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What is the modern significance of the theory of total victory in Sun Tzu's Art of War?
Sun Tzu's thought of all-round victory is a theory of winning all-round victory at the least cost through comprehensive strategy. It requires decision makers to make use of the dialectical relationship of total destruction to make the enemy yield to the maximum extent and minimize the losses of both sides. Its core idea is to seek the overall situation, understand the overall destruction and determine the overall strategy, that is, to plan from the overall situation, which requires understanding the dialectical relationship between overall destruction and total destruction, and on this basis, to formulate a comprehensive strategy. Its main means is the combination of cutting, cutting and cutting soldiers.

Sun Tzu said, "the law of using force is the best policy for the whole country, followed by breaking the country;" The whole army is the best, followed by Pojun; The whole brigade is the best, followed by the broken brigade; The whole army is the best, followed by broken soldiers; "All martial arts are the best, and martial arts are the second." "All" here refers to security, and "breaking" refers to defeating the enemy by force. Sun Tzu's words contain the following ideas: the ideal goal is to make the enemy's whole country surrender; If you can't, break the enemy and let the enemy surrender; Secondly, break the enemy brigade and make the enemy surrender; Third, defeat one enemy and make one enemy brigade surrender; Even break the enemy's position and let the enemy surrender. This is what Sun Tzu called "total victory". It can be seen that the exact meaning of Sun Tzu's concept of "total victory" refers to achieving a comprehensive victory with minimal sacrifice. He realized the opposite and complementary relationship between "all" and "breaking" and strived for a perfect "all" in guiding ideology; In practice, we advocate the combination of "complete" and "broken", and seek "complete" with "small broken". The ultimate goal is to make the enemy yield to us to the maximum extent and minimize the losses of both sides. This has achieved the dialectical unity of ideal and practice on the issue of total destruction.

Although Sun Tzu put forward the idea of total victory, he was not specific enough about how to achieve total victory, which was supplemented and developed by later generations. Among them, psychological warfare, economic warfare and alliance warfare are prominent.

Attacking the heart is an important means to achieve the goal of total victory. At present, there is a saying in the earliest military book "Military Records" in China that "the ancestors had the heart to seize people"; Sun Tzu's Art of War also said that "the three armies can seize the air and the generals can seize the heart". As a complete concept, "attacking the heart" was first put forward by Sun Bin. According to Du You's "General's Canon" in the Tang Dynasty, Sun Bin once said to the King of Qi: "If you attack his country and attack his heart, you must first let it go." There are two main tactics used by the ancients to attack the heart. One is soft attack, which the ancients called "literary attack"; One is hard attack, which the ancients called "deterrence". What is wenfa? Wen Attack is a phrase of Tamia Liu, which means to weaken the enemy by flexible means and create conditions for military strikes. Its basic feature is "as it likes, as it wishes". For example, if the enemy is arrogant, flatter him and let him get carried away; When the enemy is greedy, he will buy him off and let him be used by us; The enemy likes beautiful women, so he lures him with beautiful women, making him lose his mind and turn from wrong to right. For example, at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, Gou Jian, the king of Yue, sent Xi Shi to see Fu Cha, the king of Wu; During the Warring States Period, the Qin general Wang Jian alienated the Prince of Zhao and tried to kill Li Mu. At the end of Ming Dynasty, Huang Taiji used double agents to make Emperor Chongzhen of Ming Dynasty kill Yuan Chonghuan. , are all literary attacks.

The meaning of deterrence lies in showing strength and determination to use it, so as to deter the enemy. In Sun Tzu's words, it is called "bullying the enemy". Deterrence is still an important means for modern people to confront the enemy. Harun ullman, an instructor at the National Defense University of the United States, and others said that their theory of "shock and awe" originated from the teaching of Maggie by the grandson Wu Gong. The U.S. military carried out this strategic thought throughout the Iraq war, which played a great role in disintegrating the morale of the Iraqi army.

Another important strategy in the idea of total victory is called "economic war", that is, to achieve the goal of defeating the enemy without fighting or creating conditions for defeating the enemy militarily by economic means. This idea was recorded in Guan Zhong, a book written by Guan Zhong in ancient China. At present, the United States often uses this means, called "economic sanctions", to deal with its opponents, so as to defeat the enemy or weaken the other side without fighting, and achieve the goal of "winning is in the hands, winning is easy."

