Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare Review

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(More customer reviews)Most people who study military strategy rank Sun Tzu among the leading thinkers of all time. In this interesting book, Sun Tzu's ideas are usually compared to some of the grand strategic concepts of Clausewitz who influenced so many military thinkers in the 20th century, especially the Germans in World Wars I and II. Mr. McNeilly also effectively uses the differences between the Asian game of "Go" and Chess to examplify the different mindsets.
I highly recommend this book to all those who wish to better understand sound principles for defending a nation's freedom. As I read Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare, I couldn't avoid thinking that these same principles could be usefully applied to establishing policies for protecting nations from terrorism. In particular, Sun Tzu pointed out that `to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill." "[T}o subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill." For example, how could the community of nations jointly create and support a system that left international terrorists no place to hide, no way to get aid, and no recognition for their evil deeds?
In the last few decades, Sun Tzu has become better known as a source of inspiration for business strategists than for military ones. In fact, Mr. McNeilly wrote a superb book last year on just that subject, Sun Tzu and the Art of Business. While reading that book, I was very impressed with the modern military examples, and am glad to see even more such examples in Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare. An important reason for reshaping Sun Tzu has been that his ideas have to be simplified and reframed to apply to business, a major new arena for strategic thinking. Many military strategists, however, are reluctant to "mess" with an obvious classic. By leaving Sun Tzu in the original form for its military content, much of the power of the writing is lost to those who wish to think about government policies today for domestic, foreign, and military matters.
To me, Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare provides a valuable service by making this outstanding work easily accessible to both those with and without military experience who live now in North America or Europe. The book does this in three ways. First, it simplifies the overall message of Sun Tzu into six major principles. Second, the book uses many examples from 19th and 20th century North American and European battles, supplemented with occasional references to the ancient Greek campaigns in Asia, the Punic Wars, and the World War II, Korean, and Vietnamese warfare in the Pacific and Asia. The more recent war to oust Iran from Kuwait is also included as a counterpoint to many military errors in other campaigns. Third, the volume both quotes copiously from Sun Tzu and includes a complete copy of Samuel B. Griffith's translation of The Art of War. As someone without a military history background, I appreciated the simplified exhibits that showed the general flow of battle in many of the examples.
The six principles are also chapter titles:
(1) "Win All without Fighting: Achieving the Objective without Destroying It"
(2) "Avoid Strength, Attack Weakness"
(3) "Deception and Foreknowledge: Winning the Information War"
(4) "Speed and Preparation: Moving Swiftly to Overcome Resistance"
(5) "Shaping the Enemy: Preparing the Battlefield"
(6) "Character-Based Leadership: Leading by Example"
The final chapter applies these principles to possible future battlefields.
Whenever I read Sun Tzu, I come away more and more impressed by how important information advantages are. If you don't know much about the enemy, you will violate many of these principles. If the enemy knows very little about you, you will have an easier time following the principles as well. Clearly, an American weakness has been to under invest at times in creating overwhelming information and communication advantages. If we learn nothing else from our experiences, we should always be sure to increase our advantages whenever we are pulling back from being highly mobilized.
If all this sounds a little dry, it isn't. Mr. McNeilly has a fine, simple writing style that pulls you right along with the material. He not only uses lots of examples, he uses them well. My only quibble in this regard is that he seems a little shaky in his descriptions of the French wars after 1789. Because the French had killed their king, every nation with a king set out to conquer the French. Napoleon tends to get blamed 100% for this in the book. I'm not sure he could have obtained many allies among the crowned heads of Europe. The examples are chosen so that you get continuity of the same military leaders. You get lots about Robert E. Lee in both the Mexican campaign and in Northern Virginia, for example.
I hope you will enjoy reading this book as much as I did, and that it will be popular among our leaders.
Exhaust reasonable, peaceful alternatives before waging war!


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