Pierre, Hervé Général Beaufre

Père de la Stratégie Française

André Beaufre was born in 1902 and joined the army at a young age. As a lieutenant in the Rif, where he was seriously wounded in 1925, he became captain of the Moroccan riflemen ten years later, before witnessing the collapse in June 1940. As a fellow escapee of General Giraud in 1942, he took part in the liberation of France. After the Indochina War, he became a general and commander of a division in Algeria and finally, in 1956, head of the land forces deployed in Suez. Famous abroad, rediscovered in France some thirty years ago and regarded as one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century, General Beaufre is frequently quoted to support the most prominent analyses of current conflicts. His magnum opus, Introduction à la stratégie (Introduction to Strategy), has been translated into more than twenty languages and is a standard work worldwide. The author undertakes nothing less than redefining the field of strategy by linking areas of action that were previously unrelated. What he calls total strategy, which today resembles the very popular global approach, offers an answer to the observation that the world is in a permanent state between peace and war. However, André Beaufre, who died in 1975, offers more than just daring strategic combinations ranging from the nuclear threat to classic warfare and guerrilla warfare. He turns strategy into a method, a way of understanding problems. Under his pen, strategy becomes first and foremost a state of mind before becoming a set of instructions, a means of anticipating events rather than enduring them.