Notes from a Sun Tzu Skeptic (2019)
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I still think there is huge potential for an overarching, creative strategy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the difficulties of Soviet/US forces in Afghanistan were not an accident, but sun-tzu'd in some way.
I think modern democracies do a much better job of separating military and civilian leadership than dictatorships do. Putin seems to be too personally involved in micromanaging his war, insisting on conquests that are simply not possible (like Bakhmut and some other places). Hitler similarly interfered with his generals and hampered his war effort that way.
Zelensky is of course involved with the war, but he listens to his generals.
> "appear weak when you are strong"
That only seems useful if you want to lure the enemy into an attack in order to ambush him, but with our modern day sensibilities about the value of life, we prefer to have no attack at all. More applicable to us is "appear strong when you are weak", although such secrets never last long, so we prefer to appear strong when strong, in order to discourage any attack.
Also, Russia appeared strong while weak, and that didn't exactly work out well when Putin called his own bluff. Turns out he incorrectly believed the strong appearance of his own army. And he believed the West to be weak (or at least divided and disorganised), so he attacked.
It's not that these concerns are irrelevant, but they're a lot more complex than Sun Tzu makes them out to be, and it's possible to fall for your own disguise. Or maybe the civilian leadership can fall for the military's disguise.
That only seems useful if you want to lure the enemy into an attack in order to ambush him"
No, it is also good (necessary) for preparing a good offensive. If the enemy thinks you are weak in some area, he does not expect a push from that direction.
Ukraine did just that last fall very succesfull. Show off force and big noisy preparation of a offensive south and starting it loud. And then push hard, fast and unexpected in the north, after the enemy already moved more troops further south.
And then confusion and panic among the enemy, so a relativly small force could conquer vast lands.
That makes it sound as if Putin attacked because an opportunity presented itself.
I don't think that's why he attacked. I think he attacked because he felt he had no choice. Not because NATO was crowding into his borderlands, which is Putin's story; but because following the collapse of Soviet communism and the USSR, the rump Russia was clearly a state dependent mainly on resource-extraction, which desn't promise a great independent future. Especially with Europe's increasing development of non-fossil energy, earnings from fossil fuel exports could be expected to diminish rapidly.
But why Ukraine? Well, setting aside his deranged opinions about the historic unity of Ukraine and Russia, and the historic destiny of the "Rus", Ukraine was rapidly becoming closer to Europe, and Ukrainians were clearly happy with that prospect. Having a successful, happy fragment of the USSR on his border threatened his control over his own population.
> Turns out he incorrectly believed the strong appearance of his own army.
Agreed! In fact everyone overestimated the strength of his army.
"Rapidly" but still on a decades scale, which Putin is unlikely to live to. Meanwhile he has forced Europe to look elsewhere for energy and drastically accelerated their plans.
> But why Ukraine? Well, setting aside his deranged opinions about the historic unity of Ukraine and Russia, and the historic destiny of the "Rus", Ukraine was rapidly becoming closer to Europe, and Ukrainians were clearly happy with that prospect. Having a successful, happy fragment of the USSR on his border threatened his control over his own population.
Poland and the Baltics are already on his border, and most of the former Warsaw Pact is already in the EU and happily progressing, with quality of life drastically better than in Russia. I really don't think this excuse works.
I guess you're right, it doesn't. I don't know what I'm talking about; I'm just someone who enjoys strategy games.
I'm also extremely interested in trying to figure out what Putin was thinking when he attacked, and why he didn't just pull back when his initial blitzkrieg failed.
I happen to think his own utterances and writings are a largely-accurate presentation of what he really believes about geo-politics; but they don't answer the "Why now?" question. I think you can understand his thinking by listening to what he says. I think he really believes "there's no such thing as Ukraine".
And regarding the Baltic states: they weren't in NATO, and individually they have short borders with Russia. Ukraine has a very long border with Russia.
They have been in NATO since 2004. Narva in Estonia is <3 hours drive from St Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia. Poland also has a large border with Belarus which is for most intents and purposes a Russian client state. And the border with NATO argument falls even further apart when you consider that Russia occupying Ukraine will gain them hundreds of km of borders with NATO member states Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania.
> I'm also extremely interested in trying to figure out what Putin was thinking when he attacked, and why he didn't just pull back when his initial blitzkrieg failed.
> I think you can understand his thinking by listening to what he says. I think he really believes "there's no such thing as Ukraine".
I guess we'll never really know about his actual reasons, but as to why he didn't pull back - he's a strongman dictator, his whole persona is a tough guy. If he gets his nose bloodied and loses massive amounts of troops, that will be a huge blow to his reputation in Russia, which he can't really afford, lest someone near him things they can do a better job.
My mistake, you're right. But not Finland. And I wasn't counting Poland, which was a former European imperial power; I don't think of Poland and Sweden as being Baltic states, even though their coastlines are Baltic coastlines. In the same way (roughly), I don't think of Greece as a Balkan state.
I think he saw a rapidly closing window of opportunity. A successful Ukraine would be a threat to his own rule over Russia, because there are a lot of ties between Russians and Ukrainians, and Russians would notice if a more EU-aligned Ukraine is more prosperous than Putin-ruled Russia, and that would undermine Putin's story of saving Russia's economy (which he did, between 2000 and 2008).
