Masters of War
Michael I.Handel, "Masters of War".
Publisher: FRANK CASS | ISBN: 0203017749 | 1992 edition | PDF | 442 Pages | 2.47 MB
Publisher: FRANK CASS | ISBN: 0203017749 | 1992 edition | PDF | 442 Pages | 2.47 MB
When first comparing the works of Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, I assumed that these two great theorists of war represented what scholars have traditionally held to be the radically different Eastern and Western approaches to the art of war. Yet after a careful study of these two ‘opposing paradigms’, I concluded that the basic logic of strategy, like that of political behavior, is universal. To say otherwise would be akin to asserting that Russia, China, Japan, and the United States each follow distinct theories of physics or chemistry. Nevertheless the logic of war also differs from that of the natural sciences because it is based, as Jomini aptly put it, on ‘…nothing but usages, the principles of which are unknown to us’. That is to say, the conduct of war is based less on a formally developed theory and more on intuition, experience, and an understanding of the rules or ‘laws’ of action.