The Art Of War

Chapter Summary:

1. Detail Assessment and Planning (Chinese: 始計，始计) explores the five fundamental factors (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership and management) and seven elements that determine the outcomes of military engagements. By thinking, assessing and comparing these points, a commander can calculate his chances of victory. Habitual deviation from these calculations will ensure failure via improper action. The text stresses that war is a very grave matter for the state and must not be commenced without due consideration.
2. Waging War (Chinese: 作戰，作战) explains how to understand the economy of warfare and how success requires winning decisive engagements quickly. This section advises that successful military campaigns require limiting the cost of competition and conflict.
3. Strategic Attack (Chinese: 謀攻，谋攻) defines the source of strength as unity, not size, and discusses the five factors that are needed to succeed in any war. In order of importance, these critical factors are: Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army and Cities.
4. Disposition of the Army (Chinese: 軍形，军形) explains the importance of defending existing positions until a commander is capable of advancing from those positions in safety. It teaches commanders the importance of recognizing strategic opportunities, and teaches not to create opportunities for the enemy.
5. Forces (Chinese: 兵勢，兵势) explains the use of creativity and timing in building an army's momentum.
6. Weaknesses and Strengths (Chinese: 虛實，虚实) explains how an army's opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of the enemy and how to respond to changes in the fluid battlefield over a given area.
7. Military Maneuvers (Chinese: 軍爭，军争) explains the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon the commander.
8. Variations and Adaptability (Chinese: 九變，九变) focuses on the need for flexibility in an army's responses. It explains how to respond to shifting circumstances successfully.
9. Movement and Development of Troops (Chinese: 行軍，行军) describes the different situations in which an army finds itself as it moves through new enemy territories, and how to respond to these situations. Much of this section focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.
10. Terrain (Chinese: 地形) looks at the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. Each of these six field positions offer certain advantages and disadvantages.
11. The Nine Battlegrounds (Chinese: 九地) describes the nine common situations (or stages) in a campaign, from scattering to deadly, and the specific focus that a commander will need in order to successfully navigate them.
12. Attacking with Fire (Chinese: 火攻) explains the general use of weapons and the specific use of the environment as a weapon. This section examines the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attack and the appropriate responses to such attacks.
13. Intelligence and Espionage (Chinese: 用間，用间) focuses on the importance of developing good information sources, and specifies the five types of intelligence sources and how to best manage each of them

The Art Of War Sun Tsu

Courtesy Of: The History Channel

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise that is attributed to Sun Tzu (also referred to as "Sunzi" and "Sun Wu"), a high ranking military general and strategist during the late Spring and Autumn period (some scholars believe that the Art of War was not completed until the subsequent Warring States period. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it is said to be the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time, and is still read for its military insights.

The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy in the world. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics: "for the last two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by name.It has had an influence on Eastern military thinking, business 
tactics, and beyond.

Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of positioning in military strategy, and that the decision to position an army must be based on both objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective beliefs of other, 
competitive actors in that environment. He thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a changing environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_...

The Economics Of War

By Robert P. Murphy 
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 
Courtesy Of "The Ludwig Von Mises Institute"

[Study Guide to Human Action (2008)]

1. Total War

The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. The division of labor cannot function effectively amidst a war. Warfare among primitive tribes did not suffer this drawback because the warring parties had not been engaged in trade before the hostilities. Thus they engaged in total war.

Things were different in Europe (before the French Revolution) when military, financial, and political circumstances produced limited warfare. Wars were generally waged by small armies of professional soldiers, who generally did not involve noncombatants or their property. In this context, philosophers concluded that, because the citizens only suffered from warfare, the way to eliminate war was to dethrone the despots. The spread of democracy, many thought, would coincide with everlasting peace.

What these thinkers overlooked was that it is only democratic liberalism that ensures peace. In modern times, states wage total war against each other because interventionism and central planning lead to genuine conflict between citizens of rival states. Under classical liberalism, political boundaries are irrelevant; free trade and free mobility of labor mean that one's standard of living is unaffected by territorial expansion. Yet under national socialism (and the interventionism of their neighbors), the citizens of Nazi Germany really stood to materially gain from conquest.

