Sun Tzu: an introduction Battles, wars, and conflicts have characterized world’s history since the dawn of time. Through wars and battles, history has been written and rewritten. War and conflicts range from the earliest ones in ancient Mesopotamia to modern conflicts. The most prolonged conflict in modern times is between the Israelites and the Arab nations. Wars have altered and shaped the world. The wars of Rome, Wars of the Roses, American Civil War, World War I, and the Battle of Stoke Field among others are in the record books as the key world events that have become the history. This paper analyzes the book The Art of War by Sun Tzu, the author’s life, his ideas and works. Furthermore, it will seek to review his contributions and their …show more content…
His works and ideas are immense as they formed the basis of military strategy not only in the ancient periods but also in modern warfare. His book The Art of War consists of 13 chapters, each dealing with different but related strategies for winning a war. The given book is one of the oldest treatises based on military strategy, appearing to be the first attempt of writing on planning and subsequent execution of military procedures on rational basis (Pars, 2013).
According to Pars (2013), Tzu employs a wide range of tactics and ideas in military undertakings. They include aspects such as surprise, alliance disruption, divide and conquer, use of spies, attack by fire, tactic variation, energy, as well as laying plans, which considerably help to wage war. All these are Tzu’s strategies that military commanders have to master in wars and conflicts (Pars,
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Some lessons can be learned from his 2300-year-old writings in a different way. For instance, Sun Tzu’s piece offers valuable insights for the management of modern businesses (Chow, 1994). His writings are relevant to strategic thinking and business dealings. They contain the foundations upon which all modern military strategies are centered.
His advice on the use of spies can be applied in modern day businesses in terms of industrial espionage. After all, the latter is a common practice in the business world today as there exist a number of ‘above the board’ practices of gathering information in regards to the competitive nature of the environment (Ellis, 2013). Through his works, the author advises flexibility and shaping as a need to cope with change. He likens military tactics to flowing water. Sun posits that in the same way flowing water tends to avoid heights and only concentrates on the low lands, the army should also avoid strong enemy points and attack the weakest areas. Similarly, companies should learn to adapt flexibility in order to counter the changing and competitive situations at hand (Chow,
General Macarthur and his plan to attack Inchon was a daring endeavor however, it was one that was analyzed greatly and used the tenants of mission command. General Macarthur used his considerable leadership skills and understanding of mission command to develop a winning strategy for the landing at Inchon, skills that all leaders should know and use. Mission command is a powerful tool when used correctly and General Macarthur was a master at
Against The War 1775 “Have you ever seen a dear friend lying in the grass with the top of his skull off and his brains sliding out of them like wet oats?,” The authors of the book “My Brother Sam Is Dead” believe that they are against war. They clearly state reasons why they are against war. The book shows how war divides loyalties within a family. It also shows how war cause huge arguments of generation and the principles versus reality as well. In this book, although both sides of the war are shown, author's Collier and Collier ultimately argue that war is futile.
It is vital that the military uses history to their advantage, whether it is good or bad, in
Few historical figures can stand alongside legends such as Napoleon and Alexander the Great but in his book, Heavenly Khan, Victor Cunrui Xiong Ph.D. tries to make a case for Tang Emperor Taizong, Li Shimin. Xiong attempts to write a historical fiction that appeals to a wide variety of readers. Heavenly Khan tells the story of Emperor Taizong who grew up in a period of devastation for the Chinese people. Taizong would grow to become a military commander, military genius, and emperor of the Tang Dynasty Doctor Xiong is a professor of History at Western Michigan University and is well versed in Asian history.
The Americans fought against the North Vietnamese socialists as if performing the attrition based game of chess. Moderately, the Vietnamese hired guerrilla strategies counter to a greater opponent, similar to Sun Tzu they did not take on American militaries directly and somewhat condemned them at weakened areas. As the game of Go they governed a huge region with smaller powers. I believe that this short case study on Sun Tzu's use of the game of Go in his application of strategy positively demonstrates that the prosperous statesmen and generals elude wars of erosion in search of their
Book Review 2: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises by Richard Betts Summary: Betts starts off his book by recognizing the ambiguity around the advocacy of the use of force in a crisis by military leaders even though there is a prevalent assumption that military professionals are more aggressive than diplomats and politicians. He states he writes the book in order to provide a comprehensive survey of the postwar role of American military men in decisions on their most essential function, their use of force in combat. Betts acknowledges the vast availability of literature on military participation in decisions on defense budgets and weapons procurement, but feels there is a void when looking at decision-making from the perspective of military leadership versus civilian leadership.
