Sun Tzu’s Art of War was written by Sun Tzu, the most famous military scientist and one of the ablest commanders in Ancient China. The exact dates of his birth and death are not known, but he lived around 500 B.C.; therefore, he was a contemporary of Confucius. According to Shi Ji: The Biography of Wu Zixu, Sun Tzu and his book of thirteen chapters on the art of war were recommended by General Wu Zixu to He Lu, the sovereign of the kingdom of Wu. Recognizing that Sun Tzu was very good at military affairs, He Lu appointed Sun Tzu a general in the kingdom.
The Art of War, written approximately 2,400 to 2,500 years ago, is the earliest and most complete book on the strategy of war available in China. The current book is somewhat different from what appears on the bamboo slips, the original Sun Tzu’s Art of War, that were excavated from the Yingue Mountains. These bamboo slips date from the early years of the West Han Dynasty, about 350 years after the end of the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 B.C.), which indicates three important points: 1) The time that Sun Tzu’s Art of War was thought to be written is correct; 2) It is indeed Sun Tzu who wrote the book and not, as has been suggested, the writings of someone else in his name and; 3) The discrepancies between the content of the present edition of Sun Tzu’s Art of War in circulation and what appears on the bamboo slips shows that this classic military work has been revised throughout different dynasties—new ideas being incorporated from the notations made as various renowned marshals and generals studied the work.
Actually, scarcely any Chinese generals throughout the ages studied Sun Tzu’s Art of War without writing down their own comments and annotations. Famous among them are Sun Bin in the Warring States (475–221 B.C.), Zhang Liang and Han Xin in the West Han Dynasty, Zhuge Liang and Cao Cao in the Period of the Three Kingdoms, Li Shiming and Li Jing in the Tang Dynasty, Yue Fei and Li Gang in the Song Dynasty, Yeluchucai in the Yuan Dynasty, Liu Boweng in the Ming Dynasty and Zhen Guofang in the Qin Dynasty. Some even contributed unique and original ideas.
A number of contemporary marshals and generals in the People’s Liberation Army of China are known to have thoroughly studied Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Mao Zedong, for instance, praised the work highly, saying that Sun Tzu’s doctrine, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated,” is scientifically true. Marshal Liu Bocheng studied Sun Tzu’s Art of War so thoroughly he could even recite it, and he applied the book with great flexibility and proficiency. He personally translated one of the chapters, “Posture of Army,” from classical to modern Chinese. Marshal Liu Bocheng’s manuscript is still kept in military archives.
Many military experts and commanders in the People’s Liberation Army drew on doctrines and principles in Sun Tzu’s Art of War and applied them in many victorious battles under the guidance of Mao Zedong.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War has been an important work of military science in world history, becoming well known abroad, too. Introduced into Japan in China’s Tang Dynasty, it has been studied there quite widely since, much earlier and more extensively than in Europe and America. The book was considered the “Bible of Military Art,” the “First Art of War in the World,” and the “Originator of the Oriental Art of War.”
It wasn’t until sometime during the Qing Dynasty (1636–1911) that Sun Tzu’s Art of War began to be known in Europe and was translated one after the other into English, French, German, Russian and Czech. Napoleon often studied the book while commanding battles. When William II, after having been defeated in World War I, came across the sentence in Sun Tzu’s Art of War “A sovereign cannot launch a war because he is enraged, nor can a general fight a war because he is resentful,” the German emperor sighed ruefully and said: “I should have read the book twenty years ago.”
Decades after World War II, famed British military strategist Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart wrote a foreword to a new English translation of The Art of War, saying: “There has long been need of a fresh and fuller translation of Sun Tzu, more adequately interpreting his thought. That need has increased with the development of nuclear weapons, potentially suicidal and genocidal.”
John Collins, in his book Grand Strategy, Practices and Principles, stated: “The first great mind to shape strategic thought . . . belonged to Sun Tzu, who produced the earliest known treatise on the art of war sometime between 400 and 320 B.C. [sic]. His thirteen little essays rank with the best of all time, including those of Clausewitz, who wrote twenty-two centuries later. No one today has a firmer feel for strategic interrelationships, considerations, and constraints. Most of his ideas make just as much sense in our environment as they did in his.”
A current U.S. Army publication on conducting military operations begins with Sun Tzu’s famous advice, to “attack the enemy where he is most unprepared, and act when you are not expected.”
Richard B. Foster, formerly in charge of a strategic studies center (“think tank”) at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), and Japanese professor Osamu Miyoshi once proposed a new strategy to improve U.S. and Soviet “balance” in accordance with Sun Tzu’s “offensive strategy.” They named it “the nuclear strategy of Sun Tzu.”