China's ancient alliance strategy thought is also very rich, such as Lian Heng, Zonghe in the Warring States period; The strategy of multipolar struggle in the Three Kingdoms period. It is the product of multipolar struggle, and users use their allies to fight or declare their strength to scare the enemy. According to statistics, in the 100 days before the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, American President George H.W. Bush met with leaders of at least 5 1 countries in order to gain the support of his allies, and gained the support of more than 190 countries and regions and more than 40 international organizations, thus exerting great pressure on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and taking advantage of the situation to attack its main enemies and minimize its own.

After the appearance of nuclear weapons, Sun Tzu's idea of "defeating the enemy without fighting" attracted worldwide attention and became an important basis for some countries, especially the United States, to formulate national strategies.

In the book Real War published in May 1980, former US President Nixon talked about his new strategy of "surprise victory" against the Soviet Union. The so-called "just combination" is to confront the Soviet Union with strong military strength and strengthen the alliance with the West. The so-called "surprise victory" means relying on the western economic strength, spiritual strength and values to divide and disintegrate the Soviet Union and other countries and achieve the goal of "taking a step back and taking two steps forward" with superficial "reconciliation".

Sun Tzu's thought of total victory has also been widely used in campaign tactics. According to media reports, Tommy Franks, who was the commander of the US Central Command during the Iraq War, was a person familiar with the art of war.

After the war, Franks said in an interview with the British "Defense News" reporter that long before the outbreak of the Iraq war, the US military sent agents to Iraq to learn about the troops stationed around Baghdad, including the strength of these troops, the names, home addresses and communication methods of their senior generals and generals. On this basis, US military agents launched targeted psychological warfare against these officials and asked them to cooperate with the US military. If they accept the terms of the US military, they will get huge dollar returns and their families will be protected. After the war, the US military will not hold them accountable. Americans also promised that they could be naturalized in the United States or hold certain positions in the future Iraqi transitional government if they wanted. Franks calculated an account: the cost of launching a precision guided missile is 654.38+0 million to 2.5 million dollars. If we use the cost of a missile, we can buy off senior Iraqi officials and ask them to order their men to give up resistance, avoid casualties caused by street fighting and win quickly. Isn't this a good deal? Franks said that this practice of the US military has achieved miraculous results. After the battle of Baghdad, many Iraqi officers and soldiers took off their uniforms, disguised themselves as ordinary people, and parted ways like birds and beasts. Saddam's "ace troops"-* * * and the National Guard quietly "evaporated".

Thirdly, the idea of "victory" in the Art of War and its application in war guidance.

The theory of victory is a theory about winning by war, which is the most wonderful part of Sun Tzu's Art of War and contains rich dialectical contents. Its general requirement is to make people feel better than others, that is, to take the initiative in the war. To this end, we should know the constant changes, say that different people have different opinions, the wise see wisdom, know the truth and falsehood, use the odd right and wrong, know the characteristics, distinguish the strengths quickly, be ignorant and straightforward, and have both offensive and defensive skills.

(a) knowledge is constantly changing

The soul of military tactics is to know what is constantly changing. Often, it is an unchanging law, and change is change. Sun Tzu's art of war talks about many universal laws, that is, the general law of using troops. For example, "don't go in the direction of Gaoling, don't go against the mountain, don't pretend to go north, don't attack sharp soldiers, don't feed bait soldiers, not only return to the division, but also don't force enemy soldiers". These are universal laws, and they are general laws about operational guidance. But many times, this is not necessarily the case. For example, "returning to the division" is not unstoppable, and "surrounding the division" does not necessarily leave a gap. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cao Cao asked Zhang Xiu to retreat. Zhang Xiu had a counselor named Jia Xu, who was very clever. When Zhang Xiu first chased Cao Cao, he tried to dissuade him, but Zhang Xiu wouldn't listen. As a result, Cao Cao came prepared and failed. The second time, Zhang Xiu didn't want to chase, but Jia Xu advised him to chase. As a result, Zhang Xiujun won because Cao Cao let his guard down. It can be seen that returning to the competition area is not absolutely unstoppable. Surrounding the enemy doesn't have to leave a chance to live, but it has an absolute advantage in strength. It is not afraid of the enemy fighting with trapped animals, and surrounds them like an iron bucket. It can also break the will of the enemy and force them to surrender or assemble for annihilation. For example, during the war of liberation, our army besieged Peiping with soldiers, making the enemy "there is no way in the sky and no way in the ground", thus forcing Fu to accept peaceful adaptation. When talking about the unchangeable law, Sun Tzu emphasized that "the soldiers are unpredictable, the water is unpredictable, and the winner can be called God because of the change of the enemy", that is, people should know how to reform.