With increasingly closer ties between Ukraine and NATO, and Ukraine possibly even joining at some point, he has to take advantage of the fact that Ukraine wasn't in NATO yet. And NATO didn't respond to him taking land from Georgia in 2008, and the Crimea in 2014, so he figured they wouldn't do anything this time either. Besides, he'd invested a lot of effort into dividing the EU and NATO: funding extreme-right-wing parties all over Europe, supporting Trump, supporting Brexit, all things that seemed to make the EU and NATO weaker. But he vastly overestimated our weakness and his own strength.
That wasn't possible, and as far as I'm aware it remains impossible for now. I believe it is a prerequisite for joining NATO, that you should be in control of your internationally-recognized borders. Otherwise, at the moment of joining, the whole of NATO would instantly be at war with Russia, because NATO's supposedly a mutual defence treaty organisation.
Same goes for Georgia, as far as I can see; Georgia's internationally-recognized borders place South Ossettia inside Georgia. But South Ossettia remains occupied by Russia.
[Edit] FWIW, I don't think NATO is in shape to go to war in Eastern Europe. Western countries took advantage of the end of the Cold War and the "peace dividend" to hollow-out their armed forces and ammunition reserves. As a Brit, I'm particularly ashamed of Britain's conduct, which has involved committing huge amounts of money to two spiffy aircraft carriers, which still don't carry a full complement of F35s, and which can't operate without a fleet of destroyers and frigates, not to mention supply ships. And a new generation of strategic nuclear missile submarines. Having a stockpile of 122mm artillery shells would be massively cheaper, and a better use of money.
It is, and that's at least part of the reason why when Ukraine asked to join NATO, they were rejected. But NATO won't rule it out entirely, and Putin took that as a reason (a necessity, he claims) to invade Ukraine.
> Western countries took advantage of the end of the Cold War and the "peace dividend" to hollow-out their armed forces and ammunition reserves.
Even with those cuts, though, NATO has a far, far larger army than Russia. And far better. Though ammo shortages are definitely a big problem.
It’s not a formal prerequisite, but its probably a practical one.
> Otherwise, at the moment of joining, the whole of NATO would instantly be at war with Russia
There’s no theoretical reason the Accession Protocol for Ukraine couldn’t specify particular territories as excluded from the coverage of Article 6 until some specified future determination.
The west still appeared to be disrupted by COVID. The US and allies sent mixed signals on Ukraine which were interpreted as the US and West will let nature take it's course. The opportunity was there for Putin, and he took it. Putin wasn't wrong. Evidence: Biden tried to evacuate Zelenskyy leading to the famous quote, "I don't need a ride, I need ammo." The surprise to everyone was Ukraine fighting back ferociously. Now, Putin needs to realize the window has closed, and it is time to stop the madness.
The feeling of having no choice tends to be influenced by incentives, though. Had NATO mobilized 5 million soldiers in eastern Poland in late 2021, with the clear message that they would send those forces into Ukraine if Putin attacked, he would probably feel differently.
Personally, I think he may have felt "it's now or never". It appears he started preparing directly after the 2020 election, and he may have misjudged Biden, thinking him too weak to respond.
Yes, That's exactly what I think.
It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.
It's also true in quite some other countries, and it is to ensure that the military remains subordinated to the civil government, after the many examples of military coups in History.
https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/swearing-in-for-m...
Americans disagree about a lot, including how to interpret the Constitution and which parts of it are more or less important. But I would really hope that myself and any other random American can at least agree that our Constitution is the rule book that we must all live by and that it is ultimately what binds us as a nation.
Those prominent Americans include the original authors of said constitution: they always knew it would be a living document to be modified via amendments. Constitutional "originalists" who believe we should be totally beholden to a 240-year-old document with no changes are the ones who are not following either the spirit or the letter of the constitution.
Somebody has to be in charge of the military. If that person is just someone promoted from within, you're never more than one person's decision from a coup d'etat, "A republic, if you can keep it". So, an elected leader it is.
Of the three branches of the US government, only one is intended to provide an executive function, to decide, in an instant where necessary, without deliberation and compromise. The President. So that's the right person for the job of ultimate military commander, and it's one of the few things about that job which the voters seem to actually have some idea about.
Both the US and UK systems are under-staffed. The UK shares the job of executive leader and legislative leader (very different skill sets) under one role "Prime Minister" - while the US shares the job of executive leader and head of state (a figurehead) which also require totally different skill sets under the role of "President". This would make sense with a very small population, but it's crazy to imagine these huge countries couldn't find two people to do these very different jobs even a little better than one man (and in the US it has always been a man somehow) can do both.
(Though I think that role might go to the chancellor in times of war. Not sure.)
Yes, just like in the US.
My main point was that the chancellor is not the commander in chief by default. Only under exceptional circumstances.
That might have something to do with a leftover from the English Civil War. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Model_Army
There is no Royal Army. But all members of the armed forces, police, and certain prominent political appointments, swear an Oath of Allegiance to the monarch.
