Essay Sun Tzu's The Art of War

Nicolo Machiavelli’s The Prince and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War both both provide directions for leadership with similar goals. The Prince is primarily geared towards providing valuable information about how a ruler of many principalities may govern different populations and acquire new lands. The Art of War provides us with a schematic of the optimal path to victory. This book is instead directed towards generals of powerful militaries with only the goal of winning. Concepts such as Machiavelli’s view of destruction will be contrasted with Sun Tzu’s victory-oriented argument for taking whole and several of their other ideas will be compared. Although Machiavelli and Sun Tzu have different intended audiences, many of their ancient tactics can

7.) To what extent is Lao-tzu in favor of military action? What seems to be his views about the military?

Today, no one seems to give much value of literary works or reading. Not because it doesn’t give anything beneficiary, but because not everyone had the urged to at least finish a book. We now live in a world where social medias almost dominates our daily activities. It’s unlikely to have a place for us to consume a non-fiction or fiction book. As absurd as it sounds but that’s how people often think. We now live in an egalitarian society, where everyone is given the freedom and right of its own.

This essay will explore the influences of Sun Tzu in the Second World War. Sun Tzu (544 – 496 BC) was a Chinese general and strategist in times of the Zhou dynasty. His techniques, even today are highly respected. The teachings of Sun Tzu were used not only in Asia and Europe but have also been applied today by the western society.

In the ancient societies of Greece, war means many things; power, glory, honor. The idea of fighting is not just a daily task for the Greeks but a necessity. In

The author, Sophocles, opinions on warfare is that war is just not about heroes, who are played up to have no faults, and their moments of glory, but rather that

The works of Chinese Marxist theorist and soldier, Comrade Mao Zedong, were key in understanding the problems that faced not only the Chinese Military, but the military forces of other major countries as well. Comrade Mao provided a logical description of the strategic problems regarding China’s revolutionary war. The keys to conducting a successful revolutionary insurgency include understanding that the laws of war are developmental, that a whole military situation must be studied, and that a military must be good at learning.

St. Augustine provided comments on morality of war from the Christian point of view (railing against the love of violence that war can engender) as did several critics in the intellectual flourishing from the 9th to 12th centuries. Just war theorists remind warriors and politicians alike that the principles of justice following war should be universalizable and morally ordered and that winning should not provide a license for imposing unduly harsh or punitive measures or that state or commercial interests should not dictate the form of new peace. “The attraction for jus post bellum thinkers is to return to the initial justice of the war”. This means that war is considered as self-defense.

Warfare is a common thread that ties Homer's Iliad to Virgil's Aeneid. However, the way warfare is treated in the two epics is different. This can be attributed to many factors including the time between the composition of the pieces, the fact that pieces were written by different authors, and the fact that the pieces were written in different places. We can use these pieces to get a view of what the society that produced them thought about war and how the view of war changed as time went on in the ancient world.

The western way of war consists of five foundations that have shaped a significant amount of military cultures; the foundations are superior technology, discipline, a finance system, innovation, and military tradition. Perhaps people believe that discipline is not one of the most important foundations of the western way of war, since people tend to emphasize technology. However, discipline is the key to maximizing the other four foundations before and during conflict. Historian Geoffrey Parker agrees that technology can give a military advantage, but it is not sufficient without superior discipline. That is because discipline consists of the ability of armies to act within battle plans even when not supervised, obey orders, exercise loyalty, and restrain their fears when faced with danger. Discipline as a western way of war has influenced military cultures from the Roman Empire to today’s militaries. Discipline shaped military cultures by how they prepared for war, effectively giving them the ability to act during combat and expanding commander’s operational reach, thus aiding in conflicts throughout history and increasing the likelihood of defeating the adversary.

In this dissertation, I will write about how the artist response to war by talking about the century of war, the art movements that came about, how the artist made work around that and the ongoing war in Syria. (expanding on it)

Sun Tzu understood the nature of war as “the province of life or death,” and a “matter of vital importance to the state.”1 I agree. In my own experience, war awakens your primordial instincts and strips you of your self-rationalizations. Sun Tzu defined the character of war when he wrote, “water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions.”2 Accordingly, Sun Tzu’s principals of war offer a framework adequate to explain the nature and character of 21st century warfare, which I rationalize as a near-continuous battle of ideologies fought through asymmetric means to advance the values and interests of state and non-state actors.

This was a tactic in attempts to keep the enemy guessing and to cause the enemy to feel threatened and unsafe. It was a good strategy to trick the enemy into always thinking and feeling that an attack would happen at any given moment, something that would cause the enemy to develop stress or become restless with less chances of obtaining a sense of peace or assuming that an attack was not going to happen. If one was able to master the technique of deception, then it was likely that one will increase the chances of victory. In addition, it was crucial to become aware and analyze the enemy in order to determine if a planned and deceptive attack would work. Or, it was better to avoid confrontation if it was determined that the enemy would be stronger. Sun Tzu took into consideration that pacifism was also an important option which would benefit future and better planned attacks. He also made it clear from the beginning of his documentation that he took analytical measurements into account and the one that made more precise calculations than the enemy, one will win the war.

There are numerous studies that say that the nature and character of war are quite similar to one another and can be even used synonymously. However, according to some writers, there

The “Art of War” and “De Re Militari” two military treatises were written one continent and around five centuries apart by authors that came from two vastly different backgrounds and cultures. Both authors penned treatises intended to inform and educate commanders about war yet the underlying theme is not victory but to ensure the survivability of their soldiers in battle. Sun Tzu and Vegetius differ on their ideas of this specifically on the relationship the military holds between the governing body as well as relations with the civilian population. However, what they do come together on ideas of efficient battle that minimizes Soldier loss as much as possible.