The Art of War

Chapter	Lionel Giles (1910)	R.L. Wing (1988)	Ralph D. Sawyer (1996)	Chow-Hou Wee (2003)
I	Laying Plans	The Calculations	Initial Estimations	Detail Assessment and Planning (Chinese: 始計，始计)
II	Waging War	The Challenge	Waging War	Waging War (Chinese: 作戰，作战)
III	Attack by Stratagem	The Plan of Attack	Planning Offensives	Strategic Attack (Chinese: 謀攻，谋攻)
IV	Tactical Dispositions	Positioning	Military Disposition	Disposition of the Army (Chinese: 軍形，军形)
V	Energy	Directing	Strategic Military Power	Forces (Chinese: 兵勢，兵势)
VI	Weak Points and Strong	Illusion and Reality	Vacuity and Substance	Weaknesses and Strengths (Chinese: 虛實，虚实)
VII	Maneuvering	Engaging The Force	Military Combat	Military Maneuvers (Chinese: 軍爭，军争)
VIII	Variation of Tactics	The Nine Variations	Nine Changes	Variations and Adaptability (Chinese: 九變，九变)
IX	The Army on the March	Moving The Force	Maneuvering the Army	Movement and Development of Troops (Chinese: 行軍，行军)
X	Terrain	Situational Positioning	Configurations of Terrain	Terrain (Chinese: 地形)
XI	The Nine Situations	The Nine Situations	Nine Terrains	The Nine Battlegrounds (Chinese: 九地)
XII	The Attack by Fire	The Fiery Attack	Incendiary Attacks	Attacking with Fire (Chinese: 火攻)
XIII	The Use of Spies	The Use of Intelligence	Employing Spies	Intelligence and Espionage (Chinese: 用間，用间)

1. Detail Assessment and Planning (Chinese: 始計，始计) explores the five fundamental factors (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership and management) and seven elements that determine the outcomes of military engagements. By thinking, assessing and comparing these points, a commander can calculate his chances of victory. Habitual deviation from these calculations will ensure failure via improper action. The text stresses that war is a very grave matter for the state and must not be commenced without due consideration.
2. Waging War (Chinese: 作戰，作战) explains how to understand the economy of warfare and how success requires winning decisive engagements quickly. This section advises that successful military campaigns require limiting the cost of competition and conflict.
3. Strategic Attack (Chinese: 謀攻，谋攻) defines the source of strength as unity, not size, and discusses the five factors that are needed to succeed in any war. In order of importance, these critical factors are: Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army and Cities.
4. Disposition of the Army (Chinese: 軍形，军形) explains the importance of defending existing positions until a commander is capable of advancing from those positions in safety. It teaches commanders the importance of recognizing strategic opportunities, and teaches not to create opportunities for the enemy.
5. Forces (Chinese: 兵勢，兵势) explains the use of creativity and timing in building an army's momentum.
6. Weaknesses and Strengths (Chinese: 虛實，虚实) explains how an army's opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of the enemy and how to respond to changes in the fluid battlefield over a given area.
7. Military Maneuvers (Chinese: 軍爭，军争) explains the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon the commander.
8. Variations and Adaptability (Chinese: 九變，九变) focuses on the need for flexibility in an army's responses. It explains how to respond to shifting circumstances successfully.
9. Movement and Development of Troops (Chinese: 行軍，行军) describes the different situations in which an army finds itself as it moves through new enemy territories, and how to respond to these situations. Much of this section focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.
10. Terrain (Chinese: 地形) looks at the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. Each of these six field positions offer certain advantages and disadvantages.
11. The Nine Battlegrounds (Chinese: 九地) describes the nine common situations (or stages) in a campaign, from scattering to deadly, and the specific focus that a commander will need in order to successfully navigate them.
12. Attacking with Fire (Chinese: 火攻) explains the general use of weapons and the specific use of the environment as a weapon. This section examines the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attack and the appropriate responses to such attacks.
13. Intelligence and Espionage (Chinese: 用間，用间) focuses on the importance of developing good information sources, and specifies the five types of intelligence sources and how to best manage each of them.

