Strategy E-Book

Tom Kane

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: PKS Polity Key Thinkers Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 390

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Over twenty two centuries ago, the Greek general Pyrrhus questioned the real gains of military victory. Today we might reflect on the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in much the same way. War is not only cruel but capricious; its outcomes are often bitter and frustrating, even for the winning side.

Strategy: Key Thinkers expertly introduces the ideas of major strategic thinkers whose work explores the complex challenges associated with the use of military force. Early chapters deal with the foundational work of Sun Tzu (Sunzi), Thucydides, Vegetius, Machiavelli and Carl von Clausewitz and their relevance to problems facing Western militaries today. The book then considers broader issues, such as the distinctive importance of air and maritime operations, the difficulty of waging offensive land warfare in the face of modern firepower, the implications of nuclear weapons, and the potential of irregular warfare. It concludes by highlighting key themes which connect - and distinguish - the works under consideration, noting how these similarities and differences can inform the strategic debates of the early twenty-first century.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Bringing Strategy to Life

1: Hearing the Thunder

Strategy: the first step

The second step: using one's knowledge

Situations within situations

Deception, espionage and reckoning with the enemy

Conclusion

2: Honour, Interest and Fear

Background

Reading Thucydides

Three strategic debates

Simple principles

Complex realities

Sicily

Conclusion

3: Conquering Fortune

Vegetius: uniting the whole

Machiavelli: greater than Columbus?

4: Summarizing War

Beginning at the beginning

Poet or grammarian?

Making history

Clausewitz's trinity

Strategic patterns

The practical sceptic?

Conclusion

5: Right Place, Right Time, Right Technology

Location, location, location

The great grammarian

Conclusion

6: Heavy Metal

Never more into the breach: the triumph of defensive warfare

Which way is up? Fuller and Hart reappraise strategy

Wheel of strategy?

7: The Once and Future Atom

Clausewitz regained?

Wohlstetter's ruler: the operational analysis of strategic logic

But is it strategy? The cultural critique of deterrence theory

Conclusion

8: The Weak Against the Strong

A weapon of the strong? Insurgency in pre-twentieth-century strategic thought

So you want a revolution?

A strategic scotoma?

Conclusion

Conclusion: Strategy in the Twenty-First Century

World domination (but cheap): American and British national goals circa 2010

Finding focus: how theory informs practice

Conclusion: thoughts on thought

References

Index

Copyright © Thomas M. Kane 2013

The right of Thomas M. Kane to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2013 by Polity Press

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Acknowledgements

One of the most rewarding things about publishing a book is having the opportunity to say thank you. As I have worked on Strategy: Key Thinkers, a variety of people in a variety of roles have offered me invaluable understanding and help. I draw special attention to Heather Currey, Scott Edmunds, Jay Jansen, David Oliver, Shawn McBurnie, Kate Whyte, Debra Wilkinson and Professor Rudiger Wurzel, all of whom have supported me at critical moments, and each of whom, in one capacity or another, has listened to my story. I would also mention my editors Dr Louise Knight, Pascal Porcheron and David Winters at Polity, both for their professional skill and for their collegial spirit.

I also thank my colleagues Dr Matthew Ford and Dr David Lonsdale for their advice on scholarly matters.

Introduction: Bringing Strategy to Life

The reasons why strategy matters are stark. We live in a world in which others are willing to kill us. Moreover, all of us cherish goals which have the potential to involve us in conflict. These goals may be as visceral as the drive to live and protect our families or they may be as intellectual as the mandates of a religion or political ideology, but few of us would choose to leave such aspirations hostage to the forbearance of our rivals, and most of us would be willing, under certain circumstances, to use force ourselves as a tool for advancing them. If we are to realize our hopes for any period of time, this will to fight for them is a logical necessity. Moralists throughout time have recognized it as conditionally honourable and just.

Securing one's goals through force is easier said than done. This is obvious for those who are weak, but true even for those who appear strong. Goliath has fallen so many times in the course of human history that political thinkers from Machiavelli to the contemporary international relations scholar Kenneth Waltz have taken it as axiomatic that those who rise are doomed to decline. Waltz adds that attempts to defy this principle will only bring on one's collapse all the sooner (Waltz 2000: 36–8). If this proposition is true, even our moments of success are but precursors to failure, and all of our hopes are ultimately futile.

Nevertheless, with the will to fight for our goals comes the hope that our ingenuity will permit us to succeed in them, if not absolutely and eternally, at least satisfactorily and renewably. Without this hope, David would not have bothered.1 David, one may also recall, exchanged his sling for Goliath's mighty sword and went on to found a kingdom. Strategy is the skill which permits David to discern the uses of sling and sword alike, and to combine them for such purposes. This book aims to help readers understand this faculty, so that they might use and develop it.

