In 1825, in his first State of the Union address, John Quincy Adams laid down the fundamental principle of strategy for a commercial republic: “let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth…”

This proposition, which must have seemed far from obvious at the time, has proved remarkably true. American power flows from American wealth and our wealth from our freedom.

Yet almost necessarily, the job of making strategy for national defense falls to people whose work is not to encourage enterprise but to compel outcomes: soldiers, military historians and academic strategists, diplomats who must always think of war as a continuation of politics by other means.

These are honorable undertakings. Yet the natural result of ceding strategy to those whose professions give them little practical experience of commerce is to give short shrift to that liberty.