 

Concept Of Military Strategy

Military tactics are both a science and an art. They answer the questions of how best to deploy and employ forces on a small scale. Some practices have not changed since the dawn of warfare: ambushes, seeking and turning flanks, maintaining reconnaissance, creating and using obstacles and defences, etc. Using ground to best advantage has not changed much either. Heights, rivers, swamps, passes, choke points, and natural cover, can all be used in multiple ways. Before the nineteenth century, many military tactics were confined to battlefield concerns: how to maneuver units during combat in open terrain. Nowadays, specialized tactics exist for many situations, for example for securing a room in a building.
What does change constantly is the technological dimension, as well as the sociology of combatants. One might wish to reflect on the differences in the technology and society that produced such different types of soldier or warrior as the Greek Hoplite, the Roman Legionary, the Medieval Knight, the Turk-Mongol Horse Archer, the Chinese Crossbowman, the British Redcoat, or an Air Cavalry trooper. Each, constrained by his weaponry, logistics and his social conditioning, would use a battlefield differently, but would usually seek the same outcomes from their use of tactics. In many respects the First World War changed the use of tactics as advances in technology rendered prior tactics useless

Principles of Military Strategists 

attempted to encapsulate a successful strategy in a set of principles. Sun Tzu defined 13 principles in his The Art of War while Napoleon listed 115 maxims. American Civil War General Nathan Bedford Forrest had only one: to "[get] there first with the most men".^[15] The concepts given as essential in the United States Army Field Manual of Military Operations (FM 3–0) are:

1. Objective (Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective)
2. Offensive (Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative)
3. Mass (Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time)
4. Economy of Force (Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts)
5. Maneuver (Place the enemy in a disadvantageous position through the flexible application of combat power)
6. Unity of Command (For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander)
7. Security (Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage)
8. Surprise (Strike the enemy at a time, at a place, or in a manner for which he is unprepared)
9. Simplicity (Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding)

According to Greene and Armstrong, some strategists assert adhering to the fundamental principles guarantees victory, while others claim war is unpredictable and the general must be flexible in formulating a strategy. Others argue predictability is low, but could be increased if experts were to perceive the situation from both sides in the conflict.Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke expressed strategy as a system of "ad hoc expedients" by which a general must take action while under pressure. These underlying principles of strategy have survived relatively unscathed as the technology of warfare has developed.
Strategy (and tactics) must constantly evolve in response to technological advances. A successful strategy from one era tends to remain in favor long after new developments in military weaponry and matériel have rendered it obsolete. World War I, and to a great extent the American Civil War, saw Napoleonic tactics of "offense at all costs" pitted against the defensive power of the trench, machine gun and barbed wire. As a reaction to her World War I experience, France entered World War II with a purely defensive doctrine, epitomized by the "impregnable" Maginot Line, but only to be completely circumvented by the German blitzkrieg in the Fall of France.

Cold War Strategy 

• Strategy of massive retaliation (1950s) (Russian: стратегия массированного возмездия)
• Strategy of flexible reaction (1960s) (Russian: стратегия гибкого реагирования)
• Strategies of realistic threat and containment (1970s) (Russian: стратегия реалистического устрашения или сдерживания)
• Strategy of direct confrontation (1980s) (Russian: стратегия прямого противоборства) one of the elements of which became the new highly effective high-precision targeting weapons.
• Strategic Defense Initiative (also known as "Star Wars") during its 1980s development (Russian: стратегическая оборонная инициатива – СОИ) which became a core part of the strategic doctrine based on Defense containment.

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. ...
Furthermore, while the horizons of strategy is bounded by the war, grand strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace. It should not only combine the various instruments, but so regulate their use as to avoid damage to the future state of peace – for its security and prosperity.

Roman Empire 

From the era of Hadrian, Roman emperors employed a military strategy of "preclusive security—the establishment of a linear barrier of perimeter defence around the Empire. The Legions were stationed in great fortresses. 

