Posted on 09/10/2006 9:20:42 AM PDT by Korvac
Sun Tzu's 2,500-Year-Old 'Art of War' Guides China's Strategy Today
Lev Navrozov
Friday, Sept. 8, 2006
On June 19, the Daily of the Chinese People's Liberation Army reported that "in the past few days" the Seventh (!) Symposium on Sun Tzu's "Art of War" was held.
The report said: "Sun Tzu's ‘Art of War' advocates winning ‘without fighting.'"
Hitler, the last major Western European conqueror, and his top officers, some of whom had fought World War I for four years without winning, had possibly never read Sun Tzu's "Art of War." Many Westerners still regard themselves as supermen (the word coined by Nietzsche) because the Industrial Revolution mass-produced machines that mass-produced machine weapons like machine-guns, and that made the West for a while militarily (and hence, in many Western eyes, universally) superior to comical natives outside the West, such as Chinese, who valued individual artisanship and hated mass production.
It never occurred to Western supermen that when their ancestors pillaged the Roman Empire, "the Center of the World" (as China called itself) had existed for 4,000 years, and book printing had been invented in the Center of the World centuries before it appeared in Europe. Gunpowder, which initiated the era of firearms, was originally invented in China, not in any Western country.
In World War II, Hitler also fought, without winning, for more than four years. Sun Tzu's key word 25 centuries ago was strategy. In post-Roman Europe, the word was borrowed (from Greek) in 1810, and so Hitler knew it. But his fighting of World War II shows no trace of grand strategy and hence could end in nothing but his suicide.
To invade Russia, Hitler invaded Poland and thus ensured the Anglo-American bombing of Germany from England and then the invasion. In Russia, his troops just pushed eastward (Drung nach Osten) until they reached Moscow, which was undefended, since Stalin had been waiting for his Siberian and Far Eastern troops. Every Muscovite knew that even food store managers had fled from Moscow; Hitler and his top command did not.
Why?
Once, it had been reported to Hitler that a member of the British Embassy wanted to spy for Germany. "Then he is a traitor!" shrilled Hitler in disgust. Hitler, who exterminated 12 million civilians, regarded himself as a noble Western warrior, a knight, representing the best of Western ("Aryan") chivalry.
From the online bookstore China Books (www.chinabooks.com), I bought a recent study entitled "The Strategic Advantage: Sun Zi and Western Approaches to War." I bought it because the study was written by five Chinese in China, edited by a Chinese, and published by New World Press in Beijing. I wanted to see how the Chinese press today treats Sun Tzu.
The Chinese authors, officially published in China, regard Sun Tzu as the founder of war strategy and the teacher of the Chinese military. Sun Tzu's "Art of War" contains a special chapter, "Value of Spies." It says that no one in the armed forces deserves higher rewards than spies. Still higher rewards are given to double spies.
The Western noble knight Hitler would have been scandalized by Sun Tzu's evaluation of spies. As a result of his ignorance of what was going on in Moscow, Hitler marked time in October and November of 1941 around undefended Moscow until Stalin's Siberian and Far Eastern troops arrived in December 1941 and routed Hitler's troops. He barely managed to turn their panicky flight into a retreat.
In 1942, Hitler continued his Drung nach Osten, but the Soviet troops secretly concentrated in superior numbers (owing again to Hitler's scorn for spies) and encircled Hitler's army, which surrendered with its commander in chief at the head. To show to all the foreign correspondents in Moscow the scope of Hitler's debacle, Hitler's captive army was marched through Moscow.
The rest was Hitler's Drung nach Westen, which was as devoid of any grand strategy as had been his Drung nach Osten and which ended in his suicide.
How was Sun Tzu's precept of winning "without fighting" to be complied with? What the Chinese dictators call "assassin's mace," and some Western scholars call "superweapons" (provided they even notice them), Sun Tzu named QI, the "extraordinary force."
In decades past, QI was created by science and technology. If the United States had had atom bombs already in 1941 and dropped them on Japan right after Pearl Harbor, that would have been Sun Tzu's classical winning "without fighting" –except for one detail.
Sun Tzu lived under Absolutism, a word that appeared in the English language only in 1830. But Absolutism, or whatever else it maybe called, existed in China for 25 centuries before Sun Tzu, and about as long after him, as well as from 1949 up to now. To wait for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor or Germany's invasion of Poland would have seemed to Sun Tzu absurd or insane. Top-paid and greatly respected spies were to inform the United States about Japan's forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's invasion of Poland, and the United States was to QI Japan and Germany with atom bombs.
In the second half of the 19th century all kinds of Western conventions established the concept of "aggression" versus "defense" against it. The United States defended itself against Japan's aggression at Pearl Harbor, and "the democratic West" defended itself against Hitler's aggression.
What is known today as "democracy" would have horrified Sun Tzu as strategically absurd or insane, while Chinese Absolutism would have seemed to him absolutely necessary, in combination with QI, for "winning without fighting."