The first step towards understanding anything is to clarify the concept which one wishes to grasp. The highly esteemed scholar Colin Gray has defined strategy as a bridge between military power and political goals (Gray 1999a: 17, 2010: passim). Edward Mead Earle might add that, even in the midst of war, an effective strategy must also connect one's goals with one's economic means, one's form of government, one's diplomatic relations, one's broader culture and an open-ended variety of similar considerations (Earle 1943: viii) Rather than thinking of strategy as a bridge, we may wish to picture it as a busy airport terminal. Earle adds that strategy involves long-term efforts to secure future aspirations, as well as short-term attempts to achieve immediate ones, perhaps stretching such metaphors to absurdity.

This book will amalgamate Gray's and Earle's thoughts by defining strategy as people's efforts to take control of their political destiny. Since Goliath's physical strength does not seem sufficient for those purposes, this book will treat strategy as primarily a mental activity. Although strategic thinkers must pay attention to material factors such as the size of armies and the effects of weapons, they are primarily interested in the challenges of using military instruments effectively, not in the instruments themselves. This statement requires a caveat – the fact that strategy is an intellectual endeavour may not mean that it is a coldly rational one. Carl von Clausewitz, perhaps the best-known strategic thinker of all time, reminded readers that the genius of a great general was not the genius of a great physicist, and that success in war depends on intangibles of will, charisma, experience and intuitive judgement, at least as often as it depends on logical analysis. With those points in mind, this book will focus on strategy as it pertains to states and other organized political communities, and on strategy in situations which involve a meaningful likelihood of violence. Accordingly, this book is primarily concerned with military strategy, although it does not limit itself narrowly to that.

Once one has defined the word strategy, one must ask how it works and how to practise it. There may be bodies of knowledge in which one can catalogue answers to such questions and trace the ways in which researchers have improved upon them over time. Strategy does not work like that. Although a physician can apply specific and widely recognized treatments to specific and widely recognized conditions with confidence that today's established methods are more reliable than earlier or poorly tested ones, a strategist would be foolish to take this approach.

Not only does strategy involve a far broader range of issues than medicine, the fact that strategists must pit their abilities against thinking opponents makes the techniques which are known to have worked in the past particularly unlikely to succeed in the future. The pitfalls of attempting to fight the last war are proverbial. If one's enemies are competent, they will have studied previously successful methods as well and will be prepared to counter them. One student of this subject, Edward Luttwak, suggests that this paradox is the defining feature of strategy (Luttwak 1987: 3–5). For these reasons and others, every wise strategic decision must involve an exceptionally large element of improvisation, even if the strategist ultimately concludes that, under his or her particular circumstances, the familiar approach actually is the most promising one.

Strategists require factual information about their goals and their means for achieving them. Such material is the anatomy and pharmacology of their art. Nevertheless, to perform the crucial improvisation, strategists benefit from guidance of a different kind. Over time, a variety of authors have distinguished themselves for their offerings in this regard. We know their works through their ability to clarify the issues which concern us, through the testimony of successful strategists who have acknowledged their value and perhaps through the intuitive response we experience when we encounter insight.

Insight comes from the mind, which means, for most practical purposes, that it comes from the minds of particular humans. For this reason, our understanding of strategy is largely based upon the writings of individual thinkers. Moreover, strategic insights appear to be timeless, at least in considerable part. Therefore, classic works by long-dead authors often seem more useful than competing offerings from those writing today.

Indeed, Gray described his 2010 opus on the nature of strategy as a mere exercise in ‘rearrang[ing] the deck chairs’ on a metaphorical ship built by writers dating back to the fifth century bc2 (Gray 2010: ix). Gray justified his efforts by noting that deck chairs do, from time to time, need to be rearranged. One should note that Gray's reverence for ancient works is controversial (Gray 2010: 6). Certainly, those who wish to benefit from older works of strategic thought must be alert to the possibility that times may have changed. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the classic works remain essential to understanding stra­tegic issues today, and no doubt whatsoever that they remain essential to understanding the origins of contemporary strategic thought.

Gray identifies the most valuable strategic classics as Carl von Clausewitz's On War, Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, in that order of importance (Gray 2010: 6). Later, Gray notes Niccolò Machiavelli, Antoine-Henri Jomini, Basil H. Liddell Hart, J. C. Wylie, Edward Luttwak, Bernard Brodie and Thomas Schelling as strategic thinkers whose works also demand at least some degree of attention (Gray 2010: 6). This author, as readers of later chapters will see, draws on roughly the same canon, with inevitable additions and changes in emphasis. All such lists are subjective and potentially arbitrary, but this author hopes that he has uncovered enough useful ideas within his chosen works to convince readers that he has made valid selections.