Ultimately, treaties and international organizations cannot ensure world peace. Only a widespread adoption of liberal policies will end war.

2. War and the Market Economy

It is a widespread myth that the market economy may be tolerated in peacetime, but in emergency situations — such as a war — the government must seize control of production. During war, resources that normally go into consumer goods must be diverted into products for the military; private consumption must fall.

Entrepreneurs can most efficiently effect this switch if they are allowed to earn profits and cater to the new demand, emanating from the government as it spends funds on military items. Whether the government raises its revenues from higher taxes, increased borrowing, or even inflation, in the end the citizens will have less purchasing power, and their reduced consumption frees up the real resources to produce items for the war effort.

In the United States during the Second World War, this process was short-circuited because the government clung to the union doctrine that the workers' real take-home pay must not be allowed to fall, even during wartime. Consequently, the government was reluctant to levy higher taxes, and it imposed price controls to prevent "war profiteering." Given these realities, the only solution was to further intervene in the market, by imposing rationing schemes and other controls, designed to ensure an adequate flow of resources into the war industries.

Modern wars are won with matériel. Capitalist countries defeat their socialist rivals because private entrepreneurs are more efficient in churning out products, whether consumer goods during peacetime or weapons for their governments. Even so, ultimately war and the market economy are incompatible, as the market relies on peaceful cooperation.

3. War and Autarky

If a tailor and baker go to war with each other, it is significant that the baker can wait longer for a new suit than the tailor can go without bread. In analogous fashion, Germany lost both world wars because it could not blockade Great Britain, nor could it maintain its own maritime supply lines.

The German militarists were aware of their vulnerability and so stressed the need for centrally planned autarky. They placed their hopes in Ersatz, the substitute, a replacement that was either of inferior quality, higher cost, or both, compared to what the unfettered market would have imported from abroad. Yet the inferiority of ersatz items is not a relic of the capitalist mind. Poorly equipped soldiers will fare worse against armies using the most advantageous materials, and higher costs of production mean that fewer finished goods can be produced from given resources.

4. The Futility of War

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Interventionism generates economic nationalism, which in turn generates bellicosity. This tendency is internally consistent; only laissez-faire policies are consistent with durable peace.

Why It Matters

In this short chapter, Mises deploys his skill not only as an economist but also as a military historian. Contrary to popular belief, government controls do not enhance a country's military prowess. Entrepreneurs are more efficient than central planners in the production of tanks as well as the production of television sets.

In the long run, however, the market economy relies on the division of labor, which requires peaceful cooperation. The rise of total war in the modern age is due to the rise of "statolatry" and interventionism.

Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market," the "Human Action" Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist. Send him mail. See Robert P. Murphy's article archives.

This article is excerpted from Study Guide to Human Action, chapter 34, "The Economics of War" (2008).

"All Wars Are Based On Deception"

Big Lies Launch Wars 

By Stephen Lendman 
November 3, 2011 
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