Therefore, when official Chinese authors of today write about Sun Tzu, they describe the Absolutism of the China of his times AND that of their China today. Surely Absolutism is the best form of government for war, with its secret development of QI, its deception, which Sun Tzu considered the essence of winning without fighting, and, last but not least, its espionage.
Incidentally, the scope of Chinese espionage in the United States today is unprecedented, for in the United States today there seem to be no spies, so despised by Hitler, but there are only millions of legal and illegal aliens, and if some of them are spies, the problem is to enable them to make a living in the United States, complete with social benefits.
As for American spies in China, there is a problem. Russian studies began to grow in the United States in the 1940s and the 1950s, and so in the 1970s enough Americans knew enough Russian (after all, an Indo-European language) to read Soviet propaganda publications and pass them to the U.S. government and U.S. Congress for espionage data.
Fewer "CIA analysts" know Chinese, and hence the CIA has not been testifying in Congress about the peacefulness of China, as it did about that of Russia (and thus gave me enough material for my satirical Commentary article, reprinted in more than 500 periodicals all over the West to their readers' bitter laughter).
I am told that in contrast to European countries, China was never engaged in conquests such as the conquest of America, mistaken for India by Columbus. This is true. Columbus was after gold and slaves, while China had paper money, and there was nothing she wanted to buy from other countries, which were perceived by China, with its silks and porcelains, as populated by paupers and savages. It was ridiculous to suppose that anyone wanted to topple the sophisticated Center of the World in order to establish a Western savage pauperland.
China's navy surpassed the pathetic flotilla of Columbus by hundreds of times, but it was used to protect China against Western adventurers like Columbus, out to conquer "India" in search of gold and slaves.
In the past two centuries, the correlation has changed. The West has invented – no, not silk or porcelain, but protection against Absolutism, and the Tiananmen Square movement demonstrated that for many Chinese this invention is more precious than that of silk or porcelain.
On the other hand, today's globalism is useful to the "sovereigns" (Sun Tzu's word) for the creation of QI. Western private enterprise, science and technology help the "sovereigns" of China to create QI, necessary for winning (globally) without fighting, or to use the phrase that appeared in China over ten centuries ago and is used by today's "sovereigns" of China, to create the "assassin's mace."
You can e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net
For those who pooh-pooh the author's concerns, a couple questions:
1) Where have millions of our jobs gone?
2) Where has our industrial base gone?
3) What country now leads the world in technology exports?
4) Which country has a currency which is rising in value?
5) Which country has the fastest-growing industry and economy?
And finally:
Did you ever. Ever. Meet a stupid Chinese person?
We're fast asleep.
We really are.
But never mind. Go to Wal*mart and buy more stuff.
Everything will be fine.
bump.
Remember the pronunciation:
Soon Suh (not sun sue)
If we accept that we have been had, and we have been fast asleep, and that soon we will have lost without fighting, I believe Sun Tzu would say that we should now go forth and QI a whole lot of stuff.
US wants closer military ties with India
Dated 28/3/2006
http://www.india-defence.com/reports/1628
Washington - The Bush administration, looking to build stronger military ties to India and other countries, wants to speed up arms export procedures and better share information, US officials said on Monday.
"To improve security cooperation more broadly, the department is taking steps to improve its ability to be a good partner," Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told a Defense Security Cooperation Agency conference. "The US cannot predict with any certainty when and where we will need friends."
England said the Bush administration was working on several legislative proposals, including one giving the Pentagon permanent authority to pay for logistics support in combined military operations with other countries, a power it has had on a temporary basis in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In addition, he said the administration was trying to speed up the approval process for export licenses, which now typically stands at around 21 days.
U.S. direct foreign military sales are seen rising to $12.9 billion in fiscal 2006 which ends in September, up from $10.6 billion last year, according to industry experts.
John Hillen, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said sharing technology and information was particularly vital as Washington sought to build stronger military ties to India.
"You cannot underestimate the strategic importance of what the president was trying to do in India. It shifts the geopolitical plates of the world in the most fundamental way since Nixon went to China," Hillen told the conference.
He said a "business as usual" approach could cost U.S. firms like Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. the chance to sell new fighter jets to India, and could undermine efforts to forge closer U.S.-Indian military ties.
The United States and India earlier this month agreed to a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation pact, which will give New Delhi access to American atomic technology and fuel to meet its soaring energy needs -- provided Congress gives its approval.
It also opened to door to more arms deals with India, which has the world's second largest standing army, but has largely bought its weapons from Russia until now.
"We have to get this right with India," said one U.S. defense official, who asked not to be named.
A defense industry executive, who also asked not to be named, underscored strong U.S. corporate interests in expanding trade with New Delhi, saying he had visited India three times in the past 90 days and would soon return.
Current U.S. regulations and slow handling of export requests often prevented U.S. companies from bidding for billions of dollars of Indian defense contracts, he said.
"If we don't do something to improve it, we will be cut out of that market," the executive said, calling the opening of the Indian defense market an "absolutely tremendous" opportunity.