Where Gray reconfigured insights taken from older classics, this book attempts to illuminate the insights themselves. This author's project, like Gray's, owes heavy tribute to the earlier authors. Nevertheless, this author's project, again like Gray's, rests upon a foundation of fresh analysis. Although scholars have had centuries to study the classic works of strategic thought, no one has definitively established what those well-studied texts actually mean.

Authoritative interpretations of the strategic classics often contradict each other. Thus, historian Azar Gat can accuse Machiavelli of dull adherence to obsolete concepts while political thinker Leo Strauss encourages readers to see Machiavelli as perhaps the most radical innovator of all time (Gat 1989: 2; Strauss 1958: 290–9). The twentieth-century strategic thinker Michael Handel can portray the ancient Chinese thinker Sun Tzu as a rationalist, whereas the contemporary religious scholar Thomas Cleary, commenting in his role as translator of Asian military classics can characterize the same Chinese thinker as a mystic3 (Handel 1996: 174; Zhuge and Liu 1989: 14). As Colonel Philip Meilinger has noted, the variety of different ways in which scholars and practising strategists have interpreted – or, perhaps, misinterpreted – Clausewitz's On War approaches the point of parody (Meilinger 2007: 124–5).

This author joins those debates by performing a close reading of selected strategic classics and using it as the basis for a critical re-evaluation of the ideas within them. In so doing, he attempts to introduce those works in a way that newcomers to the field will find useful, bring out the value of those works for twenty-first-century strategists and contribute, at opportune points, to outstanding theoretical debates. His first objective, in other words, is educational, while the second two are those of original scholarly research. Given the controversies over the meaning of the strategic classics, it is impossible to succeed at the former without also succeeding at the latter.

Although numerous other works offer contemporary readings of the strategic classics, this one is distinctive in its scope and approach. Where much of the literature on this subject focuses on individual thinkers (e.g. Quentin Skinner's Machiavelli), limited historical periods (e.g. Azar Gat's The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz) or narrowly selected concepts (e.g. Barry Watts's Clausewitzian Friction and Future War), this book attempts to bring out the dominant themes from the most critical works of all eras. This inclusive approach permits the author to treat his subjects as comprehensively as possible, and to trace the evolution of key ideas through the writings of the classical authors.

Edward Mead Earle compiled essays on a wide range of influential strategic thinkers in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler. To this extent, his work resembled Strategy: Key Thinkers. Makers, however, was an anthology in which different authors wrote different chapters. This limited the book's ability to follow themes from one strategic classic to another. Moreover, the original edition of Makers appeared in 1943. Although there have been revised editions, the deck chairs on Gray's ship have been rearranged considerably since then.

Michael Handel offers a more recent attempt to compare and contrast multiple strategic classics from a variety of historical periods in his Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought. Beatrice Heuser presents another up-to-date work in this genre with The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz. Heuser took up similar themes in The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present. Strategy: Key Thinkers, however, differs from all three of these books in its analytical approach, and thus also in its contribution.

Handel has attempted to correct for the difficulties in applying works from other cultures and historical periods to the present by deliberately reading the works of his subjects in a rigidly literal fashion (Handel 1996: 17). Heuser, by contrast, attributes supreme importance to cultural and historical influences. Thus, Handel finds the works of Sun Tzu in particular to be riddled with obvious contradictions and oversimplifications, while Heuser concludes that the most basic concepts of strategic thought lack fixed meaning (Handel 1996: 80; Heuser 2010b: 503). Where Gray would have it that strategic truths are eternal, Heuser finds that they pop up and vanish amidst different historical periods ‘like colours in a woven carpet’ (Heuser 2010b: 503).

Where Handel and Heuser focus on concepts, this book emphasizes the classic thinkers' broader arguments, and the reasoning behind them. Although the author takes note of cultural and historical context, he also works on the premise that important aspects of the human condition are universal or nearly so, and that the classic works of strategic thought address these aspects. This has led him to perform a different sort of analysis from either Handel or Heuser. Readers will depart with a different perspective on the meaning of the strategic classics.

Each approach has its own value. Handel's literalism helps us to isolate ideas, which, in turn, helps us assess and apply them. Heuser's approach helps us to understand what those ideas meant to their original authors. As we come to appreciate how much the basic ideas in our field have fluctuated in the past, we develop a valuable awareness of the uncertainties buried within our own assumptions.

This book, for its part, aims at helping readers engage with the classic authors' thought processes, and perhaps even to emulate them. The greatest strategic thinkers seem to have intended that readers should use their texts in this way. Clausewitz famously compared the role of a strategic theorist to that of a swimming teacher, who shows pupils how to practise strokes on land before they eventually perform similar movements in the water (Clausewitz 1976: 120). The students do not parse out their instructor's teachings and analyse them from a position of detachment; they try them for themselves, and discover how they feel. As later chapters will detail, Sun Tzu, Thucydides and others seem to have encouraged this approach as well. This active engagement may, indeed, be what rescues strategy from the formlessness which Heuser so vividly describes.

