Beyond Sun-Tzu : Classical Chinese Debates on War and Statecraft

Sun-Tzu (Sunzi) is one of the most popular and widely known military writers in all of history. His ideas have influenced statesmen, generals, and businessmen for hundreds of years in the West and thousands of years in China. But Sun-Tzu was only one of many competing voices in Warring States China, and many Chinese philosophers and leaders, as well as a few modern Western military historians have questioned the privileged status of his theories. Beyond Sun-Tzu: Classical Chinese Debates on War and Statecraft, is the first book to systematically examine the chaotic debates among philosophers in the pivotal Warring States Period.

Military historian Morgan Deane examines scores of texts from the philosophers of Legalism, Confucianism, Daoism, the Seven Military Classics, and many others to find the truly dominant ideas of Chinese thinkers, areas of disagreement, surprising points of agreement, and a sophisticated synthesis. The result forces us to fundamentally reexamine Chinese military theory and gives us the tools to understand contemporary matters. This "broad knowledge" of Chinese military theory becomes an invaluable tool to help readers better assess the strength of Communist China, the relative unimportance of super weapons, the primacy of winning the allegiance of the people to your government, the importance of timeless counter insurgency methods, and so much more.