Just finished the latest Lee Child, slowed down by all the other stuff I’ve had to do lately. It’s a rattling good read and, although it spends more time developing institutional character, than personal characters—the US military machine is one of the main protagonists—it is full of brisk insights into human nature.
It appealed to me that, although the hero is relentlessly manly and martial, he sneers at a group of soldiers’ reverence for the The Art of War by Sun Tzu. No doubt, by “stopped watch” chance, this work contains the occasional truth or illuminating thought, but, as far as I’m concerned it’s a collection of hopelessly dated, “spiritual”, fake-wise aphorisms that men in suits can quote at each other in an effort to persuade themselves that pushing bits of paper around (or, indeed, just pushing bits around) is as important or brave as pushing ahead from a captured beachhead.
The book has been useful to me, however. The presence of this volume in a man’s office (and it’s always a man) is as sure an indication that he is a jerk as his wearing a blazer with a crest on it or owning an expensive, ugly watch.
Fair enough, but what about “On War”? What does that tell you about the man who possesses a copy on his shelf?
I await your reply in a funk at the bottom of my slit trench!
PS: As you are in ‘pulp fiction’ mode; I stumbled over an absolute corker in my local library: “Robbers” by Christopher Cook, published in paperback by ‘No Exit Press’. A simple, even trite story, but written so craftily I can’t put it down, and it vividly conjures up the wasteland around the Texan oil coast near Galveston. Trust me, I own a copy of “On War”!
Did you read the same Sun Tzu that I did? I think some of the modern derivations are a bit ridiculous (e.g. Thew Art of War & The Art of Sales, or TAOW and The Art of Love (HUH?!)), but I thought the original was insightful.
I’ve never read Clausewitz, and I’ve only read Sun Tzu online or quoted—but I’ve read enough not to want to read any more.
War is a technological discipline, not a philosophical one. There can be nothing timeless about military tactics or strategy (though some aspects change more slowly than others) and, if you believe Clausewitz, the radically different political systems we live by now render even Sun Tzu’s suggestions about “policy” irrelevant to us.
Funnily enough, the backdrop of the Reacher book that I originally referred to, is the realization that United States needs to change its approach to warfare after the fall of the Berlin Wall—the novel is set in 1990. It’s quite reasonable to say, for example, that the war in Iraq was no such thing. It would hardly be recognizable as a war to most of the classic military thinkers.
Yes, the biggest problem with the recent popularity of The Art of War has been the interpretations of legions of management “gurus”. Trying to apply its recommendations in business is just silly, but the idea of applying anything non-trivial in its pages to the modern battlefield strikes me as pretty dumb too.
(I must, of course, exclude from my “Art of War rule-of-thumb”, therefore, people who read the book for historical or cultural reasons, as opposed to doofuses in marketing who read it because they think it will make their penises larger.)
PooterGeek,
As with so many philosophers, reading them is not easy, and Clausewitz is no exception. I tried the concise edition some years ago but these days I prefer to read *about* him and his colossal influence on warmaking, particularly amongst the German General Staff. It is one of the most delicious (and tragic) of paradoxes that in the early 20th c., von Schlieffen and his imensely clever compatriots totally misunderstood the man they held in such awe. The fate of all philosophers, I suppose.
I disagree with you when you write that there are no universal laws of warfare. We can see one example today. Clausewitze pointed out the desirability of fighting one’s wars on other people’s territories, a small but significant arguement in favour of the praiseworthy thrust of American strategy in Iraq.
“War is a technological discipline, not a philosophical one. There can be nothing timeless about military tactics or strategy….”
Sorry Damian, that statement is ‘pure hogwash’ (as they say here in the South). His maxims about terrain and force-form ARE universal, but they must be applied to the reality that you are dealing with. Technology is a tool, it is not a strategy in itself, and it cannot win by itself.
Most would say that the MIGs over Korea were a far superior jet to the F-84 Sabre, yet the USAF had a kill ratio of 12-1 over them because of superior communication and teamwork. The USAF chose the ‘terrain’, and they had better knowledge of both their own forces and the opposing forces than the vice versa (the formless wins over the form-defined). Know your enemy and know yourself, better than the enemy knows these things, and you will win even with the inferior force.
Applying this stuff to workforce management is just silly. Management is about creating a team to achieve a goal. Internal competition is not implicit, and could be very couterproductive. On the other hand, it could be very useful to corporate executives, particularly in environments of cut-throat competition.