In this spirit, Strategy: Key Thinkers works through the ideas of the classic writers on strategy as follows. The first two chapters explore Sun Tzu and Thucydides. One of the advantages of addressing a variety of classics between a single set of covers is that it allows one to bring out points of comparison and contrast among the various works. Although Thucydides wrote a different sort of book from Sun Tzu and lived in a different part of the world, he turns out to be concerned with many of the same themes. Both, for instance, are concerned with the tremendous costs of war, both are acutely aware of its frequently surprising vicissitudes and both – in different ways – advise readers on the intellectual challenge of acting wisely in the face of its capriciousness.

Similar themes appear in the works of the influential Roman writer Vegetius. As chapter 3 explains, his ideas inform those of the even more influential Renaissance author Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli heralded a revolution in both military practice and strategic thought based upon the disingenuously simple proposition that disciplined infantry forces managed with single-minded ruthlessness can trample over some of the uncertainties which strategists of all eras find so troubling. Chapter 4 introduces Carl von Clausewitz as a cartographer who set out to map the strategic world which Machiavelli immodestly claimed to have discovered. In the process, of course, Clausewitz wrote a far deeper work of his own.

Thucydides suggested that there might be fundamental differences between strategies based upon land warfare and strategies based upon the various uses of ships. In the early twentieth century, other inventions such as aircraft and nuclear weapons suggested yet other alternative approaches to strategy – while complicating even land warfare to the point at which nineteenth-century practices became unsustainable. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 take up these issues, and the thinkers who responded to them. Twentieth-century history also drew attention to the ways in which terrorists, guerrillas, political subversives and other so-called irregular forces can challenge the state-organized armed forces which many strategic thinkers at least superficially treat as the norm. Chapter 8 deals with the theorists of this phenomenon. The ninth chapter looks back at the ideas discussed throughout this work and suggests implications for western democracies in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Notes

1 Machiavelli encouraged this hope as well. Chapter 3 discusses his arguments further.

2 One hopes that this ship is not the Titanic.

3 I might also mention 2012 Hull graduate Andrew Lockey, whose final-year dissertation builds on Cleary's ideas in what this author and the Board of Examiners viewed to be a promising and potentially original way.

Further reading

Gray, Colin S. (1999) Modern Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gray, Colin S. (2010) The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kagan, Donald (1995) On the Origins of War. London: Pimlico.

Murray, Williamson, Knox, MacGregor and Bernstein, Alvin (1994) (eds) The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stevens, Alan and Baker, Nicola (2006) Making Sense of War: Strategy for the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1

Hearing the Thunder

The Chinese military thinker Sun Tzu's book The Art of War, written in approximately 500 bc, remains one of the world's most widely admired works on strategy. If experience can produce insight, it is easy to see where someone living in ancient China might have found the inspiration to write a work of enduring value on this topic. For over twelve centuries beginning with the rise of the Chou Dynasty in 1111 bc, Chinese rulers contended with such legendary western commanders as Alexander the Great for the grim honour of introducing the world's most advanced military methods and using them to wage the world's largest wars. Sun Tzu lived at the dawn of this period, and his writings are an urgent reflection on the demands of a militarily sophisticated age.

This chapter summarizes Sun Tzu's reflections on strategy. The first major section discusses Sun Tzu's way of discussing this topic. Sun Tzu viewed armed conflict as a practical tool for achieving state goals, and he claimed to have identified principles that determine which side in any war will achieve victory. The first step towards developing an effective strategy, he argued, is to assess the capabilities of the opposing sides in terms of these principles.

A second major section explains how Sun Tzu advised political leaders and military commanders to use the knowledge they gain by making such assessments. The Art of War suggested that it is wiser to defeat one's enemies through superior strategy – in other words, by out-thinking them – than through brute force. A third major section details Sun Tzu's ideas about the ways in which one might come up with a superior strategy and the steps one might take to make it work. Sun Tzu concludes that all these methods depend on deception. This heightened his interest in espionage and related operations.

Sun Tzu ended his own book with a chapter on spies. The fourth, and final, major section in this chapter suggests that this is, indeed, a fitting climax to Sun Tzu's argument. This final section also notes that twentieth-century writers have suggested that The Art of War is unrealistic. Although we can never know how Sun Tzu would have answered such criticism, the ancient Chinese writer's chapter on espionage suggests his likely response.

Strategy: the first step

Chinese rulers in earlier centuries had treated war as a gentlemanly sport, in which demonstrating one's personal chivalry was as important as defeating the enemy in battle. Traditional Chinese thinkers described war as a quasi-religious ceremony, in which one maintained the harmony of the universe by performing customary acts in traditionally approved fashion. Sun Tzu declared such attitudes to be obsolete. The opening sentences of The Art of War describe warfare, not as a game or a ritual, but as a critical state enterprise in which one cannot afford to fail.

