The Art of War

The Art of War

Introduction

The art of war is a Chinese military piece of work represented by Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu is famous as a military general who describes the strategies and tactics of war in his work. In order to present the strategies and tactics of the war, he distributes his work into thirteen chapters that every chapter contains at least one aspect of warfare. His work is known as the definite and accurate military strategies. The book, The Art of War, has successfully made its influential place into Eastern and Western not only for military thinking but business tactics and legal strategies as well.

The first translation of the book into French appeared in 1772 by Joseph Marie Amiot. On the other hand, it was also translated into English in 1905 by a British officer Everard Ferguson Calthrop. Its English translation accomplished by the officer was partial. This partial interpretation was not only completed but published as well in 1910 by Lionel Giles.

Discussion

Sun Tzu is, in fact, against the evil of the war, but he encourages being ready for any time for that evil. He states that war is an essential wickedness, and we must avoid it as much as possible. He associates the war to the lost of economics and suggests that war ought to be fought for a short term so that economics losses can be avoided. "No long war ever profited any country: 100 victories in 100 battles is simply ridiculous. Anyone who excels in defeating his enemies triumphs before his enemy's threats become real". (Zubok 2010)

Sun Tzu argues in his boot that the mass murders and acts of violence must be avoided. He gives the reason that the mass murder and acts of violence may aggravate confrontation that let the enemy turn the war for his intention only. As a matter of fact, the main purpose of a war is to capture a state without any destruction. But if there is no other way of the destruction of the state, one may go for that step.

Sun Tzu puts the light in the book on the value of military strategies and positioning. He further declares that the positioning strategy ought to depend upon objective and subjective conditions. For the objective conditions, he takes the meaning of the physical environment and for the subjective conditions he intends to beliefs of aggressive players in the environment. ...