Battles are won by soldiers. Wars are won with machines.
Ultimately, WWII was won by the people who devised RADAR, cracked Enigma, faked squadrons of Spitfires, and built the atom bomb.
Ultimately the Cold War was won because ordinary people in the Soviet Bloc countries wanted the material benefits of free society. We won because we had video recorders, not because outfought them in proxy conflicts. East Germans swarmed across in their Trabants not just to taste freedom, but to taste fresh oranges.
Western civilization has triumphed because liberal democracy provides the best environment yet devised for technological innovation. Although what’s taught at West Point and Sandhurst is undeniably crucial to its continued victory, what’s taught at MIT and Cambridge is more important. The principles of informatics and physical science are timeless, those of warfare are not. Newtonian physics will continue to be useful long after we have dispensed with conventional ballistics on the battlefield and are vapourizing our enemies with energy beams.
Even today, the first, devastating attacks in Iraq were launched by people who would never set foot in the country, let alone see the whites of the eyes of the people they were killing. Ordinary Iraqis were driving about Baghdad while Ba’ath party buildings were being demolished by people sitting at computer consoles in aircraft carriers. Sun Tzu’s mind would scarcely be able to take in such feats, let alone construct a sensible counter. To his contemporaries it would be as if God had reached down from the heavens to snuff out those who had displeased Him. To our ancestors it would not be war, but the most terrible magic.
The reason terrorism represents the last threat to the West is that the terrorists have grasped that there is no answer to absolute technological superiority in the battlefield. They conduct their war against civilians; they turn the openness of our society and the power of its technology against us. Our most powerful weapons against them are not tactical ones, but intellectual ones. On September 11, the US security forces failed in their defence of the American homeland for the want of native Arab speakers, not for the want of a well-devised strategy for operations in “the Middle Eastern theatre”.
If we are to win the War on Terror—and I use the phrase without embarrassment because it is meaningful and accurate—we will do so through will, intelligence and technology. Even if the war could be won by “shooting and stabbing” alone, the people of our democracies would never tolerate the levels of shooting and stabbing the great war thinkers had in mind when they devised their theories. Our most powerful warriors now have white collars and white coats.
World War II was won with logistics, and it was the thought-out strategy of the Allies. There was no measurable technological advantage, in fact the Germans had the edge, they had radar as well, their tanks were leaps and bounds better than anything until the T-34, their artillery was bigger, they had the best rockets, etc. But their logistics sucked, they couldn’t supply a large force indefinitely, and that was the weakness the allies exploited by concentrating on the Battle of the Atlantic prior to anything else. We knew them better than they knew us, in their arrogance Hitler and Goerring didn’t believe the Brits had radar as well, and so lost Britain by a thread.
“Sun Tzu’s mind would scarcely be able to take in such feats, let alone construct a sensible counter. To his contemporaries it would be as if God had reached down from the heavens to snuff out those who had displeased Him. To our ancestors it would not be war, but the most terrible magic.”
You’ve missed the point. A sword or a Tomahawk, their is little difference, they are merely tools, and limited in their abilities. A general of Sun Tzu time would be defeated by advanced weapons because he didn’t know the enemy. It’s really a pointless comparison, if he was raised 2200 years later, he would know the weapons, and be in a position to deal with them. Using a weapon your enemy has no knowledge of is called suprise, and is part of keeping your force formless to your enemy. The terms terrain, form and others that he uses are not to be read literally, they are much broader and may have nothing whatsoever to do with land or organization. They apply to any competitive, winner-take-all situation.
We thought we beat Saddam in three weeks, but we didn’t know he had planned to conduct guerilla war from the beginning. His forces were formless, we had no knowledge of their positions and strength, while he did have knowledge of our positions and strength. They were able to make a game of it in November, despite everyone thinking they were shattered. But ultimately, in his position he could not know his own forces well enough to command them cohesively, and the disposition and loyalty of his troops was chaotic.
“Ultimately the Cold War was won because ordinary people in the Soviet Bloc countries wanted the material benefits of free society.”
