Grand strategy comprises the "purposeful employment of all instruments of power available to a security community". Military historian B. H. Liddell Hart says about grand strategy:

[T]he role of grand strategy – higher strategy – is to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental policy.

Grand strategy should both calculate and develop the economic resources and man-power of nations in order to sustain the fighting services. Also the moral resources – for to foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power. Grand strategy, too, should regulate the distribution of power between the several services, and between the services and industry. Moreover, fighting power is but one of the instruments of grand strategy – which should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure, and, not least of ethical pressure, to weaken the opponent's will. ...

Steven Kent Metz (born June 30, 1956 in Charleston, West Virginia) is an American author, Chairman of the Regional Strategy Department, and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) where he specializes in insurgency and counterinsurgency, American defense policy, strategic theory, the African security environment, and future warfare. He has been with SSI since 1993, previously serving as Henry L. Stimson Professor of Military Studies and SSI's Director of Research. Metz has also been on the faculty of the U.S. Air War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and several universities. He has been an advisor to government agencies, political organizations, campaigns and commissions; served on many national security policy task forces; testified in both houses of Congress; and spoken on military and security issues around the world. He is the author of more than 100 publications and is frequently interviewed by print, television and radio media. He is a member of the RAND Corporation Insurgency Board and a regular blogger on national security policy for National Journal and The New Republic.

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

Edward Nicolae Luttwak (born November 4, 1942) is an American military strategist and historian who has published works on military strategy, history and international relations.

Luttwak was born into a Jewish family in Arad, Romania, and raised in Italy and England. He attended Carmel College in England for a short period, and then the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University, where he received a doctorate. Whilst still at school, he revealed a talent for writing, with a vivid description in a school magazine of the family's flight from Arad one night towards the end of World War 2. His first academic post, before moving to the United States, was at the University of Bath. He became a professor at Georgetown University in 1975. In 2008, Luttwak became a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

He has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, the United States Department of State, the United States Navy, United States Army, United States Air Force, and several NATO defense ministries. Luttwak was a member of the National Security Study Group of the United States Department of Defense, and an associate of the Japanese Finance Ministry's Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy. With three other partners, he established and operated a self-sufficient forest-conservation ranch in the southern Amazon basin.

Sir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG, CBE, PC, FBA, FKC (born 7 December 1948) is Professor of War Studies at King's College London, and was a foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair. He is a member of the 2009 United Kingdom Iraq War inquiry.

Freedman was educated at Whitley Bay Grammar School, the Victoria University of Manchester (BA), University of York (BPhil), and University of Oxford, where he was a student of Nuffield College (Fellow 1974/5) and the Faculty of Social Studies. His DPhil thesis, submitted in 1975, was entitled, The definition of the Soviet threat in strategic arms decisions of the United States: 1961-1974. He also held a part-time lectureship at Balliol College at this time.

Freedman's wife Judith is KPMG Professor of Taxation Law and a Fellow of Worcester College at Oxford University. They have two children, Sam and Ruth.

Freedman held positions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) before he was appointed, in 1982, Professor of War Studies at King's College London. He has been Vice Principal (Research) of King's since 2003 and a Fellow since 1992.