"The Prince, Art Of War, On War, etc." Topic

Machiavelli's The Prince:
link

Machiavelli's Art Of War:
link

Sun Tzu's Art of War:
PDF link

Clausewitz' On War:
link

Xenophon's Cyropaedia:
link

QUESTION:

What other books are similar, with very concise but solid advice to people about principles of warfare?

Thanks.

CC

Xenophons Hippikarhikos on the maintenance of cavalry

link

Jomini's work

link

Azar Gat's work
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azar_Gat

Basil Liddle Hart and his "opponents"
link

The other books and essays by Clausewitz

Maurice Strategicon
link

Sthephen Biddle: The Modern System
link

THE PRINCE is a book that every educated person should have read, but it is not primarily about war -- except in so far as war is politics by violent means.

The classic on war and society:
link

Frederick the Great, The Art of War.

Napoleon's "Maxims"

von Leeb wrote "On Defense"

Vegetius – De Re Militari

Some useful maxims, but important for context. Reads well alongside Machiavelli's Art of War (which is in many cases a response to Vegetius).

Maurice's Strategikon is seminal work on combined arms tactics.

Knute Rockne
link

Somehow I would never use the words "very concise" with any of the books you linked to. :-)

I'd also take a look at:

Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and The Evidence of History by Colin S. Gray: link
This book does an excellent job of explaining why war cannot be reduced to metrics. It is too complex with a number of inter-related variables that vary as to their impact and emphasis.

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War: link
Still can't beat this one for understanding why and how men go to war.

Principles of Maritime Strategy, by Julian S. Corbett: link
Kind of a British Mahan, but of more interest for war in general.

How about

Reveries upon the Art of War, by Marshall Herman Maurice de Saxe

Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings by Daniel J. Hughes

The Military Intellectual and Battle: Raimondo Montecuccoli and the Thirty Years War by Thomas M. Barker

The Influence Of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 by Alfred Thayer Mahan

Rich

By the way, concise is very over rated.

Rich

JFC Fuller's 'The Conduct of War, 1789 – 1961.'

'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' by Paul Kennedy. Deals with grand strategy rather than with operational warfare, but a great read.

Colin S.Gray on war? I apologize but I would be very careful in evaluating what he writes on war.Of course he would say you can't reduce war to metrics! The man was incapable and still is incapable of quantitative analysis. Grapes you can't reach are sour. And then you have his whole ridiculous attempt to disprove the Nuclear Revolution ,as posited by the works of Robert Jervis, and Thomas Schelling, in the 1980s with "Nuclear Strategy: The Case for a Theory of Victory (International Security, Vol. 4, No.1)". That pretty much blew any respect he had in U.S Political Science and Strategic Studies and had to run away to England and greener pastures (since English I.R hates math).

He isn't stupid. He is smart. But he is too conservative in his viewpoint of Political Science (in the pre-behavioral, pre-1950s way)or the study of war. Literally a fossil and hidebound refusing the behavioral revolution in the 50s, or the quantitative progression. He is the opposite of Keegan, but like him in that he reads too much in Clausewitz. Quantitative analysis has revealed a lot of information of war (for example The Steps to War, Vasquez and Senese, or War and Peace in International Rivalry, Diehl and Goertz).

If you want to read him, do so, but in conjunction with J.D.Singer's work, as well as Raymond Aron, Thomas Schelling, and Robert Jervis. Otherwise you will get a very skewed, and marginal view on the study of war.

A good alternative is Luttwak's "Strategy", or Mearsheimer's "Conventional Deterrence"

With Respect
Konstantinos Travlos

Konstantinos
Your post is a perfect example of point of view -- kinda' made me chuckle. All the reasons you address as "negative" on Gray, I see as a positive!!! I don't like Aron's, Schnelling (especially) and Jervis' approach. Quantitative analysis has its place, but in the end, war is about people. But that's ok, there's a place for bean-counters -- as long as they're not in charge. :-)

Ah well we will have to agree to disagree (as long as the Grays stay in English academia were they belong , we don't want them to get a heart attack if they meet BDM or Vasquez:))

People: Yes that is why you study behavior in a scientific manner. Did Gray do neuro-psychological or biorythm studies?Did he even try to integrate their findings?

The problem with Gray and all those that think like him in Political Science and Strategic studies is that they make sweeping generalizations on things like human nature from nothing more then educated (and many times not even that) guesses. I got no problem with someone doing individual level analysis of I.R events. But in that case you can't just "think, think and think", do a comparative study of a small part of human history and then say here is why you can't make any scientific predictions. If you go down to the individual level (and that is what human factor arguments are in there essence) then you have, in the name of scientific integrity, to look at neuro-science, the intersection of biology and psychology, and anthropology.

Now if you are a Philosopher(which is a respected field of human inquiry) you don't have to do that. Philosophy only obeys criteria of internal logic. But if you claim to be a Political Scientist, or to be in the Military Sciences, then you can't just philosophize anymore.

I used to think like Gray (since my BA and MA are from ultra-traditionalist Universities Panteion and Chicago), until I came to the conclusion that in 50 years of Political Science, that way of thinking has given us nothing but nebulous un-scientific suppositions on abstract concepts like "human nature"!

On the other hand the rational choice approaches (game theory or quantitative) have produced a significant amounts of robust findings (examples the bellicose effect of military alliances, the significant effect military power has on war winning, and the insignificant it has on war initiation and many more, the fact that war is actually quite rare when compared to the totality of International interactions in the post 1815 world).

