Michael I Handel

The Art of War & On War Michael I Handel

Widely acknowledged as the two most important works on strategy and war, " The Art of War " by Sun Tzu and " On War " by Carl von Clausewitz have long been studied on a discrete basis, with the assumption that the theses they advanced were fundamentally at odds. This fact alone tempts the professional strategist to compare these great works in their entirety in order to discover the extent to which they are actually contradictory, similar, or complementary. It is, however, easy to understand why strategists might be reluctant to undertake such a comparison. Surely few scholars are equally accomplished in the fields of Chinese history, culture, and language and European history at the turn of the 19th century; and even if such distinguished scholars were to exist, it is even less likely that they would be professional strategists as well. In view of such obstacles, this essay adheres to a content analysis of these two texts while avoiding a more general historical, philosophical, cultural or linguistic analysis. Thus, the respective texts are quoted extensively in the interest of allowing Clausewitz and Sun Tzu to speak for themselves. As the reader will see, this approach has yielded some interesting but perhaps unexpected conclusions. This book also contains the full text of "The Art of War " by Sun Tzu in its entirety.