In "The Art of War," Sun Tzu said "All wars are based on deception." What worked in ancient times more than ever applies now, given instant ways of communicating globally and super-weapons Washington and Israel threaten to use like hand grenades. In "Doctor Faustus", Christopher Marlowe mentioned "the face that launched a thousand ships." He referred to Helen of Troy (formerly of Sparta). To win her back, Greeks launched 1,000 warships. According to Greek mythology, the Trojan War followed. Homer's Odyssey and Iliad recounted it. So did Roman poets Virgil and Ovid. Homer said it lasted 10 years. Mythological goddess quarrels started it. Real, mythological, or fabricated reasons work equally well. Then it was Athena and Hera v. Aphrodite. Today it's "war on terror" fear tactics. Near its end, Greeks entered Troy in a Trojan Horse. America's perhaps was 9/11. Both were duplicitous acts used to ravage targeted enemies. The expression, "beware of Greeks bearing gifts" originated from back then. According to Homer and other Greek literature, they burned the city, captured Trojan women, rescued Helen, and returned her to Menelaus, her husband. Fear, misinformation, and deceit work best enlisting popular support, whether in ancient China, Greece or modern times. Television today supplies it. From its earliest days, it lied, distracted, entertained, and provided a platform for corporate America to control thought, manipulate public opinion, and sell people junk they don't need. In a June 1950 commencement speech, Boston University President Daniel Marsh said, "If the (television) craze continues....we are destined to have a nation of morons." In May 1961, Kennedy's FCC chairman Newton Minow called commercial television a "vast wasteland." He suggested watching it for a day "without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper," with no distractions. "Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off" as it once did before 24 broadcasting. "I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland, (a) procession of game shows, (nonsensical) formula comedies....blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons." "And endless commercials - many screaming, cajoling, and offending....And if you think I exaggerate....try it." Try it now. It's the same on hundreds of channels round the clock ad nauseam. Communication theorist/media critic George Gerbner once said television has nothing to tell and everything to sell. In his book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman said "Americans are the most entertained and least informed people in the world," knowing little or nothing about what matters most. Famed comedian Ernie Kovacs once said television is called a medium because it's neither rare or well done. Because most people rely on it for news and information, a nation of "morons" lets America get away with murder. America's Permanent War Agenda In his book titled, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace," Gore Vidal said: "our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own." In his book titled, "Dreaming War," he compared GW Bush's imperial ambitions to WW II and subsequent Truman Doctrine pledge: "To support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." At issue was keeping Greece and Turkey from going communist. Applied globally, it initiated America's National Security State strategy. Ever since, it lurched from one war to another to benefit war profiteers and advance America's imperium, no matter the body count to achieve both. In his 1953 collection of historical revisionist essays titled, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and It's Aftermath," Harry Elmer Barnes wrote: "If trends continue as they have during the last fifteen years, we shall soon reach (the) point of no return, and can only anticipate interminable wars, disguised as noble gestures for peace." "Such an era could only culminate in a third world war which might well, as Arnold J. Toynbee has suggested, leave only the pygmies in remote jungles, or even the apes and ants, to carry on 'the cultural traditions' of mankind." Deception, misinformation, popular fiction, and Big Lies launch wars - all of them. Television today incites them. Earlier times, however had other ways to enlist public support or at least avoid opposition enough to stop them. Historian Gabriel Kolko explained nothing good about "the good war," WW II, or any others. None achieve peace, security and stability. One conflict begets others. Endless destructive cycles follow. Countless millions die. Vast destruction ravages countries. Human misery, not liberation, results. Since the 19th century, imperial wars shaped American life. Waging them is prioritized. Technological expertise produces killing machines. Industrial America suffered. Human needs go unmet, today more than ever in modern times. State capitalism partners with business waging war. Uneducated, disadvantaged, impoverished, disconnected, restless, angry millions get left on their own sink or swim. Others go to war to get killed, injured, maimed, or emotionally scared for life with nothing in return benefitting them. In his January 1961 farewell address, Dwight Eisenhower warned about: the "military-industrial complex," citing the "grave implications" of a "coalition of the military and industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government." He said "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence....by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He added that: "Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed...." Today, dominant "iron triangle" authority runs America's war machine. With sitting presidents, it consists of Congress, the Pentagon, and defense industry profiteers, including producers of sophisticated technology for digital age warfare Eisenhower couldn't have imagined. In combination, they addicted the nation to war, not for threats. It's for power and profits. Why else would war be America's business! In his book titled, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters," James Douglas discussed many reasons. Key was his opposition to force. After the Joint Chiefs demanded troops for Laos, he told Geneva Conference representative Averell Harriman: "Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don't want to put troops in." He opposed nuclear weapons use in Berlin and Southeast Asia. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, he refused to bomb or invade. Afterwards he said, "I never had the slightest intention of doing so." In June 1963 (a few months before his assassination), he called for abolishing nuclear weapons, ending the Cold War, and advancing "general and complete disarmament." In October 1963, he signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 to withdraw 1,000 US forces from Vietnam by year end and all of them by 1965. He wanted "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." Before Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied, he supported UN Resolution 194, authorizing diaspora Palestinians' right of return they never got. He wanted the American Zionist Council (AIPAC's original name) registered as a foreign agent. He opposed Israel's nuclear weapons program. He wanted peace, not conflicts. It cost him his life. Future presidents got the message. The rest, as they say, is history. Canadian Law Professor Michael Mandel explained imperial America's lawlessness in his 2004 book titled, "How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage, and Crimes Against Humanity." He discussed Justice Robert's Jackson's Nuremberg "supreme crime" declaration. It's more than ever relevant given America's out-of-control belligerence, ravaging the world one country at a time or in multiples. At Nuremberg, Jackson said: "To initiate a war of aggression....is not only an international crimes; it is the supreme international crimes differing only from the other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." In 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined crimes against peace as: "(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (and) (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i)." After WW I, Kellogg-Briand in 1928 renounced aggressive war, prohibiting its use as "an instrument of national policy," except in self-defense. Sixty-three nations were signatories, including America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Soviet Russia, and Japan. The US Senate approved the treaty 85 - 1. Like Nuremberg, it's binding international law. Washington's war machine hardly slowed. WW II followed as well as perpetual others thereafter. Even then, the business of America was war. It's more than ever that today. Its "scourge" wants power, profits and unchallenged dominance. Today, America wages it globally against humanity. International law is defied. So is morality and common sense. International peace, security, stability, equity, justice, and freedom are non-starters. Only war spoils matter, including benefits derived from them in all forms. Since WW II, America, its NATO partners and Israel waged regular aggressive wars. Millions of noncombatant civilians perished. Appalling human suffering resulted. Washington's imperial war machine is today's greatest threat, ravaging the world one country at a time. Congressional authority was abdicated. Presidents can act on their own. In September 2001, Congress approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) for "the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States." "War on terror" authority accelerated permanent wars. Presidents now wage them at their discretion. Where it all ends, who knows. No one's able to stop them. Short of finding a way, free societies, planet earth and humanity hang in the balance. Even risks that great are ignored. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman

The Art Of War For Dummies

By Jeff Huber,
June 16, 2009
Courtesy Of Anti-war News

Military precision is to precision what Kenny G is to jazz. So it is that the art of war – known in our command and staff colleges as operational art – has a language so vague that it’s useless.

Take the term center of gravity. Everyone concurs that it is a vital concept, but nobody agrees on what it means. A Marine will tell you there can only be one center of gravity, but that’s because Marines can only think about one thing at a time (loving apologies to Staff Sgt. Joe Cleveland). An Air Force pilot will tell you a center of gravity is anything he can bomb, so you need to buy him a lot of expensive bombers so he can bomb everything. A naval aviator will tell you the center of gravity is always an aircraft carrier, even in land warfare. If you ask an intelligence officer what a center of gravity is he’ll tell you it’s classified so don’t quote him by name, and if you ask an Army general what a center of gravity is he’ll start breathing through his mouth.

No wonder the dummies running our woebegone wars can’t find their way out of Iraq or Afghanistan with a map and a flashlight.

Some desk commandos in the Pentagon think the center of gravity in Afghanistan is the Taliban. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen says the Afghan people are “the real centers of gravity." Sen. John Kerry says the strategic center of gravity in Afghanistan is Pakistan, an observation that explains much about his track record at crafting winning strategies.

The 19th-century Prussian general and philosopher Carl von Clausewitz defined "center of gravity" (Schwerpunkt) as “the point against which all our energies should be directed." Clausewitz also established that “war is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means” and that "the political object" must determine "the military objective to be reached." It doesn’t take a cosmology major to figure out that an enemy’s center of gravity is the main obstacle between our objective and us, and that our center of gravity is the asset that will achieve our objective.

