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Praise for T HE S CIENCE OF W AR … This is an important read for anyone concerned with the growing influence of China. Christopher MacDonald gives us an excellent reading of the classic and both puts it in its historical context and considers China’s policies today in terms of its ancient strategies. — Jamil Anderlini, Asia Editor for the Financial Times Uniquely useful…a superb reading of the classic. Sun Tzu comes to us, over more than two millennia, as a manual on how to live in a complex world where intelligent strategy is essential for survival. This valuable and comprehensive edition includes both the Chinese text and the translation, along with explanations of places where the text is in doubt, or where there are several possible translations. — Diana Lary, Professor emerita of History, University of British Columbia. Author of The Chinese People at War (2010) and China’s Civil War (2015) MacDonald has provided his readers with a masterly new translation… preceded by a thorough analysis of the work that avoids the plodding approach of many earlier writers. — Christopher Coker, Professor of International Relations, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Author of The Improbable War: China, the United States and the Logic of Great Power Conflict (2015) A serious and valuable effort to dig new meaning out of the ancient Chinese masterpiece. The author’s argument that the Chinese Communist Party has adopted a Sun Tzu-tinted, Warring States-lensed approach to China’s foreign relations in order to maximize its national interest is both interesting and inspiring. — Dr. Zhang Zhexin, Research Fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) and Deputy Editor of China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies This new translation and commentary offers an excellent resource for anyone wishing to gain insight into the 21st-century objectives of the PRC. — Dr. Tim Summers, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Chatham House the Science of War Sun Tzu’s Art of War re-translated and re-considered Christopher MacDonald The Science of War By Christopher MacDonald ISBN-13: 978-988-8422-69-2 © 2017 Christopher MacDonald Cover design: Jason Wong HISTORY / Asia / China HISTORY / Military / Strategy POLITICAL SCIEnCE / Security (national & International) First printing December 2017 EB092 All rights reserved. no part of this book may be reproduced in material form, by any means, whether graphic, electronic, mechanical or other, including photocopying or information storage, in whole or in part. May not be used to prepare other publications without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews. For information contact [email protected] Published by Earnshaw Books Ltd. (Hong Kong) In memory of Donald and with thanks to scholars 馬嘉瑞 and 唐久寵 Contents Foreword by Professor Christopher Coker xi Foreword by Dr. Zhang Zhexin xvi Foreword by Dr. Tim Summers xx Preface 1 Part OnE 1. Sun Tzu the man and Sun-tzu the text 4 2. Art of War or science of war? 28 3. Can a commander win the Sun Tzu way? 49 i. Cao Cao 50 ii. Genghis Khan 57 iii. napoleon 68 4. Sun Tzu and the PRC 82 Part TWO Translator’s note 123 Selected quotations 131 The Sun-tzu in translation 137 孙子兵法。The Sun-tzu in Chinese 209 Bibliography 231 Index 239 About the Author 250 List of maps Map 1. The Zhou realm in the 6th century BC 6 Map 2. The Warring States circa 350 BC 16 Map 3. Cao Cao at the Battle of Guandu, AD 200 52 Map 4. The Mongol empire circa 1290 62 Map 5. napoleon at Ulm, 1805 72 Map 6. China and the first island chain 96 Foreword by Professor Christopher Coker IN THE RUN-UP to the first Gulf War (1990-91) the US army shipped a hundred thousand books to the troops while they waited for the war to begin, among them many copies of Sun Tzu’s great work. Back in the United States, the American war theorist John Boyd, who Donald Rumsfeld once called “the most influential military thinker since Sun Tzu” gave a lecture on the great Chi- nese master which lasted eight hours spread over two days, and involved 380 PowerPoint slides. It was Boyd who sold to the generals the winning strategy of not attacking Kuwait City in a frontal assault, but outflanking it. In the West, however, the reputation of Sun Tzu has waxed and waned. Harlan Ulan, the military strategist who conceived the term ‘Shock and Awe,’ specifically cited Sun Tzu as his chief source of inspiration. But some academics have been much more sceptical. The British strategist Colin Gray famously dismissed The Art of War as a ‘cookbook’; Thomas Rid more recently com- plained that