John F Sullivan
Former U.S. Army China Foreign Area Officer. Currently studying and writing about ancient Chinese strategic texts. Climber of Mt. Villingili.
View on ๐Threads
One of the Seven Military Classics, Six Secret Teachings of Jiang Ziya lists all of the equipment an army of 10,000-men will need to assemble to go to war. Its descriptions of the...
To avoid a Bankrupt understanding of Sun Tzu, consider Chapter 11 The problematic 11th chapter of the Art of War is critical to understanding the overall textโs purpose and intent...
The Uncertain Trumpet of Sun Tzu: We often think of Sun Tzuโs military advice deriving from a supremely confident commander acting as a masterful manipulator of circumstances. Th...
โBut the us is not comfortable with China becoming a tiger. America wants China to be a cat, maybe a fat cat. And it wants to pull out our teeth, like AI or high-end semiconductors...
The king of Song said to his prime minister, Tang Yang, "I have executed a multitude, yet my officials fear me even less. Why is that?" "Those whom your majesty condemned were al...
John Boyd's argument in "Patterns of Conflict" that Genghis Khan conducted warfare based on the tenets of Sun Tzu illustrates neatly Clausewitz's admonition that reliance on ancien...
The Power of the Historian: โA saying goes, โStraight as a bowstring, a man dies by the roadside, but crooked as a hook, heโs made a lordโ โฆ If the historian candidly records the...
Know Your Ancient Chinese Battles, Part 2: The Battle of Yao Hills (627 BC) Why is it important? For hundreds of years it was the quintessential example of strategic overreach di...
For those who don't know, the origins of one of the most unhelpful yet stubbornly persistent lazy generalizations of the "Western Way of War" was conceived by a duplicitous Persian...
Almost all of the events which are described in China's oldest historical texts (Zuozhuan, Shiji etc.) take place within the area bounded by the yellow circle. When ancient Chinese...
A Chinese text composed in 239 BC outlines the "eight examinations and six tests for evaluating [personnel]." 2,261 years later, it still provides a useful method to assess the tru...