mere ideologies for Aristotle, but rooted in specific social forces with opposing interests. He influenced many others since, including James Madison, whose famous essay Federalist No. 10 likewise roots party politics in rival interests and social forces, not just arbitrary political clubs. It is in the spirit of Madison and Aristotle that I say “Capitalism is a two-party system.” You need to know the contending forces before you can adequately strategize success. Wikipedia
Niccolò Machiavelli (May 3, 1469 – June 21, 1527)
Machiavelli should be considered the first modern political scientist. In fact, his greatness is rooted in his revival of concepts he learned from Thucydides and Aristotle. Unfortunately, like so many great thinkers, he is 
lampooned for treating politics as a vicious and unprincipled contest, rejecting the saccharine “moral” treatises of so many of his contemporaries, who merely drew a veil over political realities, rather than ruthlessly dissecting them. One reason Machiavelli often gets such bad reviews is that his most read work, The Prince, was written to win the unlikely favor of the newly ascendent Medici aristocracy in Florence. Machiavelli’s true republican values and brilliant polarized political economy are much more evident in his less read works such as The Discourses on Livy and The History of Florence, my personal favorite, whose introduction I quote at the beginning of my own book. Machiavelli frames the history of Florence with focus on the interests that polarized into rival parties that eventually also allied with rival foreign powers, much like in Thucydides. Machiavelli also wrote a book on The Art of War, but is not the best or the only source for his innovative thinking on strategy. Machiavelli was a political realist, which means, in Taoist terms, he believes analysts must look at “the tao” politics, the actual specific ways power is exercised, rather than deceiving oneself with the wishful thinking propounded by moral treatises. Even if you yourself have the most lofty moral aspirations, if you are naive about the power and interests of others you may lead toward ruin rather than well-reasoned success. Wikipedia
Mao Zedong (a.k.a. Mao Tse-tung) (1893-1976)
Mao is known as the leader of the Chinese Communist revolution and the foremost 
leader of China from 1949 until his death. He made vast mistakes during the last decades of his life, in part because of hubris, yet also because he did not understand industrial society nearly as well as he understood China’s peasant-landlord rural political economy. His most original political-military writings were during the 1920s and 1930s when he formulated tactics and strategy for China’s revolutionary peasant war against Chinese rivals and the Japanese invasion. Although he was in the Marxist tradition, he reversed the generally contemptuous attitude toward peasants of Marx himself and leading Marxists, including Lenin. Previous Marxists had generally seen peasants as a reactionary, counter-revolutionary force. Mao defied Stalin and built a Red Army that gained its strength from an alliance with the peasant struggle against landlord domination. In the process he developed a blueprint followed by rural revolutionaries in many other countries, most notably in Vietnam. Agrarian revolution seems to have receded during this century, but Mao’s ideas for it remain important for understanding the potential power of guerrilla warfare when it links itself sustainably to a popular objective. Wikipedia
Heinz Guderian (1888-1954)
The German blitzkrieg strategy during World War II was the invention of several people, three of which I list here. It has influenced mechanized warfare ever since. Many people are familiar with the technological means—
such as tanks and tactical air power—but fewer understand the theory. The French and British together had more and often better tanks than the Germans during the first decisive victory of the blitzkrieg against France in 1940. However, the technique mattered far more than the technology. The blitzkrieg was the first use of these weapons not as a mere supplement to conventional operations, but concentrated as part of a rapidly moving extraordinary force designed to act faster than the enemy could react. The idea was to disrupt the adversary’s static way of thinking derived from the trenches of World War I. Once a breakthrough was achieved after only a few days, the Allies lost control of the situation. Heinz Guderian was the general most responsible for designing and training the panzer force. He led a major element of it in 1940. This was the most influential wartime application of extraordinary force principles since Napoleon. Speed is the key element of the blitzkrieg that is important for political economy. The disruptive use of speed in business, particularly in financial operations, is ignored in financial and economic models that emphasize stable equilibrium prices rather than the accelerating advantage gained from rapid unexpected execution. Wikipedia
Erich von Manstein (1887-1973)
Manstein was another author of the blitzkrieg. Guderian designed the panzer forces, but Manstein actually devised the revolutionary plan for their most effective and surprising employment during the 1940 campaign. The German forces attacked French, British, Belgian and Dutch defenders who outnumbered them in soldiers and every category of weapons except aircraft. The opposing forces seemed evenly matched. Nearly all military professionals around the world expected a stalemate to ensue, as during World War I. The Allied powers even expected Germany to more or less repeat its World War I plan. In fact, the first draft of the German plan did just that. However, Manstein drastically revised it to do the unexpected: send a huge mechanized force through the road-poor Ardennes Forest. When this force emerged and quickly broke through the French lines at a weak point, the campaign was already decided. The Allies had no way to contain the fast-moving panzer spearhead that cut their forces in half only ten days into the campaign. Most of the best Allied forces were trapped and forced to evacuate hurriedly by sea or surrender. Manstein’s plan had the virtues of a singular focus, deceptive direction, and extremely rapid pace. Wikipedia
Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Brilliant General by Erich von Manstein
Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
Rommel is most famous as the Desert Fox, the German commander during most of the North African 
campaign in World War II, who often defied expectations and counterattacked decisively. He also led one of the panzer divisions during the French campaign of 1940 and the German forces resisting the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 during its opening weeks. Few people know that he was also a very effective infantry officer during World War I and wrote a book codifying the successful German innovation of infiltration tactics that overcame the trench stalemate during the last year of the war and form the basis for modern infantry tactics. Rommel’s career illustrates that key concepts of the blitzkrieg predated the adoption of the panzer division as its premier means of implementation. Whereas the Western powers continued to emphasize central control massive firepower delivered by machine guns and artillery, infiltration tactics countered with independent initiative by small-unit commanders at the front using mobile light weapons, surprise, speed, evasion, and deception instead of maximizing firepower. Firepower is designed primarily to incapacitate an enemy by direct injury. Speed and maneuver aim to disorganize enemy resistance and force most to surrender. Its success is measured by large numbers of prisoners rather than corpses. Wikipedia
Julian S. Corbett (1854-1922)
I have been a major naval buff since I was young, reading all I could get my hands on about ships, naval battles and the history of navies. Unfortunately, there are are few great theorists of sea power strategies. The best known is Alfred Thayer Mahan, especially his classic, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783. It is a pretty good history, although much better is the N.A.M. Rodger’s recent multi-volume history of British sea power. However, the best work on strategy I have found is Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian S. Corbett, a worthy critic of Mahan. I always found Mahan’s arguments weak from the time I first read them during high school. Corbett applies principles of Clausewitz to sea power. He is much better than Mahan at understanding the broader context of naval power, including the political and business interests at stake. Rodger is also rich with details of this broader context. For example, Mahan emphasizes great battles fought by concentrated fleets, but these became rather rare during the past century. He neglects the enormous historical importance of privateering and piracy as expressions of private power in war. More recently, business motives for resisting convoys and other dictates of governments over private commerce are typically neglected by most naval historians and theorists. Japan’s naval strategy in World War II was compromised by its single-minded Mahanian emphasis on the great battle, whereas the U.S. threw away its prewar plans, influenced by Mahan, and fought the Pacific War with much more emphasis on securing its own and disrupting Japan’s sea lines of communication. Corbett provides a much better explanation than Mahan for how sea power is actually used to secure the business of nations. Wikipedia
“Some Principles Maritime Strategy-Warfare” by Julian Corbett
John Boyd (1927-1997)
Perhaps the least known strategist on my list is John Boyd. He is also the most recent. He wrote no books, though there are several useful biographies about him or other books inspired by him. Mostly he worked within the U.S. Air Force and then Pentagon circles giving briefings. His ideas were included in an ever-growing and evolving slide set. He was a fighter ace who began thinking about strategy related to air combat. He did many things, including perfecting tactics and training methods for jet fighter combat that are used around the world today, inventing a formal mathematical energy-maneuverability theory, then using it to shape the innovative designs of the main U.S. fighter aircraft today (the F-15 and F-16), and finally simply codifying his theory of strategy using what he called the OODA loop. This acronym stands for observe-orient-decide-act, but what it encapsulates is a fast-paced iterative application of Sun Zi’s extraordinary force doctrine. Boyd argues a commander should often take the least expected action rather than what is predicted to be most effective. He applies this not just to air-to-air combat, but also to other brilliant examples of military strategy that disrupt the opponent’s ability to react effectively by assailing him with unexpected threats faster than he can reorient from his previous staid expectation. Others have applied his insights to business strategy. Indeed, in this fast-paced era of programmed trading in finance, the relative pace of events, so neglected by the static equilibrium methods of economics, is more and more necessary to understand winning strategies and the occasional catastrophic crash. Wikipedia
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War