(2) Talking about kindness and deception

Some people think that Sun Tzu's Art of War only talks about deception, not benevolence. This understanding is one-sided. In fact, Sun Tzu's Art of War stresses both deception and benevolence. The benevolence in Sun Tzu's Art of War is the benevolence of the wise, not pedantic; The paradox of Sun Tzu's art of war is the paradox of the benevolent, not the paradox of the heartless. Benevolence and fraud are mutually defined and utilized, benevolence is the master of fraud, and fraud is the purpose of achieving and maintaining war victory. This is the unified thought of benevolence and sophistry in Sun Tzu's Art of War. This is an extremely important principle in China's classical strategic theory.

In modern warfare, we must also talk about both kindness and deception. Now some western powers attach great importance to the study of military deception. For example, the United States published a book entitled Strategic Military Deception in 1982, and Britain published a book entitled The Art of Military Deception in 1996. Both books are based on Sun Tzu's "paradox" thought. Ponsonby, an Englishman, publicly declared in his book Lies in Time of War: "In time of war, it is a kind of negligence not to pay attention to deception, and it is illegal to tell the truth while suspecting that lies are abnormal." In the Iraq war, both sides lied a lot. The U.S. government's claim that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction has not been found so far has become a very inflammatory reason for its invasion of Iraq; After the US troops entered Baghdad, Iraqi Information Minister Al-Sahaf also declared at the press conference that this was a "trap" set by the Iraqi army to lure the enemy deeper, so that some of our experts even made a wrong judgment that "the good play is yet to come" under this circumstance. Some western countries engage in so-called "humanitarian assistance" and other activities to buy people's hearts while waging war. It can be seen that different people have different opinions, which is the only way to guide the success of wars at home and abroad.

(3) Understand the actual situation

Virtual reality refers to the size, number and morale of hostile forces, the disorder and rest of the army, the sharpness and timidity of the military situation, the priority and weakness of deployment, etc. The purpose of knowing deficiency is to attack deficiency. To defeat the enemy's weaknesses and key points is to hit them. Avoiding the real and attacking the virtual does not mean not attacking the enemy's real place, but isolating and shocking the facts by attacking the enemy's virtual place, so that the enemy's real place can be transformed into a virtual place and then the attack can be carried out. In addition, we can divide the enemy and destroy every enemy. This is Sun Bin's strategy to encircle Wei and save Zhao.

The principle of avoiding reality is also widely used in modern wars. At the Battle of amama, 1982, the British fleet landed in the port of San Carlos, with only 50 defenders, instead of in the port of Stanley, Argentina, in order to avoid reality. The Indian Military History, written by Indians, said that the Indian army was able to win the third India-Pakistan war because they successfully used Sun Tzu's tactics of avoiding reality and avoiding emptiness.

4 Tong Qi is

Sun Tzu's Art of War first put forward the theory of singularity and integrity. This strategic principle has been regarded as the most sacred and wonderful truth by military strategists for thousands of years. Curiosity is a strategy to win with unconventional thinking in view of the stereotype formed by people's conventional thinking. The essence of odd-positive theory is "the coexistence of odd and positive", that is, taking odd as positive, taking right as odd, changing endlessly, making the enemy unpredictable. The essence of surprise is "surprise". The main characteristics of the principle of winning by surprise are proceeding from reality, being flexible, "winning by change" and opposing sticking to the rules. If you stick to the pre-defined odd and positive and don't know the change, it is right and wrong, and the odd is not necessarily odd, because it itself violates the odd and positive principle.

In Sun Tzu's Art of War, the principle of the coexistence of strangeness and righteousness is highly valued in modern wars. For example, the US Army 1982 released the new version of the "Operational Outline" on August 20th, which first put forward the theory of "air-ground integrated warfare". The four basic principles of this theory are initiative, depth, sensitivity and coordination. The second chapter of the outline directly quotes Sun Tzu's famous saying: "If it is long and inexpensive, it can win the battle" and "If you take it by surprise, you will catch it by surprise". The essence of these two sentences is surprise. 1986, when Richard Lawrence, then president of the National Defense University of the United States, delivered a speech on "air-ground battle-deep attack" at the National Defense University of China in the future, he also clearly pointed out that the principles on which this operational theory is based are "the strange is changing" and "avoiding the real and attacking the imaginary" in Sun Tzu's Art of War. This theory has become an important guiding ideology of American military operations.