England also said the Pentagon and State Department, which together oversee U.S. exports of sensitive technology, were trying to fix a complicated system often characterized by "byzantine" bureaucracies.
Australian Ambassador Dennis Richardson welcomed the remarks by Hillen and England, but said there was still work to be done on better sharing of information between close allies, and approval of export licenses remained "frustratingly slow."
I agree.
No, but I've known a couple very devious ones.
BTTT
Every Navy S-3 Viking Tactics Instructor(VTI) receives a copy upon his graduation.
So, why are we fighting like drunken retards?
Do you know where it is in txt?
Another, and equally compelling question: What foreign power has been buying the huge American debt being incurred by our massive trade deficit?
1. Sun Tzu said: There are five ways of attacking with fire. The first is to burn soldiers in their camp; the second is to burn stores; the third is to burn baggage trains; the fourth is to burn arsenals and magazines; the fifth is to hurl dropping fire amongst the enemy.
2. In order to carry out an attack, we must have means available. The material for raising fire should always be kept in readiness.
3. There is a proper season for making attacks with fire, and special days for starting a conflagration.
4. The proper season is when the weather is very dry; the special days are those when the moon is in the constellations of the Sieve, the Wall, the Wing or the Cross-bar; for these four are all days of rising wind.
Remember the weather, September 11th.
5. In attacking with fire, one should be prepared to meet five possible developments:
6. (1) When fire breaks out inside to enemy's camp, respond at once with an attack from without.
7. (2) If there is an outbreak of fire, but the enemy's soldiers remain quiet, bide your time and do not attack. We were quiet and composed, didn't lash out, took care of our own and got our ducks in a row on how to respond an attack, the full chinese attack on 911 was a bust, which is why there was not a followup attack.
8. (3) When the force of the flames has reached its height, follow it up with an attack, if that is practicable; if not, stay where you are. was not practical
9. (4) If it is possible to make an assault with fire from without, do not wait for it to break out within, but deliver your attack at a favorable moment. Sept 11 was and attempted delivery
10. (5) When you start a fire, be to windward of it. Do not attack from the leeward.
11. A wind that rises in the daytime lasts long, but a night breeze soon falls.
12. In every army, the five developments connected with fire must be known, the movements of the stars calculated, and a watch kept for the proper days.
13. Hence those who use fire as an aid to the attack show intelligence; those who use water as an aid to the attack gain an accession of strength.
14. By means of water, an enemy may be intercepted, but not robbed of all his belongings.
15. Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating the spirit of enterprise; for the result is waste of time and general stagnation.
16. Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.
17. Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. They used the taliban insted of their troops 18. No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.
19. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are.
20. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.
21. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.
22. Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.
Oh look football is on!!!!
The Chinese might have something there.. China is becoming capitalistic much slower(if at all) than the United States is becoming Socialist.. The capitalism of socialism is the same as the socialism of capitalism.. China seems to be winning..
My recollection of Sun Tzu's thesis is that subordination of the Emperor's soldiers was the underlying premise to success. He demonstrated this by having court ladies do dismounted drill. They laughed and made light of the exercise. He then executed one of the ladies. The rest then followed orders.
Fear is the underlying principle in maintaining the Emperor's power. So it goes with the Communists. This is at odds when contrasted to Machiavelli's "Art of War" His method of selecting soldiers was to find tough country men such as farmers accustomed to hard work. He studied and gave examples of successful Roman military strategies. He wrote a rational treatise, based on reason not fear.
The Chinese managed to maintain local control over tribes and people who really didn't care to be free of the Chinese. But, the Mongols cleaned their clocks but good. When China decided to teach Vietnam a lesson and bloody their nose in 1979, it cost them dearly with a lot of casualties. They withdrew in a few months.
China's success on the world market has more to do with Western belief in Free Trade. It's got nothing to do with Sun Tzu. Whether or not free trade will work as theoretically posited, wealth for everyone remains to be seen. The other axiom that democracies don't go to war with each other is not likely to be tested to the extreme as much of the world is under control of thugs and elitists of one kind or another. There really is no democracy. Coming from Massachusetts where the majority would never permit homosexual marriage, the elitists have taken control of the state machinery and dictated it to be. Alas, democracy does not even exist in the United States.
Nor was Sun Tzu the only authority on the richness of Chinese military theory. T'ai Kung, Wu-tzu, Wei Liaou-tzu, and Huang Shih-kung (all Pinyin spellings, sorry) had a good deal to say about why Chinese military applications came to be the way they are. One might object that present-day Chinese military doctrine resembles that of Sun Tzu as much as current Western doctrine does Clausewitz, that is, in theory but not necessarily in the field.
As for the value of spies, however, this is something that is universally acknowledged in the ancient world most visibly by the barbaric treatment they were accorded when caught. The Old Testament has a number of references to the efficacy of personal intelligence gathering, some dating from right around the time Sun Tzu was writing. Assyrian and Babylonian practices from roughly the same period contain roughly the same advocacy. Satellites really haven't changed that as much for us as a lot of people (notably in the Clinton administration) thought that they had.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.