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Sun Tzu On Nature And Character Of 21st Century Warfare

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Sun Tzu on the Nature and Character of 21st Century Warfare
Sun Tzu understood the nature of war as “the province of life or death,” and a “matter of vital importance to the state.”1 I agree. In my own experience, war awakens your primordial instincts and strips you of your self-rationalizations. Sun Tzu defined the character of war when he wrote, “water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions.”2 Accordingly, Sun Tzu’s principals of war offer a framework adequate to explain the nature and character of 21st century warfare, which I rationalize as a near-continuous battle of ideologies fought through asymmetric means to advance the values and interests of state and non-state actors.
I predicated my assessment of 21st …show more content…

Then, on October 7th, President Bush announced operations in Afghanistan were underway. In his address to the nation, President Bush enumerated the demands given to Taliban leadership as, “close terrorist training camps; hand over leaders of the Al Qaeda network; and return all foreign nationals, including American citizens, unjustly detained in your country.” It was clear “none of these demands were met,” as President Bush announced military strikes were underway in Afghanistan. This concludes the first element of contemporary evidence.
This assessment begins with Sun Tzu’s principal of war – national unity or “Tao,” as a frame of reference to contextualize the first characteristic of war – political objectives. Tao is predicated on the “moral influence that causes the people to be in harmony with their leaders.”9 Specifically, I assess the degree of national unity achieved in the wake of the September 11th

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