RE: Sun Tzu... (Full Version)

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wwengr -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/24/2011 12:47:04 PM)

This is an interesting coversation. I am not really sure I understand the comment about Sun Tzu being a Charlatan...

When I was an officer in the United States Army, both Sun Tzu and Clauswitz were professional reading. In both cases, they really amount to philosophical thought pieces for military leaders. The principles are really applicable in any environment of conflict, but the authors were soldiers.

They are probably most useful for commanders and staff officers at operational levels of command. You probably won't find battle staffs in operational command posts using either Sun Tzu or von Clauswitz as planning guides or checklists. But you will find a lot of officers there that have studied the texts.

The United States Army today uses nine Principles of War in educating all officers. These principles are an adaptation of Carl von Clauswitz. If you read the three side by side, you can see a clear concurrence of ideas. Sun Tzu and Clauswitz provide historical background. Understanding ideas in context of their development or history is important to the development of a professional philosophy.

For the WITP gamer (or any gamer for that matter), reading and understanding the history can enrich the experience.



Nemo121 -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/24/2011 3:16:51 PM)

Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, Maurice's Strategikon, Liddel Hart, Rommel's Infanterie Greif An ( sic ), Guderian's Achtung Panzer and Tukhachevsky's writings are all different ways of solving the same sorts of problems. Some are more focussed on the operational and tactical level ( Rommel, Guderian and Tukhachevsky ) while others operate more at the strategic level but they are all simply different viewpoints.

To truly understand them you have to read them in as close to the original as possible. This means either choosing your translated edition carefully or going to the primary source material and either learning the language yourself or having it translated by others with whom you can liaise to parse precise meanings.

All four of the more strategic level authors, Sun Tzu/Bin, von Clausewitz, Maurice and Liddel Hart, are trying to solve the same sorts of issues in different timescales and geographical regions. They are also framed by their cultures and circumstances. With that said Sun Tzu/Bin and Maurice clearly understood that war was a continuation of politics by other means as well as Clausewitz. Clausewitz is just more accessible to Western readers than either Maurice or Sun Tzu/Bin.


FWIW my advice would be to read them all. I have original non-translated versions of each on my shelf as well as several translations of Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz and Maurice. In addition I also have several books on each explaining/interpreting Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. I'm also fortunate to have ready access to translation for German, traditional and modern Chinese, ancient latin, hebrew and greek etc ( useful for the Strategikon ). ALL of them have very useful things to say about war, politics and the interplay and interpollation of these factors.


If I were to summarise them very briefly:
1. Sun Tzu/Bin is by far the more quotable as his writing style is less obtuse and metaphysical than von Clausewitz's. This quotability has led to his fashionability among Western business symposia etc which often misquote or misinterpret him. E.g. He talks about types of ground and then lists them. People often quote this slavishly and literally without realising that in ancient China ( and modern China ) numerology was very important and resulted in many numbers having multiple meanings. So, when he talks about 9 types of grounds that has a connotation of there actually being infinite variations of types of ground, encompassing variations of the 9 grounds mentioned. Also the fact that the 9th ground is defined as "death ground" has everything to do with the symbology of the number 9 in Chinese numerology which derives from the fact that the word for 9 sounds quite like the word for "death" etc etc.

So, you really need to choose your translations wisely and then invest in some explanatory books if you want to understand him completely. With that said he is quotable and if you understand the subtext of what he was saying there is a lot of wisdom there - I'm particularly fond of his quote in my sigline and think it is hugely applicable to AE play.


2. von Clausewitz. A literal translation will have to be extensively explained as von Clausewitz's writing style is very obfuscatory and metaphysical. It is that curious mix of physical and philosophical which you often see in German writings from the early to mid 19th Century. Again, you need a good translation and good explanatory texts OR a deep knowledge of German scientific and philosophical writing styles of the time. Very useful if textually dense but explains a lot of initially non-evident things - such as why a mountainous defensive line is actually bad for the defender unless certain precautions are taken.


3. The Strategikon... A really excellent read. Most of the translations are readily accessible. It is helpful if you have a good basis in how the Western Roman Empire organised its troops and also on the differences in the types of opponents the Western Roman Empire faced vs the Byzantine Empire. With that said there's a lot of useful stuff here including the use of combined arms, the utility of horse-mobile troops who fought on foot ( basically the equivalent to APC-borne infantry ), the means by which they played nations and groups off eachother, the use of interior lines of communication to stabilise a frontier through phasing their battles etc. Also a lot of good organisational stuff and man and resource-management advice... all of which is applicable today allowing for differences in technology/culture.

