Summary Of The Art Of War By Sun Tzu

It was but a major coincidence that Sun Tzu’s The Art of War came to existence at a similar timeline to the Greco-Persian Wars. Granted, the exact date of the book’s publication was unknown, according to History.com, historians believed that the book was present between the 4th or 5th century BC. Assuming that the estimated date was right, then it was remarkable how the tactics and strategy used in the first and second Persian invasions of Greece that took place from 499 BC to 449 BC, paralleled much of Sun Tzu’s ideology and wisdom on warfare. If Sun Tzu somehow were to travel through space and time to observe the Greco-Persian Wars as it happened, he would have been overwhelmed at the similarities between his principles and the tactics

To move from a point to another A Commander does not create the openings for an advance due to the unpredictability of the weather. Instead he uses the changes in the weather to aid the advancement of his troops. The significance of this chapter is clear in the landings on the Normandy beaches in the Second World War. In this chapter Sun Tzu also informs that talent and experience are above rules and theory. The knowledge in his book ‘Art of War’ isn’t grasped by simply reading the texts. Understanding it and knowing when and where to appropriately apply these concepts takes practice. These concepts were not created with scientific knowledge or calculations, because war cannot be analytically calculated. War is like water, Sun Tzu says “it shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.” Accordingly this book was written by generals in the army with years of experience, and wisdom and cannot be easily repeated. Sun Tzu says “One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.” Reading these texts only provides the reader with the theory; however to gain an understanding requires practice. Therefore the rank of a commander can only be attained through the medium of reflection, creativity, study, thought and intellectual instinct.”

Clausewitz who was convinced that no theory of war could be taken seriously unless it included the psychology of commanders and soldiers and their relations to one another (Peter Paret, Napoleon and the Revolution in War, pg. 134). The human factor within the nature of war is the most complex and difficult to predict a sure outcome without addressing psychological state of the enemy and environment in with you are about to conduct operations. Boyd integrates the key ideas of two primary theorists, Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, and hypothesizes that making sense of one’s environment, making military decisions, and acting on those decisions is a respective, competitive process (OODA loop) in which one seeks to make faster and better decisions than one’s adversary, overwhelming his ability to make sense of his environment and cope with change. (Module 3, John Boyd and A Discourse on Winning and Losing, pg. 6). This thought process is relevant today through our military war games, operation plans, and TDG’s providing an opportunity for multiple levels of outcome based scenarios fundamentally rooted in understanding the

It was the ancient Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who first established the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. He also stated that everything in the world is structured by and rooted in these four elements. However during times of conflict and violence, humans begin to disturb this harmony. When this happens, the elements stop representing life and start representing a form of destruction. Throughout Robert Ross’s journey in The Wars, Timothy Findley exemplifies this theory by displaying the four elements in two diverse ways: benevolent and harmful.

The soldiers were forced to endure the burden of war that affected them emotionally and mentally. The Things they carried by Tim O'Brien was about soldiers who were impacted to hold the burden of the vietnam war and brought things emotionally and physically to the front lines which affected their mentality. Tim O’Brien used many literary techniques in this book but the ones that stood out to me were listings and point of view he used these literary techniques very often. Tim O’Brien used listing to explain why the soldiers carried a variety of certain things and how all of them mostly have the same main things to survive but other than that they have unique things that relate to the soldiers for example a quote from chapter

Sun-Tzu preaches how invaluable preparation is throughout the entire novel, whether it is learning your enemy, fooling your enemy, or simply reinforcing your own forces, it is detrimental to go to war carelessly, as a war completely avoided, is a victory in it of itself. Once again, Sun-Tzu’s knowledge pertains to the real world, an agency would be foolish in challenging another without reason. "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle” (Tzu ). However, even though Sun-Tzu is praised for his work, it is common that people mistake his teachings only for use in war, battle or similar causes. Idealistically, a great thinker would take the greatest teachings from completely irrelevant sources, and make them relevant to their own process, but for most, this type of thinking is very abstract.