Just note that the Bean counters like BDM get paid 500k a year by the DoD to advise while Colin has zero influence. Bean COunters are the only Political Scientists to receive Nobel Prizes. That the Bean Counters are integrating into political science the new findings of the life sciences, while Gray is still basing his worldview on outdated ideas of social Darwinism, or determinist views of human nature that have no, no foundation on how nature works and make genomists or neuro-psychologists laugh.

But you know what, they are damn good writers (I have studied Mearsheimer who is a far better representative of traditional I.R then Gray), and their philosophical foundations permit them to ask questions and answer them in such a way as to make sense in an intuitive way and provide seemingly parsimonious explanations of complex behavior.

Well humans like simplicity. And we like good reading. Unfortunately if you actually look at the world parsimony is a elusive if not illusionary holy grail (DNA was thought to be that in Biology, not anymore, with complexity being the reality).

I am not saying, that such exercises are not useful, or even give good results (they have), but they are not the cutting edge of Political Science, and should be read very carefully and with a good deal of skepticism. But hey Gray is fun to read!

I think what I like most about Gray, and others, and the reason I have a hard time with Schnelling, etc. (gross generlization follows) is that Gray and company recognize there are a large number of inter-related variables that influence strategy. My problem with Schnelling and company is that they believe there are a limited number of measurable variables, and they tend to ignore other variables precisely because they cannot be measured. My problem with Schnelling and rational choice theories in general is that they assume a "rational" actor…leaving aside that "rational" can mean different things or even that there's such a thing as an "irrational" actor. What is rational to me may not be rational to you for a variety of reasons such as culture, religion, education, geography, politics, etc.

In practice (over 30 years as an Army officer and civilian employee), what I've seen is that many decision makers focus on the metrics because you can hide behind what the numbers tell you. And, heck, it's tough to have metrics on morale, etc. If I have hard numbers, leaving aside whether or not the metric is valid and leads to a desired result, and you don't, I'm going to win my argument.

Having said all that, I do believe that one has to have a good understanding of all the variables, whether they can be measured or not. The hard numbers and the soft coexist and ignoring either one can lead to poor strategic judgement.

For example, as much as I like Clausewitz, I cannot accept everything he wrote. But he did come up with some good ideas that have stood the test of time. For, example, the concept of "friction" in war. Despite the best efforts of many to reduce friction, it still exists. Those who believed in the so-called technological revolution in military affairs of the 1990s ignored the fact that technology itself creates its own friction, and, in the end, I don't need to have all of America's technological capabilities to fight a war. I would argue that, as demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, I can fight a prolonged war without it, or that I can also take advantage of technology myself to resist. I would also argue, as demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, that it's the soft factors that dominiate when fighting an insurgency where you need to arrive at a long-term poltical solution that does not rely on military success to win.

And I definitly agree with your comment about reading, "very carefully and with a good deal of skepticism." But I'd apply that to all theorists.

Yes but nobody questions anymore the complexity of social events (which war is). Only really foggy traditionalists still look for parsimony to such an extent. The new quantitative analysis (post late 1990s) looks primarily for interactive effects. Single variable analysis is only used as a fist step to clarify existence claims (that such a variable actually does have show some effect). After that only interaction and conditional effects tend to have a statistically significant impact.

On rationality, pure rationality is recognized for what it is a heuristic construct (pending of course the integration of new findings from neuro-science and biology) to be used as a foundation from which to actually look at what is different and why in the real world. Rationalist scholars recognize that bounded rationality is the norm and wrestle with it sometimes successfully sometimes not. This isn't controversial in Political Science although the parsimony vs. complexity debate still rages.

The problem with Gray and those that stress immeasurable over measurable variables, is that you can't really make informed policy choices on things that you can't measure. Example: In his 1979 article "Nuclear Strategy: The Case for a Theory Victory" Gray argues that the U.S should create a theory of winning a full nuclear war, because according to his reading of Clauswitz any war should be winnable, and that Schelling and Jervis are worng to posit that Nuclear War is any different. His whole argument is then based on a claim that Soviet leaders would surrender if the U.S could take out with a first strike all of the key centers of government and defense. The problem is that he provides zero proof that Soviet leaders would react as he says. Not psychological profiles, not a rational theory, not a game theoretic explanation, not even a good foundation on sovietologist work (which itself is was more thinking then science). And he was asking the U.S government to be willing to launch a full nuclear war on those foundations. Is it weird that the rationalists won out in the end (both the policy and scientific debate-Schelling's Nobel Prize)?

But leave the tenuous character of immeasurables when it comes to policy making. We always make choices in a context of friction:)

The worst thing is that he is so damn conservative when it comes to scientific progress. It is one thing to say that we have immeasurables that make political science hard to fully give us scientific results(which by the way is still a problem that the life sciences can face). Everybody accepts this (ok Bueno De Mesquita probably doesn't but he is in his own league). But we always try to operationalise them, and don't give up in scientific inquiry. Yes some are hard to do, and we have to use dummy's or indirect methods. But also the progress in the life sciences does mean that more and more of those immeasurables can or will be operationalised in the future.

But not for Colin, and not for those that think like him. Doing bean counting is stupid and one should be just philosophizing since you can never have full explanation by scientific means. Well duh!! Not even the life sciences claim that they can provide 100% answers. Nothing new here. Doesn't stop neuro-scientists or genomicists from doing there work, shouldn't stop political scientists from striving for more scientific explanations as well.

To be fair, there are rationalists and quantitative scholars that are as bad as Gray when it comes to methodological monism, or baseless overgeneralisations. They are not the best scholars and so is the case for Gray.

Zapp Brannigan's Big book of war