Note this is not to the country. And certainly not to the people. Not even to the Crown, which is a kind of abstract superclass of British monarchs in general.
The Royal Navy does not have to swear this oath. It exists by direct Royal Prerogative which means it's assumed to be loyal, pretty much by definition.
Of course, that style is a lot harder, and thus consumes a lot more limited attention.
No, its not; and its kind of odd to say that during the era when not omly does the President fully exercise that power, they have for all practical purposes had it augmented by delegation (substantively on paper, and even more broadly in practice) of Congress’ power to declare war.
It’s true that most Presidents don’t micromanage the military, but they very much do command it, and a power generally used with some discretion and reserve is not the same as a legal fiction.
But the important thing about the President’s Commander-in-Chief role is not that it is a power (though it is), but that it is a constraint on the Congressional power to orgabize and set rules for the military.
Ultimately, military grand strategy is a domain of politics as much as it is about how to wage war. The agendas and objectives are ultimately continuations of political goals of whoever is in power. During a war, the fighting must be coordinated with diplomacy, economy/trade/manufacturing and public relations/propaganda, all of which generals tend to know little about.
And even if the President is not the one making the micro decisions, he/she definitely is responsible for making sure the war is waged in a way that is aligned with the general objectives of the administration.
This means defining objectives, access to resources as well as defining the rules of engagement. And equally importantly, listen to the military and determine when the time is right to actually provide additional resources or permissions, despite political costs.
Instead we get military generals who act more like politicians the more senior they get (proven by study). And it seems that often politicians with little to lose and a lot to prove are often more hawkish than the military around them (Hilary Clinton, Wolfowitz, et al).
But, you know, tradeoffs…
Having served in the US Navy, this statement could not be more wrong. All command authority is delegated from the President, full stop.
So, yes, he does have final command (subject to "legal orders" and similar restrictions). But he's not commanding in the normal sense of a military commander.
War is ultimately a political endeavor; the goal of a war is to compel, by use of military force, some sort of political objective. It only makes sense then that the person in charge of directing when and where that military force is used is also the person who is empowered to carry out the political policy of the entire country.
For people who rise to the top of the military from within, every political problem becomes a nail in want of the military hammer for a solution, and thus the default answer to every crisis tends to become war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was defused without a war because both Kennedy and Khrushchev couldn't bring themselves to push the button marked nuclear war, while virtually the entire military establishment was convinced, and forcefully arguing, that the only way out of the situation was to be the first to push that button.
I wouldn’t be surprised if back in the Grenada/Panama era of the 80’s that there may have been many chomping at the bit. These days, I’m guessing not so much.
As to Iraq and WMDs, you could prob call him a “stooge” if you wanted to. But the little I know from a distance, that was something that racked his conscience for the rest of his life.
Grenada, they never had time to think about it - it took three days for the most mighty military in the world to secure one of the tiniest nations in the world.
After 9/11, Rumsfeld asked the Army for their plans. They gave him a stack of plans on occupying Afghanistan and requirement for 600K troops (per doctrine) - they had no intention of volunteering. He was furious to be sidelined when the CIA guy convinced W it could all be done with small teams and airpower.
For Iraq, Rumsfeld agreed to all their plans and they saluted happily when he said to not make any occupation plans...
Simple: the founders of the US thought it would protect our democracy to ensure that a elected civilian was in charge of the military. It's mostly worked.
Nope. There's a lot of writing about this issue from various founding fathers. There was great desire to avoid the President appearing to be a king or turning into one.
Plus what they say they wanted to achieve is not necessarily what they did achieve. That's not to say they failed and the president is a king, but the president is not entirely un-king-like either.
Since a king is literally all of the functions of government, there is really no way to argue that any part of a government isn't somewhat king like.
In the US, the Judiciary with lifetime appointments and review power was always viewed as the most king-like.
It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.
subservient office culture in Japan where the big boss was reading it, so it spread to the entire organisation from where it spread to other organisations. It got to a point where no one knew why they were reading it, just that they had to. Around the same time it caught imagination of the Americans because of the Japanese (who were actually pretty efficient at their jobs).
Will look for the comment and post if it takes me less than 15 mins.
Edit: forgot how bad reddit search was. While I did not find what I was looking for, this [0] is one high quality answer you may be interested in. Only top comments are heavily moderated on that sub.
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j37co/when_...
As an example, the quote Cast a Brick to Attract Jade from The 36 stratagems of War (https://changingminds.org/disciplines/warfare/36_strategems/...) is eminently usable in design/development/product plan meetings i.e. you present a simple and concrete idea as a starting point and then leave it to the attendees to build/modify/change it and come up with a best and final solution.
To me Sun Tzu writings and all the ancient writings are about preparing one's "mind" for an attitude that can be used to cope. The commonality of story to a culture strengthens the social structure. The commonality is used to apply old wisdom to seemingly new and complex events. These writings become the common thread.
This is exactly it!
One of my interests is the study of "Worldly Wisdom"(have a bunch of books from different cultures in my collection) categorized into;
1) "Idealistic"(Ethical/Moral) - Lots of Philosophies/Holy Books/etc. deal with this.