4. Liddel Hart is interesting to read re: WW2, particularly his, "The Other Side of the Hill" but I must admit that I never really found any major independent insights in his work. He recognised the importance of what was happening in Germany and the Soviet Union and introduced it to a Western audience and his insight into that other side of the hill was good but he never really bowled me over.

Overall though, all are good, all have utility and all are worth reading, understanding and synthesising into your own understanding of tactics, operations and strategy. Saying A is great, B is a charlatan is intensely ignorant and foolish. All of them are useful but all of them need to be read carefully either from the original or from excellent translations with other sources available to explain the language and cultural context.


Lastly but not leastly I'd say that pretty much everyone could do well to read Soviet doctrine from the 50s and 60 as it deals with Operational art and the Strategic Level. I think they really synthesised things well. Failing that read Tukhachevsky from the 30s -- although a lot of what was said in the 60s was just a rephrasing of Tukhachevsky IMO with lessons learnt from WW2 incorporated. All of the above texts deal with the integration of different levels of command etc but Soviet doctrine does, I think, do so in the most accessible and clear way possible for modern readers.




Shark7 -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/24/2011 4:12:24 PM)

Honestly, to understand the difference between Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz you need to understand the difference between Chess and Go. Understand the fundamental difference between the Asian game of Go and the European game of chess and you see the differences the writings and thought processes.

In Go, the object of the game is to control as much of the board as possible. Where as in Chess, the object is to capture the opposing king while defending your own. You see the fundamental difference right? One game's strategy is the importance of controlling territory, while the other game's strategy the importance of defeating units and armies. And which one is better is totally dependent on the situation when applied to real world battlefields.



fcharton -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/24/2011 7:13:42 PM)

Hi Nemo,

quote:


Also the fact that the 9th ground is defined as "death ground" has everything to do with the symbology of the number 9 in Chinese numerology which derives from the fact that the word for 9 sounds quite like the word for "death" etc etc.


Are you sure of that? The number usually associated to death is 4 (because it sounds the same in many modern dialects, how it sounded in ancient times is, at best, educated guess). Nine, in modern culture, is considered an auspicious number. In imperial China (and probably Japan and Korea too) it used to represent perfection, wholeness, lots of items in imperial palaces go by 9 (or 27, or 81).

In classical chinese, 9 often means "all", when you refer to something that comes in small numbers. I believe this is the way one should glose the 9 grounds. It can also mean "many", even though you'd usually use 3 to say several, and 100 or 10 000 (the ban in banzai) to say a lot...

I would be very prudent of numerological interpretations of Sunzi. Lots of those "numerical readings" of classics came much later, and are typical of schools influenced by Daoism and similar schools (Huanglao, Yinyang school). There are Chinese military authors influenced by Yinyang (eg Guiguzi), but Sunzi never struck me as one of them.


About translations and editions, the problem, not specific to Sunzi, is that the work has been edited and commented so many times, by so many famous people (eg Cao Cao), that you don't know, when you translate, whether you are actually translating the Sun Zi, or one of its (many and contradictory) commentaries or canonical interpretations.

This is the case for modern chinese editions too. Classical chinese is as removed to modern as Latin would be to Italian or French, so modern editions are (most of the time) translations as well. Unless you have the time and knowledge to read the original, in several editions, and then all the canonical commentaries, and the major later criticism of those, you can't escape this difficulty.

My recommendation would be to read as many translations as possible, try to find translations of the commentaries (I'm not sure these exist, though...), and avoid picking only "one kind" of translator, ie just sinologists, or just military translators, or business types, or numerology and black arts oriented translations.

When reading translations, one aspect that always struck me is the contrast between the simplicity of the original and the complexity of the rendition.

Sorry about the longish post, this just happens to be something I am very interested in...

Francois
PS do you know the precise reference of your quote (chapter and verse...)? I am interested to see what the original says (and can pass the info back to you if you are too)...



witpqs -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/24/2011 9:14:04 PM)

quote:

Lastly but not leastly I'd say that pretty much everyone could do well to read Soviet doctrine from the 50s and 60 as it deals with Operational art and the Strategic Level.


