There was once a time when the first thing I would do in the morning was rush to the computer so that I might check the comment threads of the five to ten blogs I followed on national security and strategic theory. It was the golden era of the old Strategy Sphere: a time when […]
ISIS fighters near Mosul, in the 2014 advance against the city. Image source: “ISIS in Mosul, thousands of Refugees Flee,” Rodaw.com (9 July 2014). Last week Strategy Bridge published an interesting piece by Sebastian Bae. In it Bae analyzes the United States’ strategy to defeat ISIS through the lens of the Sunzi and its precepts. […]
Mao Zedong writing On Protracted Warfare (Yan’an, 1938) Source: Wikimedia. INTRODUCTION Last fall I wrote a popular series of posts outlining the history of the eight decade war waged between the Chinese Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu (old style: Hsiung-nu) nomadic empire. My posts were a response to a prominent American strategic theorist who misunderstood […]
“Examination hall with 7500 cells,” Guangdong (1873). Image Source. “Gifted as you are and coming from an illustrious family,” said Ma Zhunshang, “you should have passed the examinations long ago. How is it that you are still in retirement?” “Since my father died early I was brought up by my grandfather and occupied with […]
Victor Mair’s translation of the Sunzi Bingfa. Image Source. When translated into English, the Sunzi Bingfa, usually titled Sunzi’s Art of War, is a fairly small work. When we take away the commentary and annotation added by its translators we are left with a sparse text indeed: Roger Ames’ translation is 71 pages long, the […]
I recently began rereading my copy Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, the third volume in Burton Watson‘s translation of Sima Qian‘s famous Shiji. I have made it something of a goal to reread at least one portion of Sima Qian’s record every year. As I began this year’s reading my thoughts turned […]
Image source. The Long Now Foundation, a society devoted to human flourishing on a millennial timescale, has started a project named the “Manual for Civilization.” The idea behind the Manual is not unlike that of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a seed bank built deep beneath the ice of a remote Norwegian island that […]
USGS topographical map. “Japan, Korea, and Northeast China.” 2006. Image Source: koryostudies.com. What leads men and states to the path of war? For centuries thinkers and strategists of the Western tradition have turned to Thucydides and his history to find answers to this question. The great historian speaks of Athenian envoys rising up in hostile […]
Whilst Reading: A Portrait of Sofia Kramskoya, the Painter’s Wife (Ivan Kramskoi, 1866)Image Source. Earlier this year I asked if the ‘great books’ have a place in the 21st century. Jospeh Sobran says that they do: “Dogged readers of my columns will observe that I habitually quote a handful of classic writings, chiefly the Shakespeare […]
The Great Kangxi. Source: Wikimedia. Born Aixin-Jueluo Xuanye and styled Kangxi, his reign was the longest of any emperor. To this day no Chinese scholar has followed in the foot steps of Arthur Schlesinger Sr. and gathered China’s best historians together to rank all of China’s emperors, but if the task ever is completed, we […]
