The Grand Strategy of Philip II [Paperback]

Geoffrey Parker's study of Philip II is a landmark. In this penetrating analysis, Parker has successfully distilled and tied together four decades of modern scholarship on strategy, decision making, and organization theory with an original evaluation of Philip of Spain's motivations, priorities, and execution. Gone are the nationalistic generalizations and the structural excuses. Structural and institutional factors get coverage, but the real story is in the man at the top, who had to make the decisions, good and bad.

Parker starts with a discussion on the strategic culture surrounding Philip, to include his "strategic inheritence" from his father, Charles V, the massive information network over which Philip presided (and the irresistable temptation to micro-manage), and the 'messianic imperialism' context that was of Philip's own making.

Messianic imperialism is the backbone for the rest of the book, which deals with the formation and the execution of grand strategy. Parker clearly evaluates Philip's strategy v. the Dutch and the English. For reasons that he explained early in his preface, the Mediterranean theater gets shorter coverage, but it is clear that the Med. concerns were never far from Philip's mind. The French Huguenots also don't get as detailed treatment as they could have gotten, but Parker's summation of the results of Philip's policy towards France is still satisfying.

Parker makes many allusions to strategic and policy issues of the recent past, and it is clear that Philip's problems were not all the different in scope, if not in scale, than those faced by political and military leaders today. Philip's inability to discipline himself to focus on one event to see it through to completion, his inabiltiy to keep himself from micromanaging decisions from over 600 miles away, and his inability to see past his divine mission to perceive reality will all strike familiar chords.

Bottom line: Great history, great interpretation, great analysis. It has got to be a classic in the field.

"The Grand Strategy of Philip II" is a rare book. On the one hand, it is a convincing scholarly reassessment of Spanish imperial policy during the pivotal late 16th century. In that sense, the book is written to the high standards of the academy: exhaustive primary research - much of it in the original Spanish, Latin, Italian and French - and close consideration of competing theories from previous, notable works on the period. On the other hand, the book is an exemplary work of modern strategic studies, with a dash of business school case study analysis. This is a piece of academic history that cites such distinguished and diverse authorities as Peter Drucker, Carl von Clausewitz and John Lewis Gaddis and uses a broad range of historical analogies - from the Vietnam War, the Second World War and the US Civil War - to illuminate and contrast critical points. The end result is one of the more compelling works on strategy written in the past few decades.

Geoffrey Parker very much wrote this book in response to Paul Kennedy's poor treatment of Philip II and the decline of the Spanish empire in Kennedy's enormously popular and influential 1987 book "The rise and fall of the Great Powers." On the surface, Parker seeks to refute the conventional academic wisdom that Philip II had no grand strategy in any sense of the term. While the issue of "grand strategy" is discussed throughout, the book really revolves around Philip's planned 1588 invasion of England, which featured the legendary Spanish Armada and ended in utter catastrophe before it really began.

The book is broken into three more-or-less equal components. The first section offers a fascinating overview of the world Philip lived in and the unmanageable world of paperwork and decision-making that he created for himself. Parker is none too kind to Philip in this book. Most of the challenges and failures of Philip's half-century reign Parker attributes to Philip's insistence on the centralization and compartmentalization of all information and decision-making (Parker openly compares his style and system to that of Hitler). Parker suggests that if Philip had been born 500 years later in similarly privileged circumstances, he might have been an awful CEO of a family-owned business. One of his great faults, in Parker's estimation, was his "zero-defects mentality" - the fear of failure that so dominated his actions that it paralyzed his ability to act on anything but certain knowledge.

Parker describes stunning scenes of Philip working 18-hours-a-day like some Wall Street attorney, hunched over a mountain of papers and embroiled in the most arcane details of imperial appointments and financial management (of which he had little understanding).

Much has been made of the long time it took for messages to travel from place to place in the 16th century. Parker argues that it was more the uncertainty of communications that presented the truly vexing problem of the age, not necessarily the long time it took for information to travel. For instance, a message from Venice to Paris could take anywhere from one to six weeks to arrive. It was the unknown margin that led leaders to fits of despair and uncertainty. Finally, Parker raises an issue in this first section that forms a central part of his indictment against Philip II - his profound and unshakeable conviction that the mission of Spain and that of God were one in the same, and thus any obstacle or shortfall could be overcome by the miraculous intervention of the Lord himself, a phenomenon that Parker calls "messianic imperialism." The issue of religion - Catholic vs. Protestant - trumped all other considerations and Philip consistently and confidently undertook any effort that involved upholding or reclaiming the faith with the sincere expectation of a Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea style miracle to carry him to victory.

The second section is a review of the situation in the Netherlands and foreign relations with England's Elizabeth Tudor. As background, these chapters are necessary and highly informative, but they aren't nearly as absorbing and exciting to the layman as the first and final sections.

The third and final section offers a focused treatment of the question: "Why did the Armada fail?" For contemporary strategists, this section is by far the most compelling. He addresses in turn the three topics most often cited as the reasons for the failure of the Armada to link with the ground forces under the duke of Parma in the Netherlands and then to launch the cross channel conquest of England.

First, Parker addresses the fact that the planned invasion of England was "the worst kept secret in Europe." Parker likens the intelligence situation facing Elizabeth to that of the US government before Pearl Harbor. Yes, much of the enemy's plan was compromised, but the high noise-to-signals ratio and the repeated false warnings of impending invasion meant that strategic surprise, especially the well-concealed intended landing site of Kent, was still achieved. Like the FDR administration in 1941, Elizabeth knew everything, and yet knew nothing.

Second, and perhaps most dramatically given the generally sober and academic tone of the rest of the book, Parker vigorously defends the actions and preparations of the invasion forces commander in the Netherlands, the duke of Parma. He argues that Parma achieved unparalleled logistical feats to get his 27,000-man invasion force in place and ready to embark within a day-and-a-half, so any notion that the plan failed because Parma either intentionally sabotaged the invasion or was incompetent must be rejected, if one accepts Parker's reasoning.

Finally, Parked concludes that the superior English naval capabilities - better ships, bigger guns, more effective leadership, better tactics, more experience in general - ultimately doomed the Armada and thus the invasion plans to failure. Everything hinged on the ability of the Spanish to establish sea control in the Channel to get Parma's forces to England, and the British naval superiority made that basic objective nearly impossible. The British advantage is very much described in terms that we today would refer to a "revolution in military affairs " (RMA). Indeed, Max Boot used the defeat of the Armada as one of his case studies in his recent, excellent review of the RMA argument in "War Made New." Parker writes that the Spanish fully anticipated English tactics and appreciated their advantages in long-range gunnery and maneuverability, and were simply unable to overcome them.

Parker sums up the Armada's failure and Philip's direct role in causing the disaster this way: "Philip's flawed 'management style' frustrated the Armada's success far more than the loss of secrecy, the lack of communication between the two theater commanders, and the technical differences between the two fleets. His refusal to delegate, his 'zero-defects mentality', his self-generated information overload and his messianic outlook produced grave strategic errors that rendered operational success almost impossible."

Some people still insist military tactics apply to business. Once I took a public relations course, and our textbook was Clausewitz's treaty on war. If you want to avoid mistakes, to design a sound and practical strategy for whatever your business, then read Geoffrey Parker. In this book, Philip II is judged through the lenses of planning, and most importantly, of results and achievements. Why did Philip failed in his great enterprise? To make decisions is not only a matter of information -Philip was well informed of affairs- but of judgement, passion, and careful coordination with those who execute decisions.