Review:
The Art of War is one of the oldest books
on military strategy in the world.
It is the first and one of the most
successful works on strategy and has had a
huge influence on Eastern and Western military
thinking, business tactics, and beyond.
Sun Tzu was the first to recognize the
importance of positioning in strategy and that
position is affected both by objective conditions
in the physical environment and the subjective
opinions of competitive actors in that environment.
He taught that strategy was not planning in the
sense of working through a to-do list, but rather
that it requires quickly responding appropriately
to changing conditions. Planning works in a
controlled but competitive environment,
and competing plans collide, creating situations
that no one planned for.
The book was first translated into a European
language in 1782 by French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie
Amiot, and had possibly influenced Napoleon,
and even the planning of Operation Desert Storm.
Leaders as diverse as Mao Zedong, General Vo Nguyen
Giap, and General Douglas MacArthur have claimed
to have drawn inspiration from the work.
The Art of War has also been applied to business
and managerial strategies.