I’m not asking if the book contains helpful information in terms of battlefield tactics, I’m asking is it really the best book on that subject ever written and is the knowledge in that book really indispensable to winning battles/wars?
1- Are the tactics as effective in 500 BC as they are in 1400 AD and 2015 AD?
2- Is the knowledge actually specific? Saying, if you are hungry, go eat some food, is not the same as saying the root of plant [XYZ] is edible but the root of plant [ABC] is poisonous, or, if you have a limited amount of food it is better to eat a small amount every 3 hours than eating 3 large meals in one day.
3- Are the tactics really applicable to everyday life in the way that it is portrayed in that sense, ie, can the book be used to become significantly better at basketball or selling cars?
4- Is it actually the best book on war/tactics ever written?
It may seem so to you, but it is *acquired *knowledge. You may not have got it from a book, but you were not born knowing to pick your battles, play to your strengths, leave the other guy a face-saving out, to make your subordinates accountable but don’t throw them under the bus, that information is power, and how the *really *powerful reach their goals without coming to blows. That last one tends to be missed in many cultural contexts. It is useful to gather all that in one succint volume.
The West, mind you, fought wars and built empires both political and economic just fine for a couple millennia w/o widespread knowledge of Sun. However, when Westerners were finally introduced to this book it turned out to be more to the point than some of the wordy, weighty tomes European strategists cranked out in the intervening centuries, and many said “hey, how come our guys needed so many more words to make the point?” and “hey, this does not just apply to battle tactics”.
Regarding #3, at least in Western business circles it was for a time trendy to read it because of the perception that it was part of what made Japanese businesses so successful during the 70’s and 80’s. I don’t know if that is still (or ever actually was) the case in Japan, but in the West as the Japanese economy languished into the lost decade of the 90’s so too did interest in Japanese business practices and thus Sun Tzu.
I realize that Sun Tzu isn’t Japanese, but at least the idea touted by trendy business consultants back in the 80’s was that all the Japanese companies made their executives read it.
I thought that Clausewitz (“On War”) was more interesting, for the insight into our history, and our culture. Here are some quotes from Wikipedia:
[quote=Wikipedia]
His thinking is often described as Hegelian because of his references to dialectical thinking/quote]
But Clausewitz suffers from being a German author: even in abridged form, he is boring and long winded. In contrast, Sun Tzu, in translation, is short and too the point (probably hand copied rather than printed). Just the thing for a popular book for barely-literate managers.
Well, yeah. They had Vegetius instead :). De Re Militari covers much of the same ground (logistics, poliorcetics, grand strategy, leadership & discipline, avoiding fights if at all possible etc…) and it was extensively copied throughout Antiquity and the Middle-Ages.
It was widely construed as “Military 101”, required reading for anybody who cared to be more than just a gorilla in a hauberk.
Clausewitz suffers both in abridged form and in translation; that’s not what he actually said. “Der Krieg ist nichts anderes als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel.” is better translated as “war is the continuation of political intercourse with the intermixing of other means,” a much more subtle concept.
The whole Sun Tzu as a business model fetish in the 1980-90s was really pretty silly. Yeah, there are some similarities in leadership regardless of profession, but the basic goals and working environments of war and of business are so wildly different that applying Sun Tzu to business is superficial at best.
The Art of War is about conflicts, and it has some general applicability to more types of conflicts besides war. What come to mind immedately are competitive sports and and commercial businesses. There isn’t a whole lot that would be applicable to, say, growing a community garden – unless you need to force your neighbors into participating.
It is entirely possible that’s more accurate. The business consultants who really pushed him might have felt Sun Tzu was an easier read but still sufficiently Asian to satisfy their Western clients who wanted to know why they were getting eaten alive by the Japanese. (Putting so much stock in trendy business consultants instead of addressing fundamental problems with their companies might have been part of it.)
Sun Tzu is more about forming strategies in order to win a conflict. The tactics can still be relevant. Lose a battle in one area in order to win a greater battle in another. Do not fight if you do not have to. Spy on everyone else. Know your enemy.
It’s certainly not the only tactical read required by military leaders, but it should not be ignored. After all, your opponent may have read it.
It’s TOTALLY OVER-RATED. It has no real tactics, only very general talks. It’s basically garbage. It’s like one of these self-help books in that it says a lot but most are common sense and useless for any guidance in war.
The 80s and 90s were also saw the expansion of “management culture” – the idea that the managers of a car plant and the managers of a travel agency have more in common with each other than they do with the regular employees of the industries they manage. The growth of “books for managers”, including Sun Tzu, came along with that.
I read Art of War and Book Of Five Rings two or three times a year. As a martial artist, I find them fascinating and I learn something new every time I read them.
Sun Tzu expresses my fundamental philosophy very succinctly: