1Relating to the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests and the means of achieving them.

1. 1.1 Carefully designed or planned to serve a particular purpose or advantage.
   alarms are positioned at strategic points around the prison

   Example sentencesExamples

   • This paper proposes the utilization of a novel technique for feeder voltage drop mitigation at strategic locations.
   • The plan has made an assessment of the extent of areas which could be considered to be ‘strategic locations’.
   • Downing Street denies the allegation, but the tenor and content of the chatter in the days leading up to their departure reveal some form of strategic plan directed towards engineering a tangible return from the visit.
   • In the competitive airline industry, maintenance is not just an added expense, but a strategic resource for winning customer loyalty and controlling costs.
   • Bridgewater has a great deal to offer in terms of being a strategic location for industrial, commercial, retail, and service sector development.
   • A year after the group's last strategic overhaul, the plan appears to be another attempt to turn around the newspapers.
   • The systems world provides management designs, strategic and tactical actions, policies, and procedures.
2. 1.2 Relating to the gaining of overall or long-term military advantage.
   New Orleans was of strategic importance

   a hazard to British strategic and commercial interests

   Example sentencesExamples

   • No longer would the Fort Limhi serve as a strategic location in Young's plan of last resort.
   • It is extremely difficult to merge companies in general, but even more so companies that have been from their birth so identified with strategic national interests.
   • This raises the question as to whether we in Australia is applying our limited resources in our best long-term strategic interests.
   • The French government's motives are bound up with the defence of its own diplomatic and strategic interests.
   • In light of these needs, Kennedy urged that Bulgaria should emphasise long-term strategic planning.
   • It means achieving the strategic goals for which we've gone to war in the first place.
   • It is a 1, 000-year-old state with its own long-term strategic interests.
   • What we need today is a leadership that is able to identify India's strategic interests clearly and tries to achieve them by navigating skillfully through these turbulent times.
   • According to Shimizu, Japan set up a Japanese Legation in Baghdad in 1939, for political and strategic purposes, as part of its Islamic policy.
   • Imperialism depended on dominating, humiliating and exploiting others, and on drawing artificial boundaries for European strategic purposes.
   • In the 15th century artillery emerged as a strategic weapons system.
   • They became too much an organ of the Nazi Party and were used more for its own ends than to help fulfil strategic military objectives.
   • The Soviets achieve a long-desired southern strategic goal, isolating Turkey, opening a route to the Indian Ocean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
   • It would also be in the nation's long-term strategic interests.
   • Commanders need a plan, a tactical set of readiness indicators pointed toward achieving an overall strategic state of readiness.
   • This is difficult to judge because diplomatic and strategic considerations are involved.
   • The change is not in profitability, the change is in the mutual long-term strategic interests of the United States and Pakistan.
   • The militants intend to take further advantage of a wider information operations campaign as a strategic weapon.
   • Implicit in his argument is the belief that American foreign policy flows from strategic considerations of national interest.
   • The cynical exploitation of international conflicts to wage war to achieve such a crass strategic end is what makes this war so immoral.
3. 1.3 (of human or material resources) essential in fighting a war.
   the strategic forces on Russian territory

   Example sentencesExamples

   • So issues such as occupation, control over strategic resources and imperialism are never brought up.
   • Not satisfied with military and economic dominance, they want to extend their empire and control more strategic resources.
   • Elite groups are engaged in an internecine struggle for control of the continent's strategic resources.
   • For Japan, the South China Sea and the waters off Taiwan are vital for transporting oil and other important strategic resources.
   • Secondly, the US's determination to control the world's most strategic resources will lead to further invasions and occupations.
   • When each failed to win control of the central state, the locus of conflict shifted to major strategic resources such as cities and ports, fragmenting the clan alliances.
   • Direct defense refers to the use of armed forces to thwart an adversary's attempt to capture or destroy possessions such as territory, population, and strategic resources.
   • Is it feasible for a country like Namibia to procure a national strategic resource like petroleum from a single source?
   • The oil/gas recovery sector is also related to state security and involves strategic resources.
   • I found that Michael Klare has written an uneven but topical text on strategic resources.
   • Being the most important strategic resource in the world, it will continue to be what shapes the future.
   • The energy transportation systems of the Caspian region were originally designed and built to serve the strategic needs of the Soviet Union.
   • ‘Water is a strategic resource which needs to be consumed, therefore we can not afford to lose a drop, we have to save water’, the mayor said.
   • This is a priceless strategic resource, and the Army's major contribution today to the formulation of national strategy.
   • Europe cannot afford to allow an African head of state to make it look weak and foolish when the US is using its unparalleled military strength to stake a claim to strategic resources all over the world.
   • The objectives pursued by the United States involved the preservation of its access to strategic resources and geographical position.
   • In future, foreign companies will be allowed only a minority holding in firms applying for licences to tap and extract strategic resources like oil and gas.
   • This new relationship involves a direct exchange of strategic resources.
   • The key to this scheme for world hegemony is unchallenged rule over the Eurasian continent and control of its strategic resources, first and foremost, petroleum.
   • The beginning of the Cold War intensified anxieties about the nation's supply of strategic resources.

   Synonyms

   essential, key, vital, crucial, critical, important
4. 1.4 (of bombing or weapons) done or for use against industrial areas and communication centers of enemy territory as a long-term military objective.
   strategic nuclear missiles

   Often contrasted with tactical

   Example sentencesExamples

   • The book ends with a quick run through the use of strategic bombing since 1945.
   • As regards economic factors, the submarine campaign had shut down Japanese industry before strategic bombing even started.
   • Prior to WWII air power advocates considered strategic bombing to be key to breaking enemy production capacity and civilian morale.
   • One could argue that such a missile defence system would bring about the abandonment of ballistic missiles as strategic weapons.
   • A terrorist organization may camp in remote desert caves beyond the reach of strategic bombing or cruise missiles, but its activities depend crucially upon financing.
   • Sullivan makes it clear that the Army Air Forces had a preference for strategic bombing, which is not surprising.
   • After all, NATO had declared their intention of bombing only strategic military targets.
   • Several decades ago, the USSR developed nuclear weapons and strategic missiles.
   • As a World War II bomber pilot, I appreciate the role of both tactical and strategic bombing in all-out warfare.
   • He is widely regarded as a leading proponent of strategic bombing to break the enemy will, and his philosophies echoed throughout the Cold War.
   • In its main role as a strategic weapon, the payload would be a 200 kiloton nuclear warhead (not that it is suggested that the warheads were sold).
   • When we come back, a look at the history of hostage-taking as a strategic weapons of guerilla warfare.
   • At the centre of the strategy was a commitment to strategic bombing, the long-range and independent assault on the economic and military infrastructure of the enemy state.
   • From May 1944, the strategic bombing of Germany entered a new stage, destroying not only war production, but also supply routes and oil refineries.
   • A strategic weapon is not effective unless it can deliver the desired and verifiable results.
   • The United States has spent a trillion dollars on nuclear strategic weapons, such as missiles, submarines and bombers.
   • It would provoke the antagonism of many Russian politicians and embolden those who were opposed to negotiations with the United States to reduce nuclear and other strategic weapons.
   • During the Cold War, the threat of strategic attack using nuclear weapons dominated air force war planning.
   • This included the strategic bombing of Halifax and first-strike use of poison gas, if necessary.
   • Ask yourself what you expect of strategic bombing, or more specifically, what is strategic bombing?