Perhaps it’s understandable that our military and political leaders are so confused about the centers of gravity in the Bananastans. Clausewitz tells us that “strategy is the use of the engagement for the purpose of the war" and that "the aim will determine the series of actions intended to achieve it." National Security Adviser James Jones and his White House war wonks unveiled our new Bananastan strategy in March, and its "realistic and achievable objectives" are unadulterated delirium.

We can’t create "an effective government in Afghanistan" or a "stable constitutional government in Pakistan." "Disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan" won’t "degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks." The only thing today’s terrorists need to plan and launch international attacks is an iPhone; they don’t need to hunker down in a mountaintop cave on the far side of the Khyber Pass to use one of those things. They have freedom of action to operate from front row center at Bob Redford’s film festival in the Rockies if they choose to. "Involving the international community to actively assist in addressing these objectives" won’t be of any help. The Bananastan strategy objectives are so fantastic that the intergalactic community from the Star Trek universe couldn’t help us achieve them.

Not even the Vulcans could derive logical centers of gravity from the war aims the Jones gang has dreamed up. Spock himself would blanch at the thought of crafting measures of effectiveness to determine whether or not we’re making progress toward achieving such cockamamie goals; but Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our new top Bananastan general, has taken a shot at it. "The measure of effectiveness will not be enemy killed," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee at his June 2 confirmation hearing. "It will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence."

Not a single member of that committee had sufficient intellect or spine to ask McChrystal how many shielded Afghans, in his opinion, might constitute victory.

Centers of gravity can change over time, space, and levels of war. That sounds more complex than a double-decker 3-D chess tournament at first, but it’s reasonably simple. Folks who can spell their names correctly will catch on to the time and space model quickly enough. Next week’s umpteenth reoccupation of al-Kaboom, for example, will have different centers of gravity than today’s air raid on the terrorist camp that’s camouflaged as a Muslim wedding chapel. The basic levels of war are the tactical, operational, and strategic. The tactical level is where combat takes place, and the strategic level is where military actions achieve (or fail to achieve) a war’s political aims. Tactical actions are planned and coordinated to achieve strategic goals at the operational level.

Tactical and operational centers of gravity consist of some type of armed force. To the U-boat skipper bent on sinking a supply convoy, the enemy center of gravity is the convoy’s destroyer escort. An operational center of gravity may be the armored division that blocks us from capturing a major oil field, or an air defense system that thwarts our efforts to bomb key infrastructure.

Strategic centers of gravity are always political leadership. Common military wisdom deems that popular support or national resources or the media can be strategic centers of gravity, but common military wisdom is all too common and none too wise. Population, resources, and so on may be critical factors – strengths, weaknesses, or critical vulnerabilities – but they are only important as they affect political leadership. The obsession of Mullen and McChrystal with the Afghan population is cause for grave concern. A population may influence leadership with its vote or by storming the palace, but it is your enemy’s leadership, not its angry mob, that can produce the political behavior you want. The effect of popular opinion is minimal in oppressive nations, but its influence is overrated even in so-called liberal democracies. In the last two federal elections, Americans overwhelmingly voted for the antiwar agenda. For all the good it did us, we all might as well have cast our ballots in Florida.

The overarching strategic importance of political leadership makes you want to think very, very hard before you charge off with a goal of regime-change, as our Mesopotamia mistake so vividly illustrates. And the puppets we propped up in the Bananastans haven’t done so well either, have they? That crazy so-and-so McChrystal told the BBC on Friday that the Bananastan bog-down “will go on until we achieve the kind of progress we want to achieve. It won’t be short.”

Of course it won’t be short. No American conflict is short in the long war era, even though the oldest warfare sage available to us, Sun Tzu, famously warned that "no nation ever profited from a long war."

And as the living sage Pete Seeger famously asks, when will we ever learn?