2) "Realistic/Pragmatic"(the World as it is and not how you would like it to be) - These are the common books of Wisdom/Aphorisms/Quotes/etc. from Culture/Daily Life.
3) "Crooked/Cynical"(how to further self-interest/getting-back on wrongs) - These are books on Strategy/Kingship/etc.
I find it quite transformational studying this subject since it teaches one all aspects of dealing with/making sense of Life. With the ascendancy of Scientific thought and decline of traditional Religions it has become even more necessary for each of us to chart our own ways with whatever advice (adapted to Modern Science/Times) we can glean from these ancient texts.
Here is a partial list in no specific order (lookup their reviews on Amazon/elsewhere on the web for details);
1) The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence by Baltasar Gracian translated by Jeremy Robbins. This book is also available as "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" translated by many others. Of these the one by Christopher Maurer is noteworthy.
2) A Pocket Mirror for Heroes by Baltasar Gracian translated by Christopher Maurer.
3) The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Of the many translations, the one by Peter Bondanella in Oxford World's Classics is noteworthy.
4) Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi) by Francesco Guicciardini translated by Mario Domandi.
5) The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra by Roger Boesche - A very nice summary of the magnum opus "Arthashastra" from Ancient India.
6) King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India: Kautilya's Arthasastra translated and annotated by Patrick Olivelle - A very good and modern translation of a large text.
7) The Essence of Politics (Sanskrit: Nitisara) by Kamandaki translated by Jesse Ross Knutson - A shorter Ancient Indian text in the vein of Arthashastra.
8) The Pancatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom translated by Patrick Olivelle.
9) Tirukkuṟaḷ by Tiruvalluvar (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kural for details) - For a good English translation see the one translated by P.S.Sundaram and published in Penguin Classics.
10) The Art of War by Sun Tzu translated by Ralph D. Sawyer.
11) The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China translated by Ralph D. Sawyer.
12) [The Complete] Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi translated by Kenji Tokitsu.
I have left out the obvious works by Epictetus/Seneca/Cicero/Marcus Aurelius/etc. since they are all well known.
The above is a good representative of the three categories drawn from different cultures and should get you started.
Now, I haven't come across people quoting Sun Tzu in my career, but I know the type of person you're talking about.
They are the type to either stick around short-term as execs, just a couple years, or to escape with a golden parachute when things start to turn. Un-surprisingly, their accomplishments are often enough detrimental to the customers, the business or both. They are aggressive, but don't really have much skin in the game.
Furthermore, as someone who like you has served in the armed forces, I agree amongst those who serve we do not think of "war is business", those in charge do absolutely think of "war as business".
SQL is clearly the right way to store large quantities of data (some would say the only way.) Until some folk realised their context was different, and NoSql was born.
Strategy is hard because it plays out in the long term. Two roads diverge in a wood,and you have to pick one. But the consequences if that decision may be felt 20 years later, or next week, or never.
Advice from those who went before is valuable. But care must be taken to understand the context of that advice.
And sure, while the basic concept of NoSQL for data storage is not new, the core concepts were not widely known until the 2010s.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=n...
Because writing in the past is really expensive and a heavy-duty work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bamboo_book_-_binding_-_U...
It's like the popular science blogs of its age.
I suspect much of his more questionable advice is stuff that happened to work once for him in specific circumstances, and it'd be great if he told a bit more about those circumstances. But it won't necessarily work in other circumstances.
For example, his advice to live off the enemy's supplies instead of bringing your own (which would be very expensive and cause economic problems that he surprisingly addresses). This is good advice in many cases, and has been done throughout history, but it can also go very wrong. Consider Napoleon's invasion of Russia where Russia just burned down everything in the path of the French army in order to deny them supplies, then harassed French supply lines, and defeated the French army without a single fight. Also very Sun Tzu, incidentally.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, depending on circumstances. Which Sun Tzu rarely goes into.
It's not "good advice in many cases", it was (prior to the availability of first railroads and then trucks, and with the very notable exception of all-cavalry armies operating on grass steppe) an extremely basic fact on how an army works. Bringing your own supplies was, over long distances, not just bad advice, nor just hard to do, it was logistically impossible. Napoleon did not (yet) have the choice to do it any other way, the alternative was not to invade Russia, or to do it piecemeal while consolidating and developing conquered parts before moving on, which would have taken decades.
The importance of logistics for large armies is widely underestimated.
If you abandon your supply base, and try to live of the (enemy's) land, you have to advance continuously and quickly, like Sherman's successful campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas. If you rest for even a day or so, you deplete the available "forage" (i.e. the resources of the civilian population).
If you stick with your supply base, then a large part of your force has to be devoted to defending the supply lines; and those supply lines have to be manned, and consume supplies themselves. In the time before internal combustion engines, it was hard to maintain supply lines for armies larger than about 80,000 men, because the fodder required for horses began to exceed the supplies needed by the soldiers. Putin ran into logistics problems almost immediately; Russia depends internally on railways very heavily, but his army had to de-train at the border and switch to trucks, on narrow roads, lined with forests.
It was not logistically impossible, it was incredibly expensive. And more so the deeper into enemy territory you get. But plenty of armies throughout history did bring their own supplies.
