Sun Tzu and Bush

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The relevance of Sun Tzu The Art of War translated by John Minford Reviewed by Dmitry Shlapentokh The classics are always worth reading. The Art of War by Sun Tzu certainly falls in this category, and this is apparently the reason it was republished recently in English. Sun Tzu's treatise is regarded as a classic of military science and seems to be especially appropriate reading for the English-speaking public at a time when the United States and its major European ally, Britain, have engaged in wars or are in preparation for new wars on many fronts. Indeed, Sun Tzu has become quite a popular author and is frequently quoted. Therefore, it is not accidental that when the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Jintao, visited the US, he gave the book to President George W Bush, as a hint on how the United States should deal with its numerous geopolitical challenges. Yet one could doubt that Sun Tzu's advice would be of use to a US administration, regardless of who sits in the White House. The message of the book is clear: war is won not through strength but through skillful manipulation - a victory of the writing brush and brains over sword and strength. This vision of war is related to another major point of the book, or at least can be interpreted in this way: war is not just the function of the military but is the exercise of the entire societal body. And it is here that the US military behemoth fails: America's socio-economic fabric as a whole is not designed to win the current wars, regardless of what seems to be enormous and constantly increasing investments in the country's military machine.