Any specific recommendation?



Nemo121 -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 6:19:51 PM)

fcharton,

Well I got the info from someone who is a native Chinese speaker ( Mandarin, Cantonese and a few others ) and has previously translated Japanese and Chinese military stuff for me (including rather ancient court Chinese - I'm sure they'd know the proper term for it, I just took the context and forgot what that is called unfortunately ) which passed scrutiny for publication ( by others )... Of course when you go back that far you are dealing with different dialects and also "official, court" versions of the dialects. That's how it was explained to me. What I took from it was 4 was good, 8 was especially good ( which is why the last Olympics started at 8:08pm, on 8/8/08 [:D] ) and 9 was inauspicious - the thing about it sounding like death is to the best of my recollection but would be the bit I'm least certain about.

The correlation between 9 and infinity/all I'm certain of.

Chapter and verse: I'll have a look.

My favourite translations are some of the more recent ones which are done to show Sun Tzu as the epitome of a class warrior, serving the King whilst really supporting socialism and foreshadowing Mao ;-). I have one commentary by a PLA general which is, quite literally, hilarious as he was obviously buttering up to someone by showing all of the similarities between Mao and Sun Tzu/Bin etc etc. At times he got himself so wrapped up in doublespeak and doublethink any correlation to the original meaning ( as translated elsewhere ) was purely coincidental ;-).


My thinking about the simplicity of the original vs the translations is that the translations often have to explain so many culturally implicit beliefs which give the context without which the translation cannot be fully understood that they cannot but be longer and more convoluted. Of course it is also the mark of someone who has thought deeply and clearl about something that they can often distill it to its essentials... That plays a part too.



Nemo121 -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 7:05:42 PM)

witpqs,

Well, quite a few translations of Tukhachevsky's stuff were around in the 80s and 90s. More latterly translations of more recent doctrinal works have abounded. I, personally, always found Simpkins to be easy to get into but he's a bit dated.

Overall, I think that Glantz and House would be the best guys to go to.... You can do a search on Amazon for the following books and they'll serve as a good primer.
August Storm: Operational and Tactical Level.
August Storm: Strategic Level.

I list these because they deal with the Soviet offensive into Manchuria into 1945 and deal with the strategic and operational levels. They'd probably be of most interest to AE'ers. They are expensive though, probably over $100 each.


He also published a large number of CASS studies which were the Soviet General Staff's own studies into their conduct of operations. They are hugely illuminating. The best of them are:
1. Soviet Military Intelligence + the art of Deception

2. The Battle for Kurks 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study - Kursk as assessed by the Soviet General Staff during and after the war. Read just what the guys who beat the Wehrmacht at Kursk thought about what went right and what they did wrong and would try to do better next time. Fascinating reading but VERY, VERY dry. You won't find this an easy read, but it is worth it. I'd combine it with The Battle of Kursk (Modern War Studies) which is a co-work of Glantz and House in order to get an overall view... I'm assuming here that you'd have German-centric reports to compare to and arrive at a synthesis of the three. If not, let me know and I can give you a listing of some German-centric ( but still scholarly ) works to flesh out the view.

3. Belorussia 1944: The Soviet General Staff Study ( Cass series ) - How the Soviets used Strategic Deception, phasing of operations and maximised their limited general staff and logistics train by integrating those limitations into planning as operational pauses before the next push ( the circumstances for which were created by operations conducted by other Fronts during this operational pause ). Personally I think Bagration ranks as the most impressive military endeavour of the past 100 years. D-Day was impressive in terms of number of troops etc but in terms of overall scale, success and grandness of conception Bagration is hard to beat.


In terms of analysis his following books are good:
1. The Soviet conduct of Tactical Manoeuvre. A good, simple book by Glantz standards. It is probably a little low-level though but it does give you the framework of the lowest level to help you understand how that fits into higher levels.

2. Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle... I think this is my favourite... Simply an excellent book and analysis. Easier to get into and more recently updated than Simpkin for obvious reasons.

3. Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 (Modern War Studies) --- A good book to read if you want to follow the timeline of improvement in operational and strategic art chronologically. They stopped the Germans in '42, over-reached with this and then assessed what they did wrong ( lack of General staff training in the guys who were in staff positions etc), remedied their errors, went again in February?March 43 - for which I'd recommend reading Nipes' "Last Victory in Russia" and then over-reached their victory. They recovered and then mounted the Kursk operation.