According to Clausewitz, military commanders must first be aware of the three most important strategic objectives of war: (1) to conquer and destroy the armed power of the enemy; (2) to take possession of his material and other sources of strength, and (3) to gain public opinion.1 To attain the strategic objectives, Clausewitz requires the application of three decisive military principles: military commanders must apply unrelenting pressure and energy to defeat the enemy; military commanders must mass combat power against the enemy’s vulnerability, creating or revealing additional weaknesses that the attacking force can exploit; and commanders must capitalize on speed, surprise, and shock to destroy the enemy. Clausewitz insists that
In exploring Alperovitz’s question, it should be noted that the military leaders during the Pacific War era and even the
Guerrilla Warfare Throughout history there have been many great war strategies and amazing commanders such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte. There was an incredible amount of tactics for war ones were perfect to annihilate the enemy but other would only make the people afraid of them. There were also great commanders such as Alexander the Great and Ignazio Zaragoza, for example the ideology of Ignazio Zaragoza’s plan on the battle of Puebla in 1862 and likewise there were terrible also terrible commanders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Hitler whom both attempted to attack Russia during the middle of the winter. These strategies led to the creation of guerrilla warfare which then in turn evolved into different uses.
MID-TERM POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSIGNMENT QUESTION- What are the key similarities and differences between the views of Non Western political thinkers like Sun Tzu/Kautilya with Western political thinkers like Hobbes and Machiavelli, with regard to war/security of a state MACHIAVELLI AND KAUTILYA 's SIMILARITIES AND DIFFRENCES ON WAR In my essay i will present the views of MACHIAVELLI and KAUTILYA on WAR and identify their similaties and diffrences.
The honorable 73 October war will be last forever not only inside the Egyptians but also all over the world, we can consider it as the biggest war in the 20th century after world war 2. The importance of this war based on changing the balance of power in the Middle East and showed how to conduct the combined arms in the battlefield using the mission command principles. The 73 October war was praxis for using the mission command principles; we can notice that in all phases of the battle, starting with taking the responsibility of the war decision, establish cohesive units through the interaction trust, enable disciplined initiative, shared understanding and purpose, using mission orders to achieve the commander’s intent . This war is considered
The Korean War occurred during the 1950s just a few years after the brutal Second World War. When the world was recovering in the aftermath of warfare, conflicts continued and led to another global conflict between the superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union. The initial conflict between the superpowers was known as the Cold War, which lasted for 45 years and ended in 1991. The Korean War was the first actual battle fought during the Cold War between two world powers on foreign soil. The Korean War was also considered the “forgotten war” fought between the superpowers, who both wanted to further their ideal political regime--communism for the USSR and democracy for the U.S. Overall, the Korean War has had a tremendous impact on international
Another important argument about Korean War in this book is that it is “either misunderstood, forgotten, or willfully ignored”. In some Western countries and the United States, Korean War is sometimes known as the “forgotten war”, however, Cumings rejected this. He believes that the “unknown war” seemed to be much better that this is both a forgotten war and a never known war. The author brings a lot of evidences to prove his arguments about this “unknown war”. He explained the reasons of this are because Korean War was overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam War.
The United States military shapes its training around Machiavelli’s principle of preparedness and
Anderson’s work created an origin of modern warfare, it failed to compare European military experience of soldiers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century with that of more recent military experience. Instead of writing so much about the numerical superiority of forces or trade, it should have taken into account the effects on the soldiers. He argued successfully that the economics of Europe of this period represented the increasing bureaucracy and expenditure of modern armies, but did not display an overall qualitative argument of experience and operations. It is more rational that the origin began at the start of the eighteenth century with more examples of meritocracy, increasing loyalty to the state, and less desertion among armies. The secondary sources were at best average, and the bibliography did not exhibit the full list of sources.