In the early 1960s, Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery of Great Britain said, during his visit to China, that a compulsory course on Sun Tzu’s Art of War should be established in all the military academies throughout the world.
U.S. newspapers reported that the former U.S. commander in the Vietnam War, General William C. Westmoreland, quoted from Sun Tzu’s Art of War “There has never been a protracted war which benefited a country” to prove his assertion that the United States should have withdrawn from that war earlier.
As early as 1888, the Department of General Staff of the Russian Army wrote articles systematically to introduce Sun Tzu’s Art of War. During World War II, the Soviet Government, in response to a proposal from the Voroshilov Institute, translated Sun Tzu’s Art of War directly from Chinese to Russian and listed it as an important course in the history of military science.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War covers many areas, including the law of war, philosophy, strategic considerations, politics, economics, diplomacy, astronomy, and geography. The book should be studied from the modern point of view, selecting the essences and discarding the irrelevancies, making the past serve the present in order to develop it. Study of the book will greatly help military commanders at all levels in directing a war, organizing battles, developing wisdom, and increasing ability.
Marshal Liu Bocheng, the president of the Chinese Military Academy in the 1950s, once said that Sun Tzu’s Art of War is a work of universal rules on guiding and commanding wars. It contains several marked features that make it unique compared to other books on the art of war.
1. It is an ancient work on universal laws of war. It is a profound exposition of factors leading to victory and to defeat, and stresses the importance of calculations (the final military decision before a war).
2. It stresses the relationship between war and such factors as politics, economics, diplomacy, astronomy, and geography. A commander is required to judge the hour, size up the situation and anticipate the enemy’s decisions before launching or directing a war. He should never act rashly.
3. It emphasizes defeating one’s enemy by strategic considerations, not by force.
4. It expresses the belief that “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence” in a war. That is to say, we should use comprehensive means—including political, diplomatic, economic, and technical resources instead of purely military means—to subdue the enemy.
5. It maintains that in a war one should adroitly guide military action and bring one’s initiative into full play so as to lure the enemy onto the road to defeat.
6. It stresses that a commander must try his best to “bring the enemy to the battlefield and not to be brought there by him [the enemy]” whether in a strategic or tactical sense. The commander should, in any case, contend for the initiative, without which one is likely to be defeated or even annihilated.
7. It also stresses the importance of employing troops flexibly, according to the position and conditions of your enemy and yourself, and of topography.
8. It attaches great importance to “knowing your enemy and yourself” if you want to win a war. In present-day language, it means one must be realistic and practical and be certain about all situations before making the final decision to fight. Subjective assumption and rash action surely lead to defeat.
9. It advocates that employing troops must be unpredictable to the enemy and catch him by surprise. It stresses that when you attack, you must use overwhelming superiority, like a fierce tiger jumping upon a sheep, and when you want to end a battle, end it as suddenly as a flash of lightning.
As president of the Chinese Military Academy in the 1950s, Marshal Liu Bocheng strongly held that Sun Tzu’s Art of War should be the main textbook for the course entitled “Science of Campaigns,” which he himself taught. Liu Bocheng also sponsored a symposium on the book at the Military Academy. While his lectures were not limited to the book itself, he drew the essence from the book and summarized it in the following six points:
1. Strategic considerations
2. Posture of army
3. Extraordinary and normal forces
4. Void and actuality
5. Initiative and flexibility in employing troops
6. Use of spies
Marshal Liu brilliantly cited a large number of battles, stories, personal experiences, and other examples to elaborate on law, philosophy, and strategies of war in simple terms.
This present book has been written from my own study of Sun Tzu’s Art of War with reference to the file of the symposium and the book Posture of Army, which Marshal Liu translated and revised from the classic Chinese.
In ancient times, many Chinese generals wrote on the art of war. According to The History of Sung Dynasty, besides Sun Tzu’s Art of War were such well-known works as: Wu Tzu’s Art of War, The Six Points of Military Strategy, The Three Stratagems by Huang Shi Gong Wei Liao Zi, The Law of Sima, and The Dialogue between Emperor Tang Taizhong and Li Wei Gong. Many of these writings are obsolete today, with only a few still accessible somewhere in the world. None ever gained the popularity of Sun Tzu’s Art of War—which shows the vitality and practical value of Sun Tzu’s doctrine.
In directing a modern war or making final decisions, it is of practical significance for us to study Sun Tzu’s Art of War. This modern interpretation evoked wide public interest and attention both at home, when first published in Chinese in 1985, and abroad, when it was published in English in New York in 1987.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War is an extremely valuable asset handed down by our ancestors. It is essential for us to reject both dogmatism and conservatism during the process of our study. At the same time, we should also adapt ourselves to the times so that we can develop a universal art of war.