After that I'd read about Bagration and then the Manchuria operation. That should give a good view of how things developed timeline-wise.

If you like your tank battles then you could do worse than marrying some of the Kursk books here with Zamulin's "Demolishing the Myth. The tank battle at prokhorovka." It isn't out yet, it is due out next month but I know people who've met Zamulin and they say he knows his stuff ( he was the director of historical research at the Prokhorovka Museum after all ) and that the Russian version was a real cracker. Unfortunately I have almost no Russian so I've had to wait for the English version.


Oh and if you're really interested and have access you can try to get the US Army War College, Art of War Symposia minutes from the early to mid-80s when Glantz was there. They are hugely illuminating. I had a couple of them some time back but lost them in a move and haven't been able to find them since [:(][:(][:(]

There's lots of other stuff post-WW2 available ( particularly on the net these days ) with much of it having been translated from Russian. About the worst source you can use to get an idea of what the Soviets were like are contemporary German accounts - particularly those given to US interrogators at war's end. Those are rife with "telling them what they want to hear"itis as many Germans sought to curry favour with the "new guys in charge" and also to seek to justify a need to keep these professionals safe and possibly employed in a resurgent Wehrmacht/Bundeswehr as a bulwark against the Soviets etc.



fcharton -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 9:06:16 PM)

Hi Nemo,

What you call official court language is classical chinese. The word is treacherous because it is used for two different things.

1- it can mean what the chinese call Wenyan, which is the written language of the litterati throughout history (until the 20th century). This obviously changed a lot over time.
2- it can be a subset of the above, namely, the language used in the classics, which corresponds to the written language of the 3rd century BC (which would be the date of the Sun Tzu if it were written by Sun Bin, or a contemporary, if you go by the traditional story, it qualifies as 'preclassical').

There are a number of good modern commentaries published by the PLA. Unfortunately, like many (most?) chinese publications in social sciences you have to peel off the mandatory marxist wrapping to get to their (usually very good) points. In the case of Sunzi, tradition places him at the moment when marxist historians see the transition between the slave society and the feudal society, so you'd get lots of commentary on this emerging class of counsellors of princes... And the link with Mao, as the great intellectual who causes a new (and better) regime to appear is made plain.

However, this is typical of most commentaries (Chinese and Japanese, the Japanese are great commentators of Sun Tzu). In Asia, classics were, and are still, considered like 'ancient models to teach the modern man', and most commentaries strive at linking the work with their contemporary history. In other words, chinese commentaries tend to have an agenda, and should never be taken at face value.

About editions, here's a (personal) list

1- Giles: easy to find on the web is a very good starting point. It is relatively close to the text, and truthful to the usual chinese interpretation. It is a sinologist work, though.
2- Sawyer : this is the modern standard, if you buy one...
3- Mair : modern sinologist, lost of provocative ideas

4- Griffith : this is the version most of the people who learnt about Sun Tzu in the military read. As such, it is important, because it is the "Sun Tzu of the US Army"
5- Amiot (if you can read french): this was the first translation, and the standard version until the 1950s. This is what all the readers of Sunzi in the 19th and early 20th century read.

About numbers, associations are based upon words having similar pronounciation. 8 (ba) sounds in cantonese and southern dialects like a word which means "to set forth", "to emit", "to grow", and the "to get rich". 9 (jiu) is both homonymous to a word meaning "long lasting" and another one meaning "alcohool". 4 (si) is homonymous to the word meaning death. But you have to keep in mind these associations, based on modern pronounciations, are recent affairs.

Francois



witpqs -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 9:42:49 PM)

Thanks! [:)]



AW1Steve -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 9:59:07 PM)

Just a note for those following the "Duel" between Dobey and myself: It's started. I've sent the 1st turn, and have started a AAR. [:)]



Nemo121 -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 11:16:13 PM)

witpqs,
If you get them and ever want to discuss them/anything re: this drop me a line. I, weirdly, find that sort of doctrinal stuff relaxing. [X(]



AW1Steve -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 11:34:26 PM)

As do I. Weird, ain't it? [:D]



witpqs -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/25/2011 11:57:44 PM)

See the thread on a collective noun for us all... [:D]



Nemo121 -> RE: Sun Tzu... (4/26/2011 12:27:19 AM)

A Weird of Grognards.



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