The Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (I)
Answers to these questions can be formed without immense difficulty, but I am consistently surprised with how little has been done. After all, China is America’s closest peer competitor! I find it astonishing that the newest edition of the Science of Military Strategy (Zhanluexue) has not yet been translated into English. (I have given up hope of less prominent works, like the Science of Campaigns (Zhanyi Xue) or the Campaign Theory Study Guide (Zhanyi Lilun Xuexi Zhinan) will ever be translated). Most analysis of these texts are in short reviews and summaries for publications like the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief or a can be seen in few scattered references in papers or books on much larger topics. [20] While I am happy to see that Joe McReynolds has a book on the new SMS scheduled for publication this fall, we really must do better at researching and translating contemporary Chinese strategic thought. Thusfar Chinese nuclear strategy is the only topic were where the amount of existing research is adequate for the needs of strategic theory as a discipline or the demands of American national security and diplomacy. [21]
Part II of this series, which briefly reviews the state of Chinese military and political history and offers recommendations for the future of Chinese strategic theory as a sub-discipline, will be published at Zenpundit later this week. Those impatient to read the second part can find it here, where it was originally published.
[1] This was, incidentally, Luttwak’s primary error; his attention was so arrested by the strategy Lou Jing proposed to defeat the Xiongnu that he did not check to see how it performed when actually implemented.
[2] A recent example is found in Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: oxford University Press, 2013), 42-54.
[3] There are many examples, but the best remains Michael Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000).
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