It presents a fresh, distinctive and original rendition of the much-parsed classic, presented in a form that is clear and readily understood and at the same time inexhaustibly rich in meaning. A new translation by Michael Nylan, professor of early Chinese history at the University of California at Berkeley, with the assistance of a working group that included a former military officer, a poet and other specialists, is a taster for a forthcoming full-scale Norton Critical Edition containing a range of historical and analytical essays. Any new edition must add value compared with those that exist already. There are innumerable translations of Sun Tzu, and dozens into English. Sun Tzu writes: “The only way to manage the troops consists of making them equally resolute, so they act as one.” As if illustrating this point, Johnson’s withdrawal bill has gone through the Commons without a single Tory dissenter or abstainer. Removing the Conservative whip from Tory rebels last September provoked shock and horror in the liberal commentariat – not necessarily a disadvantage from Cummings’ point of view – while securing the party against further damaging divisions.Ī Conservative majority of 20 following a general election would be of little use if it could be undone at any point by a faction of 21 Tory Remainers. In Britain The Art of War is known to be one of the inspirations of Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. Perhaps more significantly, Trump’s one-time defence secretary, James Mattis, a former Marine Corps general respected by military leaders throughout the world for the sobriety of his judgment, revealed in an interview in 2018 that he is closest to Sun Tzu in his thinking about warfare. Sun Tzu recommends “acting without acting”.
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His former consiglieri Steve Bannon was also a Sun Tzu enthusiast, believing his ancient text, The Art of War, provided guidance in how to conduct a trade war with China, while one of the President’s former aides had “Art War” on his car’s licence plate. Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow and the director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution an adjunct professor at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington Universities and former member of the CIA External Advisory Board.In a tweet in July 2012, Donald Trump cited one of Sun Tzu’s most celebrated maxims: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Trump is not known as a great reader, and this must be one of the few direct quotes from a book in all of his compendious Twitter corpus. He also proposes complementing the Pentagon’s set of “4+1” pre‑existing threats with a new “4+1”: biological, nuclear, digital, climatic, and internal dangers. While the United States has been the world’s prominent superpower for over a generation, much American thinking has oscillated between the extremes of isolationist agendas versus interventionist and overly assertive ones.ĭrawing on historical precedents and weighing issues such as Russia’s resurgence, China’s great rise, North Korea’s nuclear machinations, and Middle East turmoil, Michael O’Hanlon presents a well‑researched, ethically sound, and politically viable vision for American national security policy. In the United States, policy makers have tried to articulate similar concepts but have failed to reach a widespread consensus since the Cold War ended. Russia and China are both believed to have “grand strategies”-detailed sets of national security goals backed by means, and plans, to pursue them. defense, foreign policy, and geopolitics.” -General David Petraeus, U.S. “A masterful examination of past American grand strategy and foreign policies, a compelling, thoughtful, and thought-provoking proposal of a new grand strategy by one of America’s foremost writers and thinkers on U.S. An informed modern plan for post-2020 American foreign policy that avoids the opposing dangers of retrenchment and overextension