Those sentences go on to suggest that the way to improve one's chances of success is to gather factual information and analyse it rationally (Tao 1987: 94). The fact that Sun Tzu describes war as a matter of importance to the state, and not to anyone or anything else, is noteworthy. Again, he is rejecting outdated attitudes. Warriors, Sun Tzu is warning, must work together to achieve state goals. They must not attempt individual acts of bravado purely out of desire for glory. In a different passage, he emphasizes the point that even rulers must resist the temptation to make military decisions for personal reasons (Tao 1987: 125).

Moreover, when Sun Tzu ties war to statecraft, he suggests far-reaching ideas about what strategy involves. At a minimum, he is warning strategists that they need to understand more than weapons and battlefield manoeuvres. To fulfil their purpose, they must take the state's political circumstances into account. Strategy would be complex under any circumstances, and this makes it much more so.

The Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz discussed the relationship between politics and strategy at length. Chapter 4 below discusses his writings on this subject. Sun Tzu merely declares that the relationship exists. Nevertheless, Sun Tzu frequently returns to political issues as he discusses the problems of strategy. For instance, The Art of War comments extensively on the proper relationship between the ruler of the state and military officers leading the state's troops on campaigns.

Many other ancient Chinese thinkers explored connections between the problems of governing a country and the problems of waging war. This shows that educated people in ancient China recognized both the complexity and the importance of these links. One may assume that Sun Tzu also understood that defining war as a matter of importance to the state would force him to address a wide range of issues that he could have avoided by focusing exclusively on fighting. Apparently, he considered these broader issues to be crucial.

Having told readers to study war, Sun Tzu goes on to specify the topics he thinks they ought to investigate. Sun Tzu focuses on the practical question of what the opposing sides will be able to do. There are, he says, five basic factors that determine victory and defeat (Tao 1987: 94). These are politics, weather, terrain, the personal qualities of the commanders and ‘doctrine’, which he defines as the way in which the opposing armies are organized (Tao 1987: 94). Sun Tzu's concept of doctrine also includes the measures both sides have taken to provide their forces with supplies.

Developing this theme further, Sun Tzu suggests questions that strategists might ask themselves in order to assess the five factors effectively. Some address the physical capabilities of the opposing sides. Question 5 asks which side has more powerful forces (Tao 1987: 95). Others are more open-ended. The third question asks which side is best positioned to exploit environmental factors such as the landscape (Tao 1987: 95). Others require political and psychological judgement. The first question asks which side's ruler is wiser and more competent (Tao 1987: 95). None, however, refer to the supernatural, nor do any refer to either side's observance of tradition.

Ancient Chinese rulers and generals normally consulted fortune-tellers before making strategic decisions. Not only did they presumably hope that such oracles could provide them with valuable guidance, their culture presented this ritual as a necessary part of leadership. To ignore the ritual – or, worse, to tamper with it – would be a violation of proper conduct, and might, in the eyes of the superstitious, invite bad luck. The general and strategic thinker Wu Ch'i (c. 440 bc to c. 361 bc), advised rulers to observe such rites in order to win trust and support from the people (Sawyer 1993: 207). Wu Ch'i discreetly failed to mention whether or not he believed that fortune-tellers could actually predict the future.

Sun Tzu, by contrast, urged strategists to dismiss all superstitious customs. Useful strategic knowledge, he claimed, cannot come from attempts to communicate with the spirit world, nor from divine revelations, nor from comparisons with past events, nor from astrology (Tao 1987: 126). The fact that Sun Tzu classified historical analogies as a form of superstition in this list underscores his determination to free strategists from tradition. According to Chinese legends, the mythical emperors of distant antiquity had been paragons of wisdom and proper behaviour. Moralists from the Confucian school of thought urged contemporary rulers to imitate the virtuous ancients.

In Sun Tzu's more pragmatic view of war, useful intelligence can only come from people with direct knowledge of enemy activities (Tao 1987: 126). Not only does he recommend espionage, he advises readers to practise it ruthlessly. In one passage, for instance, he advises strategists to contain breaches of security by killing everyone who knows about a particular plot (Tao 1987: 127). In another, he recommends giving one's own agents false information and deliberately betraying them to the enemy (Tao 1987: 127). Confucians would have been unlikely to approve.

The second step: using one's knowledge

For those who follow Sun Tzu's teachings, the knowledge one gains by studying the five fundamental factors becomes the foundation for one's strategy. One compares one's own capabilities to those of one's opponents in order to determine what one must do to achieve one's goals. Sun Tzu declares that the commander who makes this comparative assessment most effectively will win every battle (Tao 1987: 96). Elsewhere, Sun Tzu re-states the point in his famous saying ‘know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated’ (Tao 1987: 100).