But no, neither depots nor wagon trains can supply a large army over long distances. It's not too expensive, it's impossible, because the animals that draw the wagons (and build the depots) themselves eventually consume more supplies than they can draw.
A force of 2000 men over 100 miles? Yeah, that may be in "doable, but expensive" territory. 50,000 men over 500 miles? Forget it.
And if you think you can move 50,000 soldiers 500 miles deep into enemy territory without supply lines, you can forget about that too. Napoleon did use supply lines from Poland into Russia. Remember: we're talking about Sun Tzu's advice not to bring your own food but take it all from the enemy land, and I'm saying that doesn't work in all circumstances. I'm not saying it never works. But there are very good reasons why historically, large armies did rely on supply lines.
> Rather than reinvent the wheel here, I’ll note that K. Chase (op. cit.) ran these numbers assuming two-horse 1400lb wagons and found that assuming the army acquired no local food (but could get grass for the horses), for a group of thirty infantryman the first wagon doubles their range from 120 to 240 miles (less really, horses cannot be worked so many days consecutively). Doubling again to around 400 (accounting for horse rest time) requires not two but six wagons for thirty men. To double the range again would require more wagons than men.
By around 3 months of campaign, you need more wagons than men to provide a supply train that doesn't require local forage for your army (but require it for your animals). Supply trains in pre-modern times are less "let's provide all the food for our army on campaign" and more "provide the mobile granary to store everything we're looting for a few days before it's eaten." In premodern times, absent the possibility of naval supply, not foraging the local land for your food is logistically impossible.
Armies used supply lines over land during the 100 Years War[0], Romans maintained a network of supply depots[1]. It happened during most time periods.
Just like there's a limit to how much food you can move how far, there's also a limit to how large an army can live off the land. Beyond a certain size, you simply need to bring your own supplies. In fact, one of Napoleon's innovations was that he organised his armies in a way that allowed larger armies than before to live off the land. But larger armies did exist before; they just had to bring supplies.
And of course you're not going to supply a large army over a distance of hundreds of miles using just carts. They used ships where possible, they used supply depots, and organised the most efficient routes by which to maintain those. But you bet lots of land travel was involved as well.
[0] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/medieval/army-supplied-100-...
[1] https://www.everythingsupplychain.com/roman-army-supply-line...
To me the problem is that the study of war, like the study of economics or any other social study; isn’t a real science. There is no repeatable theoretical model, including The Art of War. There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations.
You could still apply statistics. That's what people who breed animals or plants do. Every organism is different and individual, too.
There's plenty of studies in economics (especially micro-economics) that have statistical laws just like biology does. Similar for psychology. And even for war:
It's hard to run controlled experiments at the largest scales, but there have been plenty of experiments and studies at smaller scales. And some of them yielded statistical 'laws'.
There are some. An army marches on its stomach. For war, you need three things: money, money and money. Except in a guerilla war maybe. Maybe you're right after all.
And while men with guns very often get shot, they never starve.
Maybe, but we're evaluating the quote "For war, you need three things: money, money and money" which is presumably about money.
I'm from Zimbabwe - everything in Rhodesia was about money. Money needed by the government of the time to stop the guerillas and money needed by the guerillas to house them in neighboring countries, feed and arm them.
Now that Zimbabwe is in terrible economic trouble and has obviously rigged elections and much suppression of opposition voters and of course a military coup that everyone denies was a coup, there is no rebellion and there are no guerillas because they would have no support (no money, no safe harbour, no weapons). The Russians, Chinese, South Africans and DPRK have the situation they want and the US etc don't care about it either.
This seems to imply that money will win you wars, which is not the case. You don't need "money" to get foreign military aid, nor to manufacture small arms in your own factories, especially if you use slaves for that (like the Nazis did).
I've got great news for you! There are universal economic laws that always hold true in all situations.
For example, "man acts". You can't deny that, because denying it would be an act in itself, leading to a (performative) contradiction. From this law, and just a few others of a similar kind, you can build a whole structure of logically provable theorems that have profound implications for economics and the social sciences in general.
> the more of something you have, the less of it you want. This phenomenon is referred to as diminishing marginal utility by economists.
Okay, but I have a counter-example. Money. The people who have the most sometimes still act like penny-pinchers, and lust after even more, and haggle over the smallest things. Therefore the "law of diminishing marginal utility" is more a rule of thumb than a law.
If you own a good G, that you could use to satisfy either a desire D1, or a competing desire D2, you will logically choose to use G to satisfy the greater one of these two desires - the one with the greater subjective utility to you. Let's assume that is D1.
Now, if instead of 1 you have 2 of G, you can satisfy both D1 and D2. As we have already established that the utility you have derived from consuming the first G to achieve D1 must be greater than the utility derived from consuming the second G to achieve D2, the utility of the additional unit of G is diminished when compared to the previous one.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/greaves-human-action-a-tre...
https://mises.org/library/man-economy-and-state-power-and-ma...
Anyway, if it isn't -- no, there are no universal economic laws, for the very simple reason that "humans are not always rational" and economics is fundamentally about human behavior, in groups, no less.
Let's do us all one better and nail this down.
