With the invention of the atomic weapons, there appeared, between 1945 and 1955, a class of strategists who looked upon the nuclear bomb as the 'abso… - S. K. Malik

Let us now make an attempt to study the Quranic concept of strategy. The first step to his study is to understand the difference between total strategy, that is Jehad, and . The term, Jehad, so often confused with military strategy, is in fact, the near-equivalent of total or or policy-in-execution. Jehad entails the comprehensive direction and application of 'power' while military strategy deals only with the preparation for and application of 'force'. Jehad is a continuous and never-ending struggle waged on all fronts including political, economic, social, psychological, domestic, moral and spiritual to attain the object of policy. It aims at attaining the overall mission assigned to the Islamic State, and military strategy is one of the means available to it to do so. It is waged at individual as well as collective level, and at internal as well as external fronts. Waged in its true spirit, and with multiple means available to it, the Islamic concept of total strategy has the capacity to produce direct results. Alternatively, however, it creates conditions conducive to the military strategy to attain its object speedily and economically. Military strategy thus draws heavily on the total strategy (Jehad) for its successful application. Any weakness or strength in the formulation, direction or application of the total strategy would affect military strategy in the like manner. In the absence of Jehad, the preparation for and application of 'force' to its best advantage would be matter of exception, not rule. Conversely, optimum preparation and application of the military instrument forms an integral part of Jehad.

"National interest," concedes Bernard Brodie, "are not fixed by nature nor are identifiable by any generally acceptable standard of objective criteria. They are, instead, the product of fallible human judgement on matters on which agreement within the nation is unusually less than universal." Nor is the formulation of national interests, as is well-know to us today, necessarily or essentially governed by the consideration of peace. That being so, the logical outcome of the concept of national interests in the international system of today is tension and war, and not peace, harmony, justice and understanding. Indeed, national interest is: in train a vicious and never.ending cycle, the common denominator of which is 'war', not 'peace'.

When Clausewitz, the founder-father of modern military thought, defined war as a 'continuation of policy by other means', he did, in fact, throw a challenge to the students of Political Science and International Relations to develop a theory around 'policy'. Clasewitz thus put the cart before the horse and forced the policy-makers to conduct deeper research into the science of politics. It was not 'policy' that took the initiative to define the meaning, sphere, limites and extents of 'war'. On the contrary, 'war' forced 'policy' to define and determine its own parameters. It took the human mind hundreds of years to establish, if at all, the relationship between national aims and objectives, national interests, national policy and war; and even longer to realise that war was subservient to policy. Nonetheless, the political scientists did rise to the occasion to theorise; they opined that, in brief, policy was the pursuit of national interests and that war became an instrument of policy when vital but incompatible national interests were at stake. What they failed to establish, however, was concerning the rationale behind the determination of national interests.