(5) Good specialization

Sun Tzu put forward the proposition of specialization in "Virtual and Real Articles". The essence of specialization is to concentrate forces, disperse the enemy's forces and destroy the enemy.

Concentrating superior forces and attacking scattered enemies is a prominent idea in Sun Tzu's Art of War, and its reason is obvious. It's better to hit people with five fingers than with a fist. However, if the enemy also holds a fist at me, Sun Tzu advocates that instead of fighting the enemy, we should try to open our hands, that is, "I am single-minded, and the enemy is divided into ten", forming a situation in which I attack one with ten, so that we can be wiped out one by one. So, how can we let the enemy disperse their forces? Sun Tzu's method is to make the enemy prepare more and take a long time to prepare. I don't want the enemy to know when and where I will fight him, so that he can make preparations everywhere for a long time. If the enemy has more places to guard against, his troops will be dispersed. As the saying goes, "everything is ready, except the east wind." If the enemy stays ready for a long time, he will relax and be paralyzed. We are omnipotent in the deployment of troops and lax in energy, so we are invincible at any time. Under the condition of modern war, it is not the best policy to play "sea of people tactics"; But it is often necessary to concentrate "firepower." What is needed here is the flexible application of Sun Tzu's principle.

In the war in Afghanistan, the US military carried out multidimensional joint attacks on the enemy by land, sea and air, which embodied the principle of concentrated firepower. At the beginning of the war, the US military assembled five aircraft carrier formations, more than 700 fighter planes and nearly 80,000 troops in the surrounding areas and sea areas of Afghanistan, and carried out a fierce joint attack on the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda terrorist organizations. In just over two months from 5,438+0 on October 7th, 2006/kloc-0 to February 7th, 2006 17, the US military dispatched as many as 5,000 fighter planes and dropped more than12,000 bombs, carrying out multi-directional, multi-directional and land-based attacks on the enemy from space, high altitude and air respectively. During the Iraq war, the US military launched about 800 cruise missiles, with a total dropping volume of more than 20,000, of which precision guided missiles accounted for 70% of the total ammunition, and more than 90 military satellites were used, greatly exceeding the war in Afghanistan. These all reflect the idea of focusing fire on key points. This kind of attack will appear repeatedly on the battlefield for a long time to come.

(6) Long-term understanding of speed

Grandson has an obvious tendency towards long speed, that is, your speed is expensive and your time is cheap. This makes sense. On the one hand, judging from the country's bearing capacity and logistical supply difficulties at that time, a battle of 100 thousand troops and thousands of miles would cause "700 thousand people to be idle on the road" for too long, which the country could not afford. On the other hand, it will prevent the princes from "taking advantage of the situation" and falling into double-sided or multi-faceted struggles. Once this happens, "although there are wise men, they can't be good at it." Third, starting from the characteristics of the war itself, only a sudden attack can surprise, attack and win, which is determined by the objective law of "the sense of soldiers is the main speed".

In modern warfare, the general offensive side is more conducive to a quick victory, while the defensive side is more conducive to lasting. The Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War led by the United States have all learned the lessons of the Vietnam War, and all of them are guided by quick decisions and try to avoid falling into long-term wars. Before the United States invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban regime formulated a strategy of waging a protracted war with the Americans in an attempt to make the United States take the old road of the former Soviet Union invading Afghanistan again. On the other hand, the United States is striving for a quick decision and overthrowing the Taliban regime in one fell swoop. In the Iraqi war, the US military adopted the theory of "quick cure" put forward by Harun ullman and others, bypassed some cities, hurried forward and went straight to Baghdad, which was consistent with Sun Tzu's ideas of "if the city does not attack, the land will not be disputed" and "a long victory is not expensive".

(7) Xiao

Sun Tzu put forward the idea of pedantry as a straight line in Wu Debate. The original intention of detour is to detour and go straight, and later it is extended to indirect and direct means.