Those lucky enough to discover that they are stronger than their opponents might assume that they can simply smash their enemies with brute force. Sun Tzu warns that this is never the best approach, even for those who have the resources to succeed with it. To begin with, war is costly and disruptive for all of society. Here, the fact that Sun Tzu views warfare as a tool of government becomes important. The Art of War goes into detail about various ways in which the mere activity of military campaigning impoverishes the community (Tao 1987: 126).

First, Sun Tzu notes that warfare requires large amounts of money. In making this point, he observes that its direct cost to the state treasury is only part of its expense. People throughout the country will bear all manner of financial losses due to the war effort, and this will sap their collective means as well as hurting individuals. Having discussed war's cost in ‘gold’, Sun Tzu goes on to address its price in terms of human and social capital. Labourers needed for agriculture will be occupied transporting military supplies, and, even when they return to the fields, they will be ‘exhausted’. Moreover, there will be ‘continuous commotion’ throughout the land. Sun Tzu leaves readers to imagine the mischief this upheaval may trigger.

Sun Tzu goes on to observe that armies may fight in this ruinous manner for years without either side managing to overcome the other. A commander who neglects an opportunity to hurry this process, Sun Tzu tells us, does not know his job (Tao 1987: 126). Long campaigns are equally hard on troops and their gear. The Art of War reminds readers that soldiers lose their effectiveness as they tire (Tao 1987: 120). Sun Tzu estimates that the cost of replacing worn-out equipment amounts to 60 per cent of the total expense of waging war (Tao 1987: 120).

Moreover, Sun Tzu suggests, other risks of war increase as time passes, particularly as one moves one's forces from place to place, engages the enemy in combat and undertakes other demanding activities. Sun Tzu does not define these other risks as precisely as he sums up war's economic costs. Nevertheless, he alludes to them repeatedly throughout his work. For instance, Sun Tzu warns strategists to avoid attacking cities if possible (Tao 1987: 97). When Sun Tzu explains his reasons for giving this advice, he turns out to be concerned about more than the obvious dangers of storming city walls. In order to assault a city, Sun Tzu notes, one must spend months preparing siege equipment. During that time, lower-ranked commanders may lose patience and do something rash. Although Sun Tzu ends the example at this point, one can see that the besieging army's problems have only begun.

The longer and more intensively one engages in military operations, The Art of War warns, the more deeply one will become enmeshed in cascades of unpredictable disasters. One will no longer know either one's enemies or oneself. One's ability to practise strategy will suffer accordingly. Meanwhile, the enemy is likely to take advantage of one's confusion. This led Sun Tzu to reflect that, although there are certainly examples to remind us that it is dangerous to rush military operations, he cannot think of a single case in which ‘a clever operation … was prolonged’ (Tao 1987: 97). There are ‘evils inherent in employing troops’, and Sun Tzu warns us that we can never understand the art of using military force effectively until we appreciate that point (Tao 1987: 97).

No matter how great one's resources, one must always seek to use them as swiftly, efficiently and decisively as possible. One must seek, wherever possible, to manoeuvre one's enemies into assuming a greater share of war's inherent evils than oneself. Thus, coming up with a short-term plan to attack the enemy or repulse the enemy's attack is only the most obvious part of making strategy. The Art of War advises strategists to ‘create a situation’ that will make one's plans feasible (Tao 1987: 95). What does this mean in practice? Sun Tzu scatters partial answers to this question throughout the early chapters of his work, usually expressing them in poetic language. The victorious side in a battle, The Art of War tells us, ‘is as one yi [a measurement of weight] balanced against a grain’ (Tao 1987: 102). In a properly coordinated attack, Sun Tzu writes, troops strike the enemy ‘as a grindstone against eggs’ (Tao 1987: 103).

Such imagery does not tell strategists exactly how to ‘create situations’, but it does suggest principles that may guide them in their efforts. As one reads further through The Art of War, one finds that Sun Tzu recapitulates those principles multiple times, explaining his ideas in increasingly specific terms as he goes on. For instance, Sun Tzu pays particular attention to the principle of timing one's actions properly, conserving one's resources when possible, but acting without hesitation when one can achieve some advantage by doing so. Early chapters of The Art of War discuss this theme in a purely impressionistic way. In one passage, Sun Tzu reflects on the way a hawk times its dive to intercept its prey with enough momentum to snap bones (Tao 1987: 103). Later, Sun Tzu describes military situations in which the concept may apply, noting that troops which have time to settle in their chosen positions will be rested, whereas those who must charge against them will arrive fatigued (Tao 1987: 105).