the book reads at times like ‘a choppy Twitter feed from 500 BC’. Even Sun Tzu’s Western admirers have not always done justice to the author or his work. Take Gen Tommy Franks, the architect of the second Gulf War, who liked to boast that he could quote The Art of War by heart. Franks was an able tactician but a lousy strategist and it was clear as soon as the insurgency began that he had memorised a series of bullet points rather than absorbed the real lessons of Sun Tzu’s book. Even in popular culture the great Chinese thinker has been treated with scant re- THE SCIENCE OF WAR spect. Tony Soprano was advised by his therapist to read The Art of War – and why not, you might ask if you think it’s all about deception and deceitfulness, the very qualities surely needed by a Mafia boss. The ultimate insult was the film The Art of War, a lacklustre movie starring Wesley Snipes which traded on the book’s name and nothing else. It was followed by two direct- to-video sequels, The Art of War 2: Betrayal and The Art of War 3: Retribution. Reading Christopher MacDonald’s new translation, it is star- tling how current some of Sun Tzu’s injunctions sound. War is a necessary evil, so wage it only when you have to and wage it quickly because the longer you fight the more likely you will be destroyed by it. It is evil, but of course not in any moral sense, in that people die, but because it disturbs the Dao, the harmony of the world. It is necessary because of the wilfulness of human beings – necessity is the one force that can make people risk their lives and justify their deaths. necessity is the one thing to get people to kill with a good conscience. Many of my students still think of war as cutting throats and bludgeoning people over the head. But Sun Tzu asks us to treat war as a problem of intelli- gence. Be smart: try deception, secrecy and surprise. That’s why The Art of War is so popular with businessmen: it is as important in the boardroom as it is in a military academy. One reason why his advice resonates so much is that it brings contemporary conflicts to mind, especially the continuing diplo- matic tussle between China and the United States. MacDonald goes to great lengths to show how the Chinese leadership seems to be fully conversant with the thinking of the most famous phi- losopher of war. As Henry Kissinger writes, in no other country is it conceivable that a modern leader would initiate a major na- tional undertaking by invoking strategic principles from a mil- lennium ago, nor that he could confidently expect his colleagues xii CHRISTOPHER MACDONALD to understand the significance of his allusions. “Yet China is singular. no other country can claim so long and continuous a civilisation or such an intimate link to its ancient past and the classical principles of strategic statesmanship.” In its relations with the US, the country is going with what Sun Tzu calls shi - a tough word to translate since it can mean many things including power and potential but MacDonald hits the nail on the head, I think, by rendering it in his translation of the work as ’strategic dominance.’ MacDonald has provided his English-speaking readers with a masterly new translation. It is preceded by a thorough analysis of the work that avoids the plodding approach of many earlier writers. He has opted instead for something more open-ended and impressionistic. There are short chapters on such concepts as oblique/direct, empty/solid, victory and strategic dominance. He is refreshingly thorough in laying out the concepts before applying them to analyse the campaigns that help throw them into even greater relief. The relationship he establishes between his critical and historical analysis is challenging. And for all his cautious rigour, MacDonald is drawn to the human beneath the analytical categories. Cao Cao, one of the greatest generals of his or any age, is here brought to life, as are Genghis Khan’s tactics which so influenced Soviet thinking in the 1920s. Sun Tzu, he adds, produced less a theory of war than a sci- ence which offered commanders “a tool for prioritising their energies and resources during the run-up to war, along with a menu of practical methods for winning it.” He is interested in ex- ploring the many dimensions of that science, including its philo- sophical underpinning which continues to elude many Western strategists; the historical context of the book which escapes most of us in the West who have at best an imperfect acquaintance with Chinese history; and the way in which some of the great xiii THE SCIENCE OF WAR generals of the past intuited some of Sun Tzu’s main theoretical constructs.