The British Military Strategy That Shaped NATO, the US Army and Modern Warfare

Описание: There is a phrase taught at West Point, Sandhurst, and the Israeli Defence Forces Staff College that traces back to a wounded British captain in a French field hospital in 1916. The phrase is: advance along the line of least resistance. It is one of the most consequential ideas in the history of warfare. And it came from Britain.
This video explains the four interlocking ideas that together make up what military historians call the British Way of War — the strategic culture that allowed a medium-sized island nation with limited manpower to remain a first-tier military power for three centuries, shape NATO's founding doctrine, rewrite the US Army's field manuals, and influence how Israel, Australia, and special forces around the world think about fighting.
↳ The Duke of Marlborough and the 1704 Blenheim campaign — strategic deception at a scale that had never been attempted before
↳ Basil Liddell Hart and the Indirect Approach — the theory born from the catastrophe of the Somme that the German Army used against Britain at Dunkirk
↳ Mission Command — why British officers are trained to make decisions independently in ways that their American counterparts are not, and what that looked like at Goose Green in 1982
↳ Sea Power as strategic leverage — how Britain used maritime dominance to punch far above its weight for 300 years and why that logic still drives British defence policy in 2026
Every claim in this video is sourced from primary material. This is not a summary of Wikipedia. It is a serious analysis of why Britain fights the way it does — and why that matters right now, when Britain is rebuilding its conventional capability against the most serious threat to European security since the Cold War.

Sources used in this video include:
— Liddell Hart, Strategy (1954, revised 1967)
— RAF Air Power Review — Liddell Hart and Modern War (2017)
— NATO Doctrine Body — Mission Command Study among Senior NATO Officers (2025)
— DTIC — Mission Command Philosophy British and American Armies
— House of Commons Defence Committee — Defence in the Grey Zone (July 2025)
— House of Commons Library — Strategic Defence Review 2025 CBP-10406
— RUSI Journal Vol.157 — Influence, the Indirect Approach and Manoeuvre
— National Army Museum — British Army and the Falklands War
— Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890)

⚠️ DISCLAIMER
This video is produced for educational, informational, and public interest purposes only. All information is drawn exclusively from open-source, publicly available material including published books, academic journals, government publications, think tank reports, and established historical sources. Nothing in this video is intended to compromise classified information, ongoing operations, or the safety of any military personnel. The views expressed are analytical commentary based on publicly available evidence and do not represent the position of the British Government, the Ministry of Defence, NATO, or any military organisation. Historical assessments of battles, campaigns, and doctrine are based on verified open-source scholarship and established military historiography.


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