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The Art of War
(Chinese: 孫子兵法) is a Chinese
military treatise that was written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu.
Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of
warfare, it has long been praised as the definitive work on military
strategies and tactics of its time.
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 quick and appropriate responses to changing
conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a
competitive environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected
situations.
The book was first translated
into the French 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. |