"Predictable, repeatable action"
Repeatable is even untrue, unless I misunderstand your meaning. First of all, the ranking of your goals or desires is not assumed to be constant over time. Also, it is not assumed that your world model is constant. Quite the opposite, it is often explicitly emphasized that humans have the ability to change their mind about things, for example by learning.
As many people pointed out, there are plenty. Humans don't change over course of centuries.
- soldiers need to be fed
- attacks on undefended locations are more likely to succeed
- if you can set your enemy on fire, do so, people really don’t like being on fire
"Get there first with the most men." – Nathan Bedford Forrest.
These have served me well in my career. Business problem? Solve it, placing less of an emphasis on how and more on solving it fast and building a pipeline to iterate on it even faster.
- Importance of reserves: troops that enter fight instantly become an order of magnitude more complicated to manoeuver. Thus it's important to keep ~half your forces in reserve. This one was forgotten by French general Gamelin at the beginning of WWII => thus when the German attack through Sedan pierced the French front unexpectedly fast, only weak troops were left to stop them in front of Paris.
- How to use terrain to your advantage: for instance put non-crossable obstacles behind you, or difficult terrains / slopes in front of you so that enemies waste effort and organization in crossing through while your troops are rested waiting for them when they emerge.
- How to place troops in classical battles: why cavalry often goes on the sides.
- Importance of pre and post-battle actions, for instance pursuit after routing the enemy.
I honestly don't see how you can possibly apply just Sun Tzu is battle. Much of it is vague or superficial. And that may be why it endures: the details of with change constantly, with every new technology and every new idea. But you can't fight a war with just basic principles; you've got to understand the weapons, the soldiers and the terrain and other circumstances you're fighting with.
In a sense, Sun Tzu even addresses that: you've got to know yourself and your enemy. So in a sense, the example that the article starts with, where Ma Su got to lead an army based just on his knowledge of Sun Tzu, was completely counter to Sun Tzu's advice: Ma Su may have known Sun Tzu, but he didn't know his own army or that of the enemy. That's what experience is for.
So it's not that Sun Tzu is nonsense; it's that it's not enough. And it's old. It's valuable because it was the first major treatise on strategy and war, but it has been improved upon for thousands of years. It doesn't trump anything that was written later. Later books address the same issues and more, but in a more appropriate context. It's not that Sun Tzu is bad, it's that more recent works are better, more up to date, more relevant, and more applicable.
That said, I recognise a lot of Sun Tzu's principles in the war in Ukraine. A blatant one: all over the summer they were talking about the battle for Kherson, and I thought: is it wise to announce that? That way Russia can prepare for it. And Russia did. And then Ukraine took a large swathe of land east of Kharkiv, on the complete opposite end of the frontline. "When you are going to attack nearby, make it look as if you are going to go a long way; when you are going to attack far away, make it look as if you are going just a short distance."
Later they did take Kherson, but only after Russia had withdrawn from it, because Ukraine had made it impossible for Russia to continue defending it. "Attack where there is no defense." Of course to accomplish that, they used long-range artillery that Sun Tzu couldn't even dream of.
Compared to Clausweitz, Sun Tzu would have been a Twitter guru, inviting the question: So, what?
Here is 10 tips how to win in every battle
[new management is whitewashing the W in the logo/banner name of T_itter]
One thing that hasn't changed about human nature, everyone is looking for a quick solution that's guaranteed to work. If you can market yourself as an authority many people will listen to you whether you actually are an authority or not. Engaging with reality directly is difficult, painful, uncertain, and often unfulfilling, so people demand proxies to do it for them. In many cases these proxies are necessary, the world is too complex for everyone to know everything in perfect detail. But if you're going to devote 40 hours/week or more to something, it's probably best that you minimize your proxies for that thing.
Using Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, or any strategic work as an all-encompassing ground truth is to deny reality for the sake of comfort. Denying reality for the sake of comfort is not a competitive trait.
This had me laughing out loud. Very visual and effective image. It almost hurts.
After all, even the word "tactics" came fro his name[1].
https://wiki.lspace.org/Callus_Tacticus
[1] Please don't believe this; read the Discworld books instead; Jingo is the one with General Tacticus quotes.
The first chapter of AoW is about estimates; of your capabilities, of your situation, of the terrain. Of course you're supposed to pick the good terrain if you arrive there first. There's a story in the Samuel Griffith translation (imho by far the best), about Sun Pin, a descendant of Sun Tzu. Pursued by Pang Chüan, a rival general with a superior army and a long-standing grudge, Sun Pin arrived in a forested valley late in the day and ordered a large tree chopped down to block the road. To this, he affixed a scroll reading 'Pang Chuan dies here'. Pang Chuan arrived with his vanguard a few hours after the sun had set and found the road blocked. On being informed that there was a scroll, Pang Chüan ordered a torch lit so he could read it. Moments later his army was hit by arrows from all sides, aiming at the bright light. Realizing that Sun Pin had successfully baited him, Pang Chüan killed himself with his own sword in rage, leaving his army in disarray.