We won because we outspent them. A planned economy cannot compete with a free-market system, this was Reagan and Thatcher’s great insight. You’d be suprised at what the Russians produced, they have a very scientific turn of mind. But they allocated their economy to keeping up with us on defense, until it just collapsed. They couldn’t do it, they couldn’t make a plan at the Politburo that produced more than letting every comrade make his own plan would have, but that was impossible politically. The average Russian was not aware of the quality of life difference they were suffering relative to the West. They just knew that stuff suddenly began dring up 5 or 10 years after the arms race became NATO’s policy, instead of NATO’s reaction.
“Western civilization has triumphed because liberal democracy provides the best environment yet devised for technological innovation.”
Their is little doubt that it provides us with a great advantage. But our weakness is that we cannot keep much of it to ourselves. The Iraqis had Silkworm anti-ship missiles from China (fyck you very much Mr. Clinton), Russian night-vision gear, and a plethora of other ‘advanced’ arms. If arms sanctions hadn’t been in place for the past 12 years, the conflict would have been MUCH more intense. Other systems don’t need to be as good as we are at tech inovation, they just buy it or steal it from us. Of course, satelite coverage and 7 carrier battle groups are our ‘aces in the hole’, but they can only do so much in a land war, they are more limited than you might think.
And there is the other point that this war has been much more of a political contest than a military one, and democracies are horrible at political warfare. We’re still suffering political damage inflicted by the KGB during the Vietnam War. Read Ion Pacepa, more people should:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-pacepa031803.asp
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200402260828.asp
Overall, I liked reading Clauswitz better than Tzu, I think it’s a question of style. Tzu is like reading Confucious or a haiku, the meaning is often hidden in the verbage, and you’re supposed to search it out. Clauswitz is much more direct and detailed, but I think also a bit more limited in scope.
“The reason terrorism represents the last threat to the West is that the terrorists have grasped that there is no answer to absolute technological superiority in the battlefield.”
They DO have an answer, and you gave it yourself. They attack civilians and ‘soft targets’, it’s political guerilla war. They depend on another of your statements: “the people of our democracies would never tolerate the levels of shooting and stabbing the great war thinkers had in mind when they devised their theories”. They are under no such limitation, and are thus trying to force concessions politically. Followed by a hudna, and then more blackmail.
I think you’re wrong, technology is not our asset, it is currently working against us in the form of high-speed communications. Al-Jazeera is able to spread nazi-level propaganda at a level they could never have dreamed of 20 years ago, and have a virtually zero stategic suprise capability left, due to our own media organs. White collars are not going to win this war for us, we cannot stand off from them and beat them, they are too well camoflaged. We must get close and personal, study them in situ not in a laboratory, and stalk them on the individual level. A technological weapon is only useful if you can use it, and currently we are losing the political war so bad we can’t even use the ones 50 years old effectively. This is a knife-fight, not a set-piece war.
One last thing, back to WWII and logistics. I was watching the History Chanel the other night, and I heard a rather telling statistic. For every soldier Japan put in the field, they were able to produce and deliver about 8 lbs of supplies. For every American soldier, we produced and delivered over 2000 lbs of supplies. Japan’s national logistics were strangled by American submarines. Of course, a lack of resources is the whole reason they began their regional aggression in the first place.
For more on logistics and WWII, Stephen Den Beste has a great (if long) piece on it: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/12/Thefourelementsofwarfare.shtml
PooterGeek,
Is wrong, I think, to suggest that there are no universal laws of warfare. The best analogy comes from chess. There are an infinite amount of variables but the great masters have deduced *some* universal laws, such as, the very well known one, ‘He who controls the centre four squares, controls the game’.
Clausewitze deduced similar ‘laws’ but unfortunately his elliptical writing style disguised his opinion that warfare was, and is, always dynamic and fluid, and that his ‘laws’ were of a different nature from scientific ‘laws’.
The German General Staffs of the 19th and 20th centuries fooled themselves into believing that Clausewitze’s precepts were mechanistic – he himself would have been horrified – and launched three major wars of which only the first (Franco/Prussian) was successful. Clausewitze had nothing to say on naval or air warfare, or the sort of terrorist warfare we face today. However, I’m sure he would have been a keen observer of Israeli tactics, particularly their pinpoint actions against the top men of Hezbollah. Anyone else noticed the drop-off in suicide bomb attacks recently?
Love a Good Debate
Pootergeek and I, as well as a fellow named David Duff, have been debating Sun Tzu, the nature of war, and grand strategy in Iraq and the War on Terror. Check it out if you like….