Later still, Sun Tzu gives even more concrete examples of ways one might put the principle of effective timing into practice. If one manages to catch one's enemies as they are crossing a river, one can strike at a moment when half of the opposing force has crossed, so that the enemy troops on one side will have difficulty helping their comrades on the other (Tao 1987: 113). If one manages to set fire to the enemy's camp, one should attack the moment enemy troops abandon their positions to fight the fire, but not before (Tao 1987: 124). Sun Tzu notes that this moment may come before the flames actually reach anything important, and reminds generals that, having set a fire, they must take care not to position their own troops downwind from it (Tao 1987: 124).

Readers could easily mistake Sun Tzu's specific examples for step-by-step instructions about how to carry out certain operations. Sun Tzu undoubtedly believed that the methods he described in his examples would work under the right conditions, and that they are worth mastering so that one can use them if those conditions arise. Nevertheless, he warned readers that there can be no recipe books for strategy. When he claimed those who follow his advice are certain to triumph, he was referring to his counsel about concepts, not his instructions about the details of particular stratagems.

Sun Tzu reminded readers of this point early in his work. The essence of successful strategy, he noted, is to strike in a way the enemy has failed to anticipate. Since the enemy's expectations depend upon the context of the engagement, there is no way to reduce this approach to a formula (Tao 1987: 95–6). This statement suggests that Sun Tzu offered his guidelines for setting fires and ambushing enemy forces as they cross rivers to illustrate his more abstract concepts, not as dogma. The techniques described in the illustrations will be appropriate in some situations but not in others. The ideas behind them, in Sun Tzu's view, will always be valid.

The fact that one must plan every operation afresh, one may note in passing, makes accurate information yet more important to Sun Tzu's way of making strategy. Since one cannot deduce how the enemy has failed to prepare or where one might stage an unexpected manoeuvre through mental effort alone, one must extract such ‘keys to victory’ from up-to-date reports about the particular circumstances in which one is fighting. Thus, despite the fact that Sun Tzu devotes entire chapters to ‘Terrain’ and ‘The Nine Varieties of Ground’, he precedes all this material with a caveat in an earlier chapter warning that one cannot hope to use terrain effectively without consulting guides who know it well (Tao 1987: 109).

Situations within situations

Effective timing is only one of the methods by which Sun Tzu hoped to ‘create situations’. The hawk, to revive Sun Tzu's metaphor, may have to circle for hours before suitable prey appears. In war, those who merely wait for opportunities may have to wait forever. Sun Tzu acknowledged that this may, at times, be the painful reality. Even expert strategists, he notes in the opening lines of his chapter on ‘Dispositions’, cannot miraculously transform strong enemies into weak ones. Accordingly, Sun Tzu notes, the simple fact that one knows how to achieve victory does not mean that one can do it in practice (Tao 1987: 101).

Sun Tzu goes on, however, to explore a more optimistic thought. Even when there is no way to create the situation one desires, it may still be possible to create a situation in which it will become possible to create such a situation. This is particularly true for those who have the foresight to begin the process well in advance. Thus, the most ingenious strategists may not appear particularly talented. Observers are not normally impressed when others accomplish things which appear easy, and a skilful commander chooses to fight at times and in places where he has taken measures to ensure that he will have the advantage (Tao 1987: 101).

Such a commander's groundwork – both figurative and literal – makes his final victory look as easy as hearing thunderclaps. One may also note that such a commander's defeated opponents are likely to blame their failure on the excuse that they could not possibly have won under the circumstances. The reason why Sun Tzu titled this chapter ‘Dispositions’ turns out to be that he is advising readers to do their best to ‘position’ themselves in ways that allow them to sidestep the frustrating state of affairs he described at the beginning of the chapter. This careful positioning – and not mere opportunism – is what allows a skilled general to strike with lethal momentum (Tao 1987: 102).

This idea leaves strategists with the challenge of figuring out what a suitable disposition might be. Readers are entitled to complain that this is easier said than done. Nevertheless, Sun Tzu goes on to explain why he believes that it is possible. Even the most limited situations, he suggests, can develop in an enormous variety of ways, depending on how different factors combine. There are, he notes, only five musical notes, but there are an effectively infinite variety of songs (Tao 1987: 103). As a strategist, one strives to act in ways that combine with existing circumstances to improve one's future options.

One way of doing this, Sun Tzu suggests, is to take advantage of the fact that different types of forces can do different types of things. Therefore, just as one can combine the five musical notes into any number of tunes, one can combine actions by different types of forces to produce any number of tactical effects. This concept of combined arms warfare is commonplace throughout military history. Hannibal, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte are but three who have achieved renown for their success at choreographing manoeuvres involving infantry, cavalry and, in the last case, artillery. Armoured vehicles took over the traditional roles of cavalry in the twentieth century, and air power added a fourth component to the mix.