All around the world, people try to better understand their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, people comprehend their enemies in sports like football and in any sort of competition. The novel Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson is a book about an empress endeavoring to subjugate a continent called Genabackis, with only Darujhistan standing in her way. As the Empress formulates an idea to take down Darujhistan, and memories of the quandom emperor with it, she finds out it is not as easy as she planned it to be. Along the way, there are many small battles about almost anything, whether it is a card game or a siege, and as a result, people try to be more knowledgeable about their competitors. In

Many of the people who physically and/or tortured other people during the Cultural Revolution were never actually punished or judged for what they did after the Cultural Revolution ended. At the end of the memoir, Ji-li wrote “Those who persecuted others, even beat or tortured them, were victims too, after all.” (page: 270) This quote is very important because it might’ve been weird for some people because the torturers were not punished.

“The Tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst” wise words from Henry Fosdick. When it comes down to the time where an individual hits rock bottom, a man either do its best or do its worst. Although, Man can do its best and do its worst at the same time. There are many reasons how man’s best can result to man’s worst. Henry Fosdick statement is both true and false.

To begin, in Art of War by Sun Tzu, he refers to war as a designed strategy. He claims, ‘To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy is the acme of skill.’ (Tzu, 1943, p. 79). This means that a well-designed strategy is to initiate the fuse with the enemy with a non-violent stunt like giving urine to the enemy instead of wine (Tzu, 1943, p. 79). This enrages them causing recklessly thinking and they make the first move to attack and the defendant can be prepared to weaken the attack and defence systems by eliminating the forces. Their defence is weakened and the enemy becomes easy to conquer and overthrow without any more physical acts.

The most impressive idea in this book is what master sun mentioned in chapter six, he said, “Military formation is like water” and then illustrates that “a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius” (94). From my understanding about this sentence, he is trying to say that the strategy of the war is a bit like water, there is no fixed form for it, and the way to win is that always change strategy according to enemy's behavior. At the same time, this thought could also be explained this way, confuse your opponents, once they cannot find your weakness and trace, then you are invincible. In short, avoiding conflict with opponents

immense impact around the world. According to the greatest Chinese history researcher Sima Qian, “Sun Tzu, a great strategist and tactician, composed this military treatise in 512 BC.” (Sima Qian, 109 BC) Subsequently, For the last two thousand years, The Art of War has caused profound influence on Asia military strategy development. For instance,” during the Sengoku era in Japan, a daimyo called Takeda Shingen, inspired by the book , became almost invulnerable in all battles without relying on guns.”(Griffith Samuel B., 2005) Speaking of propagation, a British scholar and translator Giles Lionel indicated that “the book was first translated into the French language in 1772 by French Jesuit Joseph Marie Amiot, while the annotated English translation was completed and published by Lionel Giles in 1910.” (Giles Lionel, 2007)

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”(Sun Tzu). This quote has bewildered me ever since I began to read Sun Tzu and to fully understand it, one has to understand the implications of winning wars. I once heard that only dead men see the end of war, loosely phrased from Plato, and I don’t know if I can agree. Arguably, America’s greatest export is war, and do we sure like to go door to door like regular ol’ boy scouts knocking to let us in. A country built on revolution and its foundation on indigenous graves, America knows war, and war is money. With that said, if Sun Tzu’s great strategy were to be followed, how would we, as Americans, perpetuate

On the left side of the painting sitting upon a ravaged hand there is well dressed and pedagogic. The man seems to be in the process of examining something or possibly in a reading position looking downwards. The man can be said to exemplify a person of culture, education or reasonableness and can perhaps be elucidated to mean the small voice of reason and rationality as opposed to the sadistic and turbulent irrationality of War being displayed by the interestingly large creature tearing at itself. The small figure of the man stands in grim contrast to the large monstrous figure. There is also, what seems to be minute structures of development (man-made buildings) being portrayed on both sides of the limp hand in an attempt to further illuminate

Another significant lesson on warfare and leadership put forth by Sun Tzu was having the ability to conquer areas with no fighting at all. This lesson also involved the ability to absorb and expand within an area instead of total domination and annihilation. Sun Tzu mentioned, “In the practical art of