"these "fortresses" existed along the perimeter of the Empire, often accompanied by actual walls (for example, Hadrian's Wall). Due to the perceived impenetrability of these perimeter defenses, the Emperors kept no central reserve army. The Roman system of roads allowed for soldiers to move from one frontier to another (for the purpose of reinforcements during a siege) with relative ease. These roads also allowed for a logistical advantage for Rome over her enemies, as supplies could be moved just as easily across the Roman road system as soldiers. This way, if the legions could not win a battle through military combat skill or superior numbers, they could simply outlast the invaders, who, as historian E.A. Thompson wrote, "Did not think in terms of millions of bushels of wheat." Emperor Constantine moved the legions from the frontiers to one consolidated roving army as a way to save money and to protect wealthier citizens within the cities. However, this grand strategy would have costly effects of the Roman empire by weakening its frontier defenses and allowing it to be susceptible to outside armies coming in. Also, people who lived near the Roman frontiers would begin to look to the barbarians for protection after the Roman armies departed. "Constantine abolished this frontier security by removing the greater part of the soldiery from the frontiers to cities that needed no auxiliary forces. He thus deprived of help the people who were harassed by the barbarians and burdened tranquil cities with the pest of the military, so that several straightway were deserted. Moreover, he softened the soldiers who treated themselves to shows and luxuries. Indeed, to speak plainly, he personally planted the first seeds of our present devastated state of affairs – Zosimus, 5th-century CE historian

 

Limit Strategy

 is considered "the essential ingredient for making war either politically effective or morally tenable."^[23] Without strategy, power is a "loose cannon and war is mindless."^[23] Because strategy is necessary, however, does not mean that it is possible. Political scientist Richard K. Betts has detailed some of the critiques raised by skeptics regarding the feasibility and practicability of strategy, explaining "[t]o skeptics, effective strategy is often an illusion because what happens in the gap between policy objectives and war outcomes is too complex and unpredictable to be manipulated to a specified end."^[24] Beyond the difficulty of organizing resources for effective grand strategy, Betts explores both the retrospective fallacy of coherence – the tendency to see the actions of states as more coherent and purposeful than they actually were or to assume particular actions and choices as more decisive in the outcome of events than they actually were – and the prospective fallacy of control – the tendency of policymakers to believe they can exert far greater influence over events than they can. Betts highlights 10 of the skeptics' critiques that throw the predictability of strategy into question.

“

Critique 1: Luck Versus Genius. Strategy is an illusion because it is impractical to judge in advance which risk is reasonable or which strategy is less justifiable than another. The illusion persists because observers confuse what they know about results of past strategic choices with what they can expect strategies to know before the choices are tested. Almost any strategy can be rationalized and no rationale falsified at the time that a strategy must be chosen. Critique 2: Randomness Versus Prediction. Strategy is an illusion because results do not follow plans. Complexity and contingency preclude controlling causes well enough to produce desired effects. Hindsight reveals little connection between the design and denouement of strategies. The problem before the fact appears to be estimating risk (probability of failure), but the record after the fact suggests that the real problem is pure uncertainty. Critique 3: Psychoanalysts Versus Conscious Choice. Strategy is an illusion because leaders do not understand what motives drive them, and they delude themselves about what they are really trying to do. They use war not for manifest political purposes but for subliminal personal ones, so the link between political ends and military means is missing at the outset. Critique 4: Cognition Versus Complex Choice. Cognitive constraints on individual thought processes limit strategists’ ability to see linkages between means and ends, or to calculate comprehensively. Critique 5: Culture Versus Coercion. Coercive strategies aimed at an adversary’s will depend on communication. Cultural blinders prevent the common frames of reference necessary to ensure that the receiver hears the message that the signaler intends to send. Critique 6: Friction Versus Fine-Tuning. Even if cultural blinders do not foreordain deafness when coercive signals are sent, normal operational friction delays execution of plans and decouples signals from the events to which they are meant to respond. Strategy that depends on coupling then collapses. Critique 7: Goal Displacement Versus Policy Control. Organizational processes deflect attention from policymakers’ priorities to implement organizations’ habits of operation and institutional interests. Means may be applied effectively toward goals, but to instrumental goal of the operations rather than the higher political objectives meant to govern strategy. Critique 8: War Versus Strategy. Strategy is an illusion because practice reverses theory. In theory, strategy shapes the course of war to suit policy. In actual war, the target resists strategy and counters it, confounding plans, and redirecting strategy and policy to suit the unanticipated requirements for operational success. This puts the cart before the horse and negates the rational basis for strategy. Critique 9: Democracy Versus Consistency. The logic of strategy depends on clarity of preferences, explicitness of calculation, and consistency of choice. Democratic competition and consensus building work against all of these. Critique 10: Compromise Versus Effectiveness. Compromise between opposing preferences is the key to success in politics but to failure in military strategy. Since political leaders have the last word on strategy in a democracy, they tend to resolve political debates about whether to use forces massively or not at all by choosing strategic half-measures that turn out to serve no good objectives at all.