The Art of War discusses combined arms warfare in abstract terms. Instead of talking about halberdiers, cavalry, archers, charioteers, armed river boats, elite units of picked troops or other types of military units that would have been familiar in Chou Dynasty China, Sun Tzu talks about combining actions by ordinary forces and extraordinary forces. One uses ordinary forces to occupy one's enemies and extraordinary forces to defeat them (Tao 1987: 103). Later Chinese strategic writers from the third century ad to the twentieth have concluded that he left the exact nature of the two types of forces vague on purpose (Tao 1987: 35). Troops who play an ordinary role in some situations may play an extraordinary role in others.

When one is fighting in cleared farmland, for instance, one might think of infantry as an ordinary force. One might use infantry to hold one's enemies in place while cavalry takes advantage of its extraordinary speed to encircle the enemy flanks and win a decisive victory. In jungle warfare, however, the two types of forces might reverse roles. The terrain might restrict cavalry (or armoured vehicles) to predictable operations along roads while permitting lightly armed foot soldiers to encircle the enemy by going through the forest. Japanese infantry devastated Allied forces using such flanking manoeuvres during Japan's Second World War offensives in Burma and Malaya.

Sun Tzu himself hints that he intends commanders to decide which forces are ordinary and which are extraordinary on a case-by-case basis. He concludes his discussion of the two types of forces by comparing troops to stones and tree trunks. On a level field, both are static. On a slope, however, stripped logs and round rocks will roll downhill, gaining speed as they go. A commander's job is to gather round boulders on a mountain top and ensure that they cascade down upon the foe (Tao 1987: 104).

Sun Tzu believes that a commander's skill at matching forces to situations is more important than the number of troops she or he has under his or her command. Although Sun Tzu clearly appreciates the importance of numerical superiority, he emphasizes that there is a difference between the size of an army in theory and the number of troops that actually fight in any particular battle. Only the second number matters. A large army which has dispersed its forces is no stronger in any actual battle than a smaller army which has remained concentrated (Tao 1987: 106).

All these ideas about ways of deploying forces depend upon having troops that will do what the strategist requires of them. This leads to another principle that runs throughout Sun Tzu's work – the principle of cultivating one's own military capabilities. Considerable portions of The Art of War advise commanders about how to supply, organize and lead troops in ways that make them as strong, versatile and reliable as possible. These are clearly among the surest measures any strategist can take to create circumstances that will maximize his or her chance of winning future battles.

Various sections of The Art of War apply the principle of cultivating one's strategic capabilities to all the different levels of a military and political organization. Responsibility for improving strategic potential extends from the commanders of the smallest military units to the ruler of the state. Sun Tzu also emphasizes that attempts to develop one's military capabilities will only succeed if one persists with them. Other ancient Chinese writers, notably the third century bc political theorist Han Fei Tzu, castigated rulers for changing their policies to reflect changes in political fashion, and in response to manipulation by their courtiers. Sun Tzu does not dwell on the topic of court intrigue, but he seems to be concerned with similar problems.

In an effectively administered military organization, The Art of War tells us, leading the entire army is little different from commanding a small band (Tao 1987: 103). Although Sun Tzu does not elaborate, this statement reveals important points about his attitude towards organizing, supporting and leading armed forces. The fact that Sun Tzu feels the need to make this statement suggests that he is aware that, under most circumstances, management of a large force would be far more complex than management of a few men. Indeed, most military commanders throughout history have had to devote more effort to routine management than to planning master strokes of the sort Sun Tzu admires.

‘Amateurs talk strategy’, Omar Bradley noted over two millennia later. ‘Professionals talk logistics’ (Pierce 1996: 74). Sun Tzu appears to recognize the truth in such observations. Nevertheless, Sun Tzu might add that the reason why professionals ‘talk logistics’ is that logistics are what make it possible for them to practise strategy.

One also notes that Sun Tzu focuses on making large forces responsive to their supreme commander. The Art of War largely ignores the possible advantages of enabling lower-ranked members of those forces to act independently. One reason may be that Chinese strategic thinkers of Sun Tzu's era were – with good reason – acutely concerned about the risk that individual warriors might do rash or cowardly things in battle. Sun Tzu was probably more interested in controlling personal initiative than in fostering it.

Nevertheless, Sun Tzu's emphasis on central control distinguishes Sun Tzu from twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers on strategy, many of whom see properly channelled independence in the lower ranks as the key to achieving war-winning breakthroughs of the very sort The Art of War advises commanders to seek. This emphasis also distinguishes Sun Tzu from other military thinkers in ancient China. A strategist of the second century bc named Han Hsin summed up the reasons why his superior Liu Pang was able to defeat his opponents and found the Han Dynasty by saying that, although Liu Pang was himself a poor general, he was an excellent commander of generals (Kane 2007: 157). Sun Tzu offers little direct advice for those who wish to improve their skills as commanders of generals.

Just as Sun Tzu provides specific examples of ways in which commanders might – when appropriate – apply his principles on the battlefield, he provides examples of specific techniques they might use to establish control over their forces. The Art of War