Why can people who take circuitous roads arrive later than those who take straight roads? This is because the contradiction between pedantry and honest and frank is not static. Under certain conditions, they can be transformed into each other. For example, if there are fewer obstacles and fewer enemies on the circuitous road, the time for me to pass may be shorter. There are many obstacles in the straight road, and the enemy is heavily defended, but it will take me longer to pass. A detour can take the enemy away by surprise, so people who walk straight can often be defeated. Sun Tzu realized this transformation law, so he put forward this category with profound philosophy and made it an important principle for war guidance. The ancients mastered this principle and often used indirect means to achieve goals that direct means could not.

Inspired by The Art of War, liddell hart, a British military theorist, put forward the indirect route strategy. During the Gulf War, Allied Marines and Airborne Divisions evaded Iraq's frontal defense line, detoured behind Iraqi and Kuwaiti troops, and quickly surrounded them. They call it "left hook", which is also a successful application of the idea of "taking a detour as a straight road". It can be seen that this idea still has important value today.

(8) Both offensive and defensive.

Attack and defense is the basic way of fighting. Sun Tzu emphasized both attack and defense, thus forming a relatively complete theory of attack and defense.

Sun Tzu's art of war holds that troops going deep into enemy countries can fully strengthen the cohesion and fighting spirit of foot soldiers; You can also "eat because of the enemy." The best way to attack quickly is to attack suddenly, which is "as fast as the wind" and "as moving as Lei Zhen". In order to achieve the purpose of surprise attack, secret decision-making and secret preparation are needed; If necessary, carry out a deep attack and "unite the enemy for thousands of miles and kill the generals for thousands of miles" in order to achieve things skillfully. Among the two categories of attack and defense, Sun Tzu's Art of War prefers attack.

But Sun Tzu's Art of War not only emphasizes good attack, but also advocates good defense, that is, good defense. For example, it requires "those who are good at keeping, hiding under nine places"; In order to win defensive operations, we must first prepare for war; In the deployment of troops, we should give priority to defense and master a certain number of mobile forces to adapt to various possible situations. We should oppose "too many people are prepared" and "everything is prepared". If we think everything is ready, we will do everything. Secondly, it emphasizes giving full play to the advantages of defensive operations, "being on the battlefield first", "leaving early and returning late, and all staff are on standby", making use of favorable terrain, doing a good job in defensive camouflage, creating illusions and deceiving the enemy; Thirdly, use troops flexibly in defensive operations, and when the enemy "speaks with one voice", take what he loves first, so as to mobilize the enemy, defend the attack and undermine the enemy's attack attempt; Or they can't stick to it, "draw the ground as a prison and defend it to the death", so that the enemy can't fight with us. The defensive thought of Sun Tzu's Art of War occupies a certain position in his military thought and can not be ignored.

In modern warfare, we must also attack and defend at the same time. Passive defense and blind attack have extremely serious consequences. What Americans now call "asymmetric war" is a means for the weak to attack and defend. The U.S. Department of Defense defines "asymmetric warfare" as "concentrating its weaknesses to deal with the enemy's strength." The national defense report of the United States in fiscal year 20001pointed out four aspects of asymmetric threat: information warfare, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, ballistic missiles and terrorism, and put forward the operational guiding principles of asymmetric response. Under the condition of modern war, no matter the strong or the weak, there is a problem of how to attack in defense and how to defend well in attack. Moreover, this problem is more prominent, more important, more complex and more advanced than in the past, and it is an important topic worthy of study under the conditions of modern war. The "9. 1 1" incident is a typical asymmetric contest between the weak and the strong. According to the Los Angeles Times, following the "9. 1 1" incident, there is a "grandson fever" in the United States again. Only the English version of Sun Tzu's Art of War published by Oxford University Press sold 16000 copies within one month, ranking second in the American bestseller list. This shows that Americans attach great importance to finding theoretical weapons for asymmetric operations from Sun Tzu's Art of War in order to achieve both offensive and defensive purposes.

Because the whole theoretical system of Sun Tzu's Art of War revolves around the word "victory", it also has its inevitable limitations. For example, in order to win, soldiers can be plundered, soldiers can be stupid, and virtue can be used as a means of victory ("making the people consistent with their superiors"). These thoughts had a negative impact on later generations.

To sum up, it can be seen that Sun Tzu's thought of winning first, winning completely and losing is still of great reference value to modern national defense construction and military struggle. The ancients said: "It is hard to say that ancient and modern times are different, and different generations can be in tune." There will be great differences in war styles and specific methods at home and abroad, but some principles about war guidance are the same. Sun Tzu's Art of War puts forward many general laws about war, which are still of guiding significance to today's national defense construction and military struggle.