There's no use of 'death ground' here; the emphasis is on speed and a cultivated ability to recognize favorable terrain and understand how to exploit it, and to strike at the opposing force's command structure rather than engaging in a wasteful battle of attrition. I like Clausewitz, but his line about the destruction of the opposing force being the ideal outcome has been taken far too literally in many conflicts. Clausewitz's military experience was in the Napoleonic wars and while he has much wisdom to share on strategy - choosing the time, place, and general shape of battle - his view of battle itself basically a slugfest in which size of force x intensity of violence gives you the answer. This was distilled some decades later into Lanchester's laws, a set of differential equations that provide surprisingly good insight into how a conflict of attrition will go. But Clausewitz and Lanchester are (imho) not great at addressing how to get an opponent to play themselves. Sun Tzu is very much about defeating the opponent's command structure, without which the army won't function.
Sun Tzu is hard to read because of the flowery language and the epigrammatic style, vs the more popular military style of discursive and specific examples (in both Asian and western military traditions). The Art of War at first feels like a collection of super-obvious truisms and annoyingly vague aphorisms with some specific instructions here and there, causing many readers to fixate on the latter. If you read it this way you'll certainly end up like the arrogant and unfortunate Ma Su. But the book is not an argument, it is a drill. You have to go through it over and over. The boring and shallow-seeming parts are foundational and they don't give up their value straight away. The way Ive got value out of it is to read some new stuff or writings about a specific conflict or aspect of conflict, then go back and read Sun Tzu again. Read more, read Sun Tzu again. Problems tying things together? Read Liddell Hart again, then read Sun Tzu again. Instead of pulling it apart looking for hidden meanings or some better translation from classical Chinese, let it function like a framework for organizing military knowledge.
Incidentally, my (outsider) experience of a lot of essays like this is that they are only partly about their nominal subject, and really about philosophical arguments within the defense establishment to shape doctrine, procurement, and long-term strategies. There are factions of strategic thought within the military bureaucracy that are constantly maneuvering for position, such that the peacetime defense establishment could be said to be engaged in the conduct of internal warfare by other means.
Many of Napoleon's most famous victories were won with a significant numerical disadvantage. If you had tried to determine the outcome of a battle at the time by simply comparing the number of men on each side, you would have failed often.
What I meant in my comment above, though, is not that Napoleon didn't care about such topics, but that Clausewitz doesn't always do a good job of writing about them on the tactical level. I absolutely think he's worth reading, but he's the opposite of Sun Tzu - a mass of dense, heavy, and often abstract text. There are multiple poor or incomplete translations of his famous On War which don't help. His smaller works like Principles of War and Tactics are much better starting points.
True that, but there has been plenty of more substantive critique. e.g. https://scholars-stage.org/not-everyone-likes-sunzi/
For example:
> The greatest victory is that which requires no battle
He says a lot of stuff like that but this is only true if your aim is peace in the near term and appearances of victory. The carnage of war, the worse it is the more it avoids even more war. If you win without battle then others will keep starting more battles because why not? But if you defear your enemy well and in the most horrific way then it becomes unthinkable to willingly start a battle or war with you. Even in the middle of war, a great and terrible victory demoralizes the enemy but a victory with no bloodshed only delays when the next battle will happen since you only won a battle and not the whole war.
I could pick many examples from WW2 and the ensuing peace we enjoy to this day (relative to before that time). Or how the US sabotages and enables regime changes all over without actual (at least acknowledged) conflict but time and time again it only delayed and worsened the threat.
My philosophy is that you should never start a war except as retaliation of an actual attack or immediate and impending attack (NK firing missiles not Iraq is about to get missiles). But if you start a war it is your duty to finish it fast and without witholding your aggression so long as that aggression contributes to preventing even more aggression from your enemies and resentment from your people (US and country building/preserving in a time of war in vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq comes to mind).
Happy to be corrected and educated on this. My point is that if you are not careful you can interpret that one teaching of his to mean you should avoid battle as much as possible. And a few others I have thought about are also like this. Surprising your enemy or deceiving them is not always the best idea either, what is more terrible to your enemy than telling them you will cause enormous damage at a specific date and time and doing exactly that despite their desperate attempts to counteract that, it crush their spirits and allow you to decieve them later on more effectively.
"War is the continuation of policy with other means." — Carl von Clausewitz
A foreign policy that achieves your aims is better than a foreign war; a functional domestic policy is better than a civil war. But sometimes people won’t compromise and the only policy left is war.
Similar to a school bully or when you get in prison and you start getting picked on. Resolving things peacefully with that bully only lets other bullies come after you later on. But harming that one bully effectively ensures your safety long term.
Trying to achieve a lasting peace through a decisive victory rarely works, because people don't work like that. In a more likely outcome, you are simultaneously not aggressive enough to prevent future conflicts and too aggressive, creating enemies motivated by revenge. Revenge is a dangerous motive, because it can turn battles into positive-sum games. Any enemy losses – both combatant and civilian – become victories, while your losses only matter by reducing your ability to kill more enemies.
That is, I understood that the point of the books was more to get governments and people to engage with understanding the practical elements of war, like:
- Wars are very very very expensive
- They're expensive even when you're not at war
- Your troops probably don't want to be fighting cause it means they probably will get hurt or die
- No one likes being conquered, so don't assume that the war is done once you've killed enough soldiers
- It's really expensive to supply an army
- Seriously, do you know how much a horse eats? How about a thousand horses?
My takeaway from the books was first teenage disappointment that the books weren't super deep or evil like I had been led to believe, and second that the books really seemed to try to deglamorize war by talking about all the stuff involved with it besides the killing/conquering, and showing how expensive and exhausting it really is.
He also implies that diplomacy and posturing is actually part of battle which isn't the case but I am sure diplomats and politicians consider themselves warriors.
Often wars are started to avenge a wrong, significant losses in your side were accepted when you declared war. If you win a battle without accomplishing your objectives then what was the point?
But I think I do agree with you on his intent and that is sort if my point, his wisdom is neither absolute nor infallible. I would consider it a guidance to help you decide not hard set commandments to follow.
I'm also sure that said position is not absolute, but rather just the idea that one should not look into prolonging battles (except when you're consciously participating in a war of attrition, obviously) and to hopefully evade them altogether as they at least reduce morale and exhaust resources.
Asymmetric warfare is destined to outlast the will of the attacker to maintain totally war, and to continue long after the attacker has started to become war-weary. IMHO, winning an asymmetric war against a sufficiently motivated opponent is only possible by engaging in genocide and large scale population relocations.
https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2020/6/15/sun-tzus-...
TL;DR Sun Tzu doesn't mean "Try to win without having a fight", but "Try to win without having a formal 1-on-1 engagement".
"Battle" shouldn't be understood as generic violent conflict, but a specific formal affair in which two armies gather up and clash with each other.
So for rather than reading this as "Try to solve things non-violently", this post suggests the meaning is more like "Try not to be forced into an engagement on even terms. If you can just poison them all, or starve them, that'd be much better".
For every truism from Sun Tzu, there is a data point providing a counter argument.
For the truism you are presenting, to whit:
> The carnage of war, the worse it is the more it avoids even more war. If you win without battle then others will keep starting more battles because why not? But if you defear your enemy well and in the most horrific way then it becomes unthinkable to willingly start a battle or war with you.
The counterpoint is WW2, which was a result of how horrifically Germany was defeated in WW1.
So, no, it's not always true.
I'd argue not horrifically enough. I mean their defeat eas decisive and the toll on their morale was huge but their idea of greatness through war and appettite for war in general was obviously not resolved.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the other hand swiftly resolved Japan's appetite for violence (not that I neccesarily agree).
WW1 and Germany to me are good examples of how not to finish a war. I ask why Germany was allowed to continue to be a free state? Why not divide up Germany as a foreign territory or colony between victors? Why not make sure no military or hostile government ever rises up again like the US did with Japan (still has no offensive military!).
If you want to see how effective what I am saying is, look at Genghis Khan. Any sign of resistance and your entire town or village was burned and erased out if existance. Many of his enemies surrender long before he ever arrives there.
You cannot take half-measures with an aggressor. Victory can't be partial for it to last.
If you merely wound your enemy he will regain strength and come back at you many times stronger or at least keep coming back until you surrender (Taliban). You must do what it takes to kill off your enemy fully even after victory.
My favorite reading of The Art of War, because Baldermort has an awesome voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDlW3WqXisM
It wouldn't still be mandatory reading at war colleges the world over if it didn't still have merit, or if it had no merit to begin with.
Spoken like someone with absolutely no idea how mandatory reading is chosen.
I believe it is the first of those three. Many books have been written since that are now outdated, while The Art of War is not.
You might have better luck with some actual reasons. Assuming you're right and then complaining that nobody believes you even though your assumptions plainly show that you're right isn't going to make you sound any more credible.
Here's an article noting that UK water companies use divination to locate underground pipes: https://sallylepage.medium.com/in-2017-uk-water-companies-st...
Which of these would you say is most likely accurate?
1. The water companies use dowsing because dowsing works.
2. The water companies use dowsing because dowsing doesn't work.
3. Whether dowsing works or not is not a factor in why water companies use it.
I'm willing to change my mind, but you're not giving me anything to change it to.
> I believe it is the first of those three.
I believe it's fairly obvious it's the third. It's a landmark because it's the first. It's read for the same reasons people care about Plato and Aristoteles. Not because they were correct about everything, but because that's what everything since then builds upon.
Sometimes, the reading list is quite varied.
They could have chosen the first 2 chapters of Stendhal's "charterhouse of parma" if you want a vibe from down at the platoon level (for much the same reasons as Heyer's book was chosen for an overall view at Wellington's level)
But, while Georgette Heyer invented the Regency romance, hers are not "bodice-rippers". They're far better than that.
"An Infamous Army" is kind of a strange book. It's half a romance, and half a war story, and it doesn't quite work as either one, but it works well as itself.
Heyer didn't know how to end a book. They're all flirtation and then "reader, she married him (probably)"
If your actions led to your own clan's erradication 30 years after the fact then tour actions might not have been the smartest (unless e.g. your clan was going to be erradicated either way and you managed to buy them time).
Literally said in Chap. 3 from the Art of War:
supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
Because publishers are profit seeking and have marketing departments.