The New Chinese Classics
The Necessities of War: Sundz and Chinese Leadership
E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks
(estimated publication date: 2013)

The Sundz Art of War is one of the most popular of ancient Chinese books, both inside China and internationally. This translation arranges the sections of this brief text in the chronological order of their composition, adds a commentary emphasizing the universality of its military principles, supplements it with an annotated translation of the core portion of the next of the Chinese military classics, the Wu Chi or Wudz, and puts both in the context of warfare and politics over the 04th and 03rd centuries, the formative period of the unified empire.

1. Sundz ("Master Sun") is often thought to be Sun Wu, a general of the state of Wu at the end of the 06th century. This turns out to be a myth of later times; our Sundz was actually Sun Bin, the Chi general who in 0343 was victorious over Ngwei in the first-ever encounter between large armies of the new-style mass infantry type. The successive layers of the Sundz, each not much longer than could be written on a sheet of paper, folded in quarters, and kept in the pocket of a uniform blouse, show how the art of commanding this new type of military force gradually evolved from direct experience, and eventually blossomed into a few subtle theoretical principles about the use of armies, principles which later readers have noted are readily adaptable to the use of power in general.

2. The evolution of the Sundz text indeed proceeds hand in hand, throughout the last half of the 04th century, with the evolution of the theory of civil leadership.Those parallels are developed in this book by quotations from the statecraft texts of that period. The commentary to this translation of the Sundz emphasizes its continuity with such modern military classics as the maxims of Napoleon or Clausewitz, and with the outcome of actual battles, emphasis being placed on examples from the American Civil War of 1861-1865 and the Pacific War of 1941-1945.

3. Certain aspects of military success, such as what to do with a conquered nation, are taken up, along with further advice on the training of the army, in the next of the military classics, the Wudz. That work consists of a core, designed to continue the Sundz, and several later additions meant to enhance the myth of its supposed author, Wu Chi. There is little value in these additions, which merely confuse the picture of evolving military theory, and they are here taken up only in an appendix.

4. The enormous increase in killing power represented by the mass infantry army was eventually countered by a matching development in the art of defending cities against mass attack, an art eventually taken over and further developed by the antiwar Mician movement. The steady escalation between the specialties of offense and defense is one of the most convincing, as it is one of the most humanly appalling, aspects of the history of this period. Sections of the Mician military writings are included, in order to document and dramatize that rivalry.

5. One of the most fascinating features of the high Warring States is the close interaction between Dauist and military thought. The linkages between the Sundz and the Wudz on one hand, and the contemporary Dau/Dv Jing on the other, will be noticed in the commentary.

This book will clarify the Sundz by putting its leadership maxims in correct historical context, and by drawing on other texts from that same period, including the statecraft texts which were reaching partly analogous answers to the problem of governing the new style state. The generality of the Sundz tradition will not be treated condescendingly (no advice to the lovelorn will be given), and its interpretation will not be decoyed into frenzied samurai directions, but its ongoing military relevance will be noted, and examples will be drawn from later warfare. The scholar will gain a new and more precise idea of the text and its historical setting, and the specialist in current affairs will make contact with a body of applied wisdom which has proved far from obvious to routine practitioners of civil and military management, but has become almost reflexive for the leaders of the modern Chinese state.

17 May 2007